certainly the smaller class of the two, avail themselves of the sale of
flowers in the streets for immoral purposes, or rather, they seek to
eke out the small gains of their trade by such practises. They frequent
the great thoroughfares, and offer their bouquets to gentlemen, whom on
an evening they pursue for a hundred yards or two in such places as the
Strand, mixing up a leer with their whine for custom or for charity.
Their ages are from fourteen to nineteen or twenty, and sometimes they
remain out offering their flowers--or dried lavender when no fresh
flowers are to be had--until late at night. They do not care, to make
their appearance in the streets until towards evening, and though they
solicit the custom of ladies, they rarely follow or importune them. Of
this class I shall treat more fully under another head.
The other class of flower-girls is composed of the girls who, wholly
or partially, depend upon the sale of flowers for their own support
or as an assistance to their parents. Some of them are the children
of street-sellers, some are orphans, and some are the daughters of
mechanics who are out of employment, and who prefer any course rather
than an application to the parish. These girls offer their flowers
in the principal streets at the West End, and resort greatly to the
suburbs; there are a few, also, in the business thoroughfares. They
walk up and down in front of the houses, offering their flowers to any
one looking out of the windows, or they stand at any likely place. They
are generally very persevering, more especially the younger children,
who will run along, barefooted, with their “Please, gentleman, do buy
my flowers. Poor little girl!”--“Please, kind lady, buy my violets. O,
do! please! Poor little girl! Do buy a bunch, please, kind lady!”
The statement I give, “of two orphan flower-sellers” furnishes another
proof, in addition to the many I have already given, of the heroic
struggles of the poor, and of the truth of the saying, “What would the
poor do without the poor?”
The better class of flower-girls reside in Lisson-grove, in the streets
off Drury-lane, in St. Giles’s, and in other parts inhabited by the
very poor. Some of them live in lodging-houses, the stench and squalor
of which are in remarkable contrast to the beauty and fragrance of the
flowers they sometimes have to carry thither with them unsold.
OF TWO ORPHAN FLOWER GIRLS.
Of these girls the elder was fifteen and the younger eleven. Both
were clad in old, but not torn, dark print frocks, hanging so
closely, and yet so loosely, about them as to show the deficiency of
under-clothing; they wore old broken black chip bonnets. The older
sister (or rather half-sister) had a pair of old worn-out shoes on her
feet, the younger was barefoot, but trotted along, in a gait at once
quick and feeble--as if the soles of her little feet were impervious,
like horn, to the roughness of the road. The elder girl has a modest
expression of countenance, with no pretensions to prettiness except in
having tolerably good eyes. Her complexion was somewhat muddy, and her
features somewhat pinched. The younger child had a round, chubby, and
even rosy face, and quite a healthful look. Her portrait is here given.
They lived in one of the streets near Drury-lane. They were inmates
of a house, not let out as a lodging-house, in separate beds, but
in rooms, and inhabited by street-sellers and street-labourers.
The room they occupied was large, and one dim candle lighted it so
insufficiently that it seemed to exaggerate the dimensions. The walls
were bare and discoloured with damp. The furniture consisted of a
crazy table and a few chairs, and in the centre of the room was an old
four-post bedstead of the larger size. This bed was occupied nightly
by the two sisters and their brother, a lad just turned thirteen.
In a sort of recess in a corner of the room was the decency of an
old curtain--or something equivalent, for I could hardly see in the
dimness--and behind this was, I presume, the bed of the married couple.
The three children paid 2_s._ a week for the room, the tenant an
Irishman out of work paying 2_s._ 9_d._, but the furniture was his,
and his wife aided the children in their trifle of washing, mended
their clothes, where such a thing was possible, and such like. The
husband was absent at the time of my visit, but the wife seemed of a
better stamp, judging by her appearance, and by her refraining from any
direct, or even indirect, way of begging, as well as from the “Glory be
to Gods!” “the heavens be your honour’s bed!” or “it’s the thruth I’m
telling of you sir,” that I so frequently meet with on similar visits.
The elder girl said, in an English accent, not at all garrulously, but
merely in answer to my questions: “I sell flowers, sir; we live almost
on flowers when they are to be got. I sell, and so does my sister,
all kinds, but it’s very little use offering any that’s not sweet. I
think it’s the sweetness as sells them. I sell primroses, when they’re
in, and violets, and wall-flowers, and stocks, and roses of different
sorts, and pinks, and carnations, and mixed flowers, and lilies of
the valley, and green lavender, and mignonette (but that I do very
seldom), and violets again at this time of the year, for we get them
both in spring and winter.” [They are forced in hot-houses for winter
sale, I may remark.] “The best sale of all is, I think, moss-roses,
young moss-roses. We do best of all on them. Primroses are good, for
people say: ‘Well, here’s spring again to a certainty.’ Gentlemen are
our best customers. I’ve heard that they buy flowers to give to the
ladies. Ladies have sometimes said: ‘A penny, my poor girl, here’s
three-halfpence for the bunch.’ Or they’ve given me the price of two
bunches for one; so have gentlemen. I never had a rude word said to me
by a gentleman in my life. No, sir, neither lady nor gentleman ever
gave me 6_d._ for a bunch of flowers. I never had a sixpence given
to me in my life--never. I never go among boys, I know nobody but my
brother. My father was a tradesman in Mitchelstown, in the County
Cork. I don’t know what sort of a tradesman he was. I never saw him.
He was a tradesman I’ve been told. I was born in London. Mother was a
chairwoman, and lived very well. None of us ever saw a father.” [It
was evident that they were illegitimate children, but the landlady had
never seen the mother, and could give me no information.] “We don’t
know anything about our fathers. We were all ‘mother’s children.’
Mother died seven years ago last Guy Faux day. I’ve got myself, and my
brother and sister a bit of bread ever since, and never had any help
but from the neighbours. I never troubled the parish. O, yes, sir, the
neighbours is all poor people, very poor, some of them. We’ve lived
with her” (indicating her landlady by a gesture) “the two years, and
off and on before that. I can’t say how long.” “Well, I don’t know
exactly,” said the landlady, “but I’ve had them with me almost all
the time, for four years, as near as I can recollect; perhaps more.
I’ve moved three times, and they always followed me.” In answer to my
inquiries the landlady assured me that these two poor girls, were never
out of doors all the time she had known them after six at night. “We’ve
always good health. We can all read.” [Here the three somewhat insisted
upon proving to me their proficiency in reading, and having produced
a Roman Catholic book, the “Garden of Heaven,” they read very well.]
“I put myself,” continued the girl, “and I put my brother and sister
to a Roman Catholic school--and to Ragged schools--but _I_ could read
before mother died. My brother can write, and I pray to God that he’ll
do well with it. I buy my flowers at Covent Garden; sometimes, but
very seldom, at Farringdon. I pay 1_s._ for a dozen bunches, whatever
flowers are in. Out of every two bunches I can make three, at 1_d._ a
piece. Sometimes one or two over in the dozen, but not so often as I
would like. We make the bunches up ourselves. We get the rush to tie
them with for nothing. We put their own leaves round these violets (she
produced a bunch). The paper for a dozen costs a penny; sometimes only
a halfpenny. The two of us doesn’t make less than 6_d._ a day, unless
it’s very ill luck. But religion teaches us that God will support us,
and if we make less we say nothing. We do better on oranges in March or
April, I think it is, than on flowers. Oranges keep better than flowers
you see, sir. We make 1_s._ a day, and 9_d._ a day, on oranges, the two
of us. I wish they was in all the year. I generally go St. John’s-wood
way, and Hampstead and Highgate way with my flowers. I can get them
nearly all the year, but oranges is better liked than flowers, I think.
I always keep 1_s._ stock-money, if I can. If it’s bad weather, so bad
that we can’t sell flowers at all, and so if we’ve had to spend our
stock-money for a bit of bread, _she_ (the landlady) lends us 1_s._, if
she has one, or she borrows one of a neighbour, if she hasn’t, or if
the neighbours hasn’t it, she borrows it at a dolly-shop” (the illegal
pawn-shop). “There’s 2_d._ a week to pay for 1_s._ at a dolly, and
perhaps an old rug left for it; if it’s very hard weather, the rug must
be taken at night time, or we are starved with the cold. It sometimes
has to be put into the dolly again next morning, and then there’s 2_d._
to pay for it for the day. We’ve had a frock in for 6_d._, and that’s
a penny a week, and the same for a day. We never pawned anything; we
have nothing they would take in at the pawnshop. We live on bread and
tea, and sometimes a fresh herring of a night. Sometimes we don’t eat a
bit all day when we’re out; sometimes we take a bit of bread with us,
or buy a bit. My sister can’t eat taturs; they sicken her. I don’t know
what emigrating means.” [I informed her and she continued]: “No, sir,
I wouldn’t like to emigrate and leave brother and sister. If they went
with me I don’t think I should like it, not among strangers. I think
our living costs us 2_s._ a week for the two of us; the rest goes in
rent. That’s all we make.”
The brother earned from 1_s._ 6_d._ to 2_s._ a week, with an occasional
meal, as a costermonger’s boy. Neither of them ever missed mass on a
Sunday.
OF THE LIFE OF A FLOWER GIRL.
Some of these girls are, as I have stated, of an immoral character, and
some of them are sent out by their parents to make out a livelihood
by prostitution. One of this class, whom I saw, had come out of prison
a short time previously. She was not nineteen, and had been sentenced
about a twelvemonth before to three months’ imprisonment with hard
labour, “for heaving her shoe,” as she said, “at the Lord Mayor, to get
a comfortable lodging, for she was tired of being about the streets.”
After this she was locked up for breaking the lamps in the street.
She alleged that her motive for this was a belief that by committing
some such act she might be able to get into an asylum for females. She
was sent out into the streets by her father and mother, at the age of
nine, to sell flowers. Her father used to supply her with the money to
buy the flowers, and she used to take the proceeds of the day’s work
home to her parents. She used to be out frequently till past midnight,
and seldom or never got home before nine. She associated only with
flower-girls of loose character. The result may be imagined. She could
not state positively that her parents were aware of the manner in which
she got the money she took home to them. She supposes that they must
have imagined what her practices were. He used to give her no supper
if she “didn’t bring home a good bit of money.” Her father and mother
did little or no work all this while. They lived on what she brought
home. At thirteen years old she was sent to prison (she stated) “for
selling combs in the street” (it was winter, and there were no flowers
to be had). She was incarcerated fourteen days, and when liberated
she returned to her former practices. The very night that she came
home from gaol her father sent her out into the streets again. She
continued in this state, her father and mother living upon her, until
about twelve months before I received this account from her, when her
father turned her out of his house, because she didn’t bring home money
enough. She then went into Kent, hop-picking, and there fell in with a
beggar, who accosted her while she was sitting under a tree. He said,
“You have got a very bad pair of shoes on; come with me, and you shall
have some better ones.” She consented, and walked with him into the
village close by, where they stood out in the middle of the streets,
and the man began addressing the people, “My kind good Christians, me
and my poor wife here is ashamed to appear before you in the state we
are in.” She remained with this person all the winter, and travelled
with him through the country, begging. He was a beggar by trade. In the
spring she returned to the flower-selling, but scarcely got any money
either by that or other means. At last she grew desperate, and wanted
to get back to prison. She broke the lamps outside the Mansion-house,
and was sentenced to fourteen days’ imprisonment. She had been out of
prison nearly three weeks when I saw her, and was in training to go
into an asylum. She was sick and tired, she said, of her life.
OF THE STREET SALE OF LAVENDER.
The sale of green lavender in the streets is carried on by the same
class as the sale of flowers, and is, as often as flowers, used for
immoral purposes, when an evening or night sale is carried on.
The lavender is sold at the markets in bundles, each containing a dozen
branches. It is sold principally to ladies in the suburbs, who purchase
it to deposit in drawers and wardrobes; the odour communicated to linen
from lavender being, perhaps, more agreeable and more communicable
than that from any other flower. Nearly a tenth of the market sale may
be disposed of in this way. Some costers sell it cheap to recommend
themselves to ladies who are customers, that they may have the better
chance for a continuance of those ladies’ custom.
The number of lavender-sellers can hardly be given as distinct from
that of flower-sellers, because any flower-girl will sell lavender,
“when it is in season.” The season continues from the beginning of
July to the end of September. In the winter months, generally after
day-fall, dried lavender is offered for sale; it is bought at the
herb-shops. There is, however, an addition to the number of the
flower-girls of a few old women, perhaps from twenty to thirty, who
vary their street-selling avocations by going from door to door in the
suburbs with lavender for sale, but do not stand to offer it in the
street.
The street-seller’s profit on lavender is now somewhat more than cent.
per cent., as the bundle, costing 2-1/2_d._, brings when tied up in
sprigs, at least, 6_d._ The profit, I am told, was, six or seven years
ago, 200 per cent.; “but people will have better penn’orths now.” I
was informed, by a person long familiar with the trade in flowers,
that, from twenty to twenty-five years ago, the sale was the best. It
was a fashionable amusement for ladies to tie the sprigs of lavender
together, compressing the stems very tightly with narrow ribbon of any
favourite colour, the heads being less tightly bound, or remaining
unbound; the largest stems were in demand for this work. The lavender
bundle, when its manufacture was complete, was placed in drawers, or
behind books in the shelves of a glazed book-case, so that a most
pleasant atmosphere was diffused when the book-case was opened.
CUT FLOWERS.
I now give the quantity of cut flowers sold in the streets. The returns
have been derived from nursery-men and market-salesmen. It will be
seen how fully these returns corroborate the statement of the poor
flower-girl--(p. 135)--“it’s very little use offering anything that’s
not sweet.”
I may remark, too, that at the present period, from “the mildness of
the season,” wallflowers, primroses, violets, and polyanthuses are
almost as abundant as in spring sunshine.
Violets 65,280 bunches.
Wallflowers 115,200 „
Lavender 296,640 „
Pinks and Carnations 63,360 „
Moss Roses 172,800 „
China ditto 172,800 „
Mignonette 86,400 „
Lilies of the Valley 1,632 „
Stocks 20,448 „
-------
Cut flowers sold yearly in the }
streets } 994,560 „
OF THE STREET SALE OF FLOWERS IN POTS, ROOTS, ETC.
The “flower-root sellers”--for I heard them so called to distinguish
them from the sellers of “cut flowers”--are among the best-mannered and
the best-dressed of all the street-sellers I have met with, but that
only as regards a portion of them. Their superiority in this respect
may perhaps be in some measure attributable to their dealing with a
better class of customers--with persons who, whether poor or rich,
exercise healthful tastes.
I may mention, that I found the street-sellers of “roots”--always
meaning thereby flower-roots in bloom--more attached to their trade
than others of their class.
The roots, sold in the streets, are bought in the markets and at the
nursery-gardens; but about three-fourths of those required by the
better class of street-dealers are bought at the gardens, as are “cut
flowers” occasionally. Hackney is the suburb most resorted to by the
root-sellers. The best “pitches” for the sale of roots in the street
are situated in the New-road, the City-road, the Hampstead-road, the
Edgeware-road, and places of similar character, where there is a
constant stream of passers along, who are not too much immersed in
business. Above three-fourths of the sale is effected by itinerant
costermongers. For this there is one manifest reason: a flower-pot,
with the delicate petals of its full-blown moss-rose, perhaps, suffers
even from the trifling concussion in the journey of an omnibus, for
instance. To carry a heavy flower-pot, even any short distance, cannot
be expected, and to take a cab for its conveyance adds greatly to the
expense. Hence, flower-roots are generally purchased at the door of the
buyer.
For the flowers of commoner or easier culture, the root-seller receives
from 1_d._ to 3_d._ These are primroses, polyanthuses, cowslips (but
in small quantities comparatively), daisies (single and double,--and
single or wild, daisies were coming to be more asked for, each 1_d._),
small early wallflowers, candy-tufts, southernwood (called “lad’s love”
or “old man” by some), and daffodils, (but daffodils were sometimes
dearer than 3_d._). The plants that may be said to struggle against
frost and snow in a hard season, such as the snowdrop, the crocus, and
the mezereon, are rarely sold by the costers; “They come too soon,” I
was told. The primroses, and the other plants I have enumerated, are
sold, for the most part, not in pots, but with soil attached to the
roots, so that they may be planted in a garden (as they most frequently
are) or in a pot.
Towards the close of May, in an early season, and in the two following
months, the root-trade is at its height. Many of the stalls and
barrows are then exceedingly beautiful, the barrow often resembling a
moving garden. The stall-keepers have sometimes their flowers placed
on a series of shelves, one above another, so as to present a small
amphitheatre of beautiful and diversified hues; the purest white, as
in the lily of the valley, to the deepest crimson, as in the fuschia;
the bright or rust-blotted yellow of the wallflower, to the many hues
of the stock. Then there are the pinks and carnations, double and
single, with the rich-coloured and heavily scented “clove-pinks;”
roses, mignonette, the velvetty pansies (or heart’s-ease), the white
and orange lilies, calceolarias, balsams (a flower going out of
fashion), geraniums (flowers coming again into fashion), musk-plants,
London pride (and other saxifrages; the species known, oddly enough, as
London pride being a native of wild and mountainous districts, such as
botanists call “Alpine habitats,”) and the many coloured lupins. Later
again come the China-asters, the African marigolds, the dahlias, the
poppies, and the common and very aromatic marigold. Later still there
are the Michaelmas daisies--the growth of the “All-Hallow’n summer,” to
which Falstaff was compared.
There is a class of “roots” in which the street-sellers, on account of
their general dearness, deal so sparingly, that I cannot class them as
a part of the business. Among these are anemones, hyacinths, tulips,
ranunculuses, and the orchidaceous tribe. Neither do the street people
meddle, unless very exceptionally, with the taller and statelier
plants, such as foxgloves, hollyoaks, and sunflowers; these are too
difficult of carriage for their purpose. Nor do they sell, unless again
as an exception, such flowers as require support--the convolvolus and
the sweet-pea, for instance.
The plants I have specified vary in price. Geraniums are sold at from
3_d._ to 5_s._; pinks at from 3_d._ for the common pink, to 2_s._ for
the best single clove, and 4_s._ for the best double; stocks, as they
are small and single, to their being large and double, from 3_d._ (and
sometimes less) to 2_s._; dahlias from 6_d._ to 5_s._; fuschias, from
6_d._ to 4_s._; rose-bushes from 3_d._ to 1_s._ 6_d._, and sometimes,
but not often, much higher; musk-plants, London pride, lupins, &c., are
1_d._ and 2_d._, pots generally included.
To carry on his business efficiently, the root-seller mostly keeps a
pony and a cart, to convey his purchases from the garden to his stall
or his barrow, and he must have a sheltered and cool shed in which to
deposit the flowers which are to be kept over-night for the morrow’s
business. “It’s a great bother, sir,” said a root-seller, “a man having
to provide a shed for his roots. It wouldn’t do at all to have them
in the same room as we sleep in--they’d droop. I have a beautiful big
shed, and a snug stall for a donkey in a corner of it; but he won’t
bear tying up--he’ll fight against tying all night, and if he was
loose, why in course he’d eat the flowers I put in the shed. The price
is nothing to him; he’d eat the Queen’s camellias, if he could get at
them, if they cost a pound a-piece. So I have a deal of trouble, for I
must block him up somehow; but he’s a first-rate ass.” To carry on a
considerable business, the services of a man and his wife are generally
required, as well as those of a boy.
The purchases wholesale are generally by the dozen roots, all ready
for sale in pots. Mignonette, however, is grown in boxes, and sold
by the box at from 5_s._ to 20_s._, according to the size, &c. The
costermonger buys, for the large sale to the poor, at a rate which
brings the mignonette roots into his possession at something less,
perhaps, than a halfpenny each. He then purchases a gross of small
common pots, costing him 1-1/2_d._ a dozen, and has to transfer the
roots and soil to the pots, and then offer them for sale. The profit
thus is about 4_s._ per hundred, but with the drawback of considerable
labour and some cost in the conveyance of the boxes. The same method is
sometimes pursued with young stocks.
The cheapness of pots, I may mention incidentally, and the more
frequent sale of roots in them, has almost entirely swept away the
fragment of a pitcher and “the spoutless tea-pot,” which Cowper
mentions as containing the poor man’s flowers, that testified an
inextinguishable love of rural objects, even in the heart of a city.
There are a few such things, however, to be seen still.
Of root-sellers there are, for six months of the year, about 500 in
London. Of these, one-fifth devote themselves principally, but none
entirely, to the sale of roots; two-fifths sell roots regularly, but
only as a portion, and not a larger portion of their business; and the
remaining two-fifths are casual dealers in roots, buying them--almost
always in the markets--whenever a bargain offers. Seven-eighths of
the root-sellers are, I am informed, regular costers, occasionally a
gardener’s assistant has taken to the street trade in flowers, “but I
fancy, sir,” said an experienced man to me, “they’ve very seldom done
any good at it. They’re always _gardening_ at their roots, trimming
them, and such like, and they overdo it. They’re too careful of their
plants; people like to trim them theirselves.”