fruit and vegetable market due to over-crowding at the Eastern Market. However, the location was contested due to its proximity to the cemetery, and proved unpopular with market gardeners who refused to use the space. This resulted in it serving as a livestock and hay market (the Meat Market Reserve) until 1867, when a substantial brick building (now the Meat and Fish Hall) was erected on the corner of Elizabeth and Victoria streets. In 1876, the Victorian Government passed an Act officially gazetting the Old Melbourne Cemetery site as land to be reserved and developed into markets. A year later the part of the cemetery on the corner of Queen and Victoria streets where the unconsecrated burials of Aboriginal people and executed criminals were located, was the first area to be built upon. Before construction started, 28 skeletons were exhumed and re-interred at the Melbourne General Cemetery, including those of three Aboriginal men who had been executed in the 1840s. Official opening of Queen Victoria Market The Queen Victoria Market officially opened in March 1878, and it quickly expanded into wholesale and retail fruit and vegetable trading, which prompted the construction of G, H, I and J sheds. Shops were built along Elizabeth Street in 1880, and in 1884 the well-known Meat and Fish Hall façade was constructed. By 1898, an average of 300 carts loaded with fresh vegetables and fruit from market gardens to the south east of the city arrived twice a week during the summer for sale in the market. Expansion In 1920, work to expand the markets to Peel Street were commenced. This involved building over the section of the old cemetery allocated for Jewish burials and also the graves of the first British colonists. Considerable public protest occurred to attempt to halt the development. Sir John Monash, who was Jewish, stated that if the project went ahead it "would stamp Australians as a people devoid of sentiment and morality." A petition to the Prince of Wales to intervene in the development proved unsuccessful. Work proceeded and between 1920 and 1922, 914 bodies were exhumed and re-buried in other cemeteries around Melbourne, notably at the new Fawkner Cemetery. By 1923 most of the remains of the prominent early settlers had been relocated, and the rest of the Old Melbourne Cemetery was ploughed up and prepared for the market expansion. Sheds K-L and M were built on