“I sold them from 6_d._ to 1_s._ 6_d._ The ‘Globes’ went off well.
Geraniums was very fair. The ‘Fairy Queens’ of them sold faster than
any, I think. It’s the ladies out of town a little way, and a few in
town, that buy them, and buy the fuschias too. They require a good
window. The ‘Jenny Linds’--they was geraniums and other plants--didn’t
sell so well as the Fairy Queens, though they was cheaper. Good
cloves (pinks) sell to the better sort of houses; so do carnations.
Mignonette’s everybody’s money. Dahlias didn’t go off so well. I
had very tidy dahlias at 6_d._ and 1_s._, and some 1_s._ 6_d._ I do
a goodish bit in giving flowers for old clothes. I very seldom do
it, but to ladies. I deal mostly with them for their husbands’ old
hats, or boots, or shoes; yes, sir, and their trowsers and waistcoats
sometimes--very seldom their coats--and ladies boots and shoes too.
There’s one pleasant old lady, and her two daughters, they’ll talk
me over any day. I very seldom indeed trade for ladies’ clothes. I
have, though. Mostly for something in the shawl way, or wraps of some
kind. Why, that lady I was telling you of and her daughters, got me to
take togs that didn’t bring the prime cost of my roots and expenses.
They called them by such fine names, that I was had. Then they was so
polite; ‘O, my good man,’ says one of the young daughters, ‘I must have
this geranium in ’change.’ It was a most big and beautiful Fairy Queen,
well worth 4_s._ The tog--I didn’t know what they called it--a sort
of cloak, fetched short of half-a-crown, and that just with cheaper
togs. Some days, if it’s very hot, and the stall business isn’t good in
_very_ hot weather, my wife goes a round with me, and does considerable
in swopping with ladies. They can’t do her as they can me. The same
on wet days, if it’s not very wet, when I has my roots covered in the
cart. Ladies is mostly at home such times, and perhaps they’re dull,
and likes to go to work at a bargaining. My wife manages them. In
good weeks, I can clear 3_l._ in my trade; the two of us can, anyhow.
But then there’s bad weather, and there’s sometimes roots spoiled if
they’re not cheap, and don’t go off--but I’ll sell one that cost me
1_s._ for 2_d._ to get rid of it; and there’s always the expenses to
meet, and the pony to keep, and everything that way. No, sir, I don’t
make 2_l._ a week for the five months--its nearer five than six--the
season lasts; perhaps something near it. The rest of the year I sell
fruit, or anything, and may clear 10_s._ or 15_s._ a week, but, some
weeks, next to nothing, and the expenses all going on.
“Why, no, sir; I can’t say that times is what they was. Where I made
4_l._ on my roots five or six years back, I make only 3_l._ now. But
it’s no use complaining; there’s lots worse off than I am--lots. I’ve
given pennies and twopences to plenty that’s seen better days in the
streets; it might be their own fault. It is so mostly, but perhaps only
partly. I keep a connection together as well as I can. I have a stall;
my wife’s there generally, and I go a round as well.”
One of the principal root-sellers in the streets told me that he not
unfrequently sold ten dozen a day, over and above those sold not in
pots. As my informant had a superior trade, his business is not to
be taken as an average; but, reckoning that he averages six dozen a
day for 20 weeks--he said 26--it shows that one man alone sells 8,640
flowers in pots in the season. The principal sellers carry on about
the same extent of business.
According to similar returns, the number of the several kinds of
flowers in pots and flower roots sold annually in the London streets,
are as follows:
FLOWERS IN POTS.
Moss-roses 38,880
China-roses 38,880
Fuschias 38,800
Geraniums 12,800
-------
Total number of flowers in }
pots sold in the streets } 129,360
FLOWER-ROOTS.
Primroses 24,000
Polyanthuses 34,560
Cowslips 28,800
Daisies 33,600
Wallflowers 46,080
Candytufts 28,800
Daffodils 28,800
Violets 38,400
Mignonette 30,384
Stocks 23,040
Pinks and Carnations 19,200
Lilies of the Valley 3,456
Pansies 12,960
Lilies 660
Tulips 852
Balsams 7,704
Calceolarias 3,180
Musk Plants 253,440
London Pride 11,520
Lupins 25,596
China-asters 9,156
Marigolds 63,360
Dahlias 852
Heliotrope 13,356
Poppies 1,920
Michaelmas Daisies 6,912
-------
Total number of flower-roots }
sold in the streets } 750,588
OF THE STREET SALE OF SEEDS.
The street sale of seeds, I am informed, is smaller than it was thirty,
or even twenty years back. One reason assigned for this falling off
is the superior cheapness of “flowers in pots.” At one time, I was
informed, the poorer classes who were fond of flowers liked to “grow
their own mignonette.” I told one of my informants that I had been
assured by a trustworthy man, that in one day he had sold 600 penny
pots of mignonette: “Not a bit of doubt of it, sir,” was the answer,
“not a doubt about it; I’ve heard of more than that sold in a day by a
man who set on three hands to help him; and that’s just where it is.
When a poor woman, or poor man either--but its mostly the women--can
buy a mignonette pot, all blooming and smelling for 1_d._, why she
won’t bother to buy seeds and set them in a box or a pot and wait for
them to come into full blow. Selling seeds in the streets can’t be
done so well now, sir. Anyhow it ain’t done as it was, as I’ve often
heard old folk say.” The reason assigned for this is that cottages in
many parts--such places as Lisson-grove, Islington, Hoxton, Hackney,
or Stepney--where the inhabitants formerly cultivated flowers in
their little gardens, are now let out in single apartments, and the
gardens--or yards as they mostly are now--were used merely to hang
clothes in. The only green thing which remained in some of these
gardens, I was told, was horse-radish, a root which it is difficult
to extirpate: “And it’s just the sort of thing,” said one man, “that
poor people hasn’t no great call for, because they, you see, a’n’t not
overdone with joints of roast beef, nor rump steaks.” In the suburbs
where the small gardens are planted with flowers, the cultivators
rarely buy seeds of the street-sellers, whose stands are mostly at a
distance.
None of the street seed-vendors confine themselves to the sale. One
man, whom I saw, told me that last spring he was penniless, after
sickness, and a nurseryman, whom he knew, trusted him 5_s._ worth
of seeds, which he continued to sell, trading in nothing else, for
three or four weeks, until he was able to buy some flowers in pots.
Though the profit is cent. per cent. on most kinds, 1_s._ 6_d._ a
day is accounted “good earnings, on seeds.” On wet days there is no
sale, and, indeed, the seeds cannot be exposed in the streets. My
informant computed that he cleared 5_s._ a week. His customers were
principally poor women, who liked to sow mignonette in boxes, or in
a garden-border, “if it had ever such a little bit of sun,” and who
resided, he believed, in small, quiet streets, branching off from the
thoroughfares. Of flower-seeds, the street-sellers dispose most largely
of mignonette, nasturtium, and the various stocks; and of herbs, the
most is done in parsley. One of my informants, however, “did best in
grass-seeds,” which people bought, he said, “to mend their grass-plots
with,” sowing them in any bare place, and throwing soil loosely over
them. Lupin, larkspur, convolvulus, and Venus’s looking-glass had a
fair sale.
The street-trade, in seeds, would be less than it is, were it not that
the dealers sell it in smaller quantities than the better class of
shop-keepers. The street-traders buy their seeds by the quarter of a
pound--or any quantity not considered retail--of the nurserymen, who
often write the names for the costers on the paper in which the seed
has to be inclosed. Seed that costs 4_d._, the street-seller makes
into eight penny lots. “Why, yes, sir,” said one man, in answer to
my inquiry, “people is often afraid that our seeds ain’t honest. If
they’re not, they’re mixed, or they’re bad, before they come into our
hands. I don’t think any of our chaps does anything with them.”
Fourteen or fifteen years ago, although seeds, generally, were fifteen
to twenty per cent. dearer than they are now, there was twice the
demand for them. An average price of good mignonette seed, he said,
was now 1_s._ the quarter of a pound, and it was then 1_s._ 2_d._ to
1_s._ 6_d._ The shilling’s worth, is made, by the street-seller, into
twenty or twenty-four pennyworths. An average price of parsley, and of
the cheaper seeds, is less than half that of mignonette. Other seeds,
again, are not sold to the street-people by the weight, but are made
up in sixpenny and shilling packages. Their extreme lightness prevents
their being weighed to a customer. Of this class are, the African
marigold, the senecios (groundsel), and the china-aster; but of these
compound flowers, the street-traders sell very few. Poppy-seed used to
be in great demand among the street-buyers, but it has ceased to be
so. “It’s a fine hardy plant, too, sir,” I was told, “but somehow, for
all its variety in colours, it’s gone out of fashion, for fashion runs
strong in flowers.”
One long-established street-seller, who is well known to supply the
best seeds, makes for the five weeks or so of the season more than
twice the weekly average of 5_s._; perhaps 12_s._; but as he is a shop
as well as a stall-keeper, he could not speak very precisely as to
the proportionate sale in the street or the shop. This man laughed at
the fondness some of his customers manifested for “fine Latin names.”
“There are some people,” he said, “who will buy antirrhinum, and
artemisia, and digitalis, and wouldn’t hear of snapdragon, or wormwood,
or foxglove, though they’re the identical plants.” The same informant
told me that the railways in their approaches to the metropolis
had destroyed many small gardens, and had, he thought, injured his
trade. It was, also, a common thing now for the greengrocers and
corn-chandlers to sell garden-seeds, which until these six or eight
years they did much less extensively.
Last spring, I was told, there were not more than four persons, in
London, selling only seeds. The “root-sellers,” of whom I have treated,
generally deal in seeds also, but the demand does not extend beyond
four or five weeks in the spring, though there was “a straggling trade
that way” two or three weeks longer. It was computed for me, that there
were fully one hundred persons selling seeds (with other things) in
the streets, and that each might average a profit of 5_s._ weekly, for
a month; giving 200_l._ expended in seeds, with 100_l._ profit to the
costers. Seeds are rarely hawked as flowers are.
It is impossible to give as minutely detailed an account of the
street-sale of seeds as of flowers, as from their diversity in size,
weight, quantity in a pennyworth, &c., no calculation can be prepared
by weight or measure, only by _value_. Thus, I find it necessary
to depart somewhat from the order hitherto observed. One seedsman,
acquainted with the street-trade from his dealings with the vendors,
was of opinion that the following list and proportions were as nice an
approximation as could be arrived at. It was found necessary to give
it in proportions of twenty-fifths; but it must be borne in mind that
the _quantity_ in 3/25ths of parsley, for example, is more than double
that of 3/25ths of mignonette. I give, in unison, seeds of about equal
sale, whether of the same botanical family or not. Many of the most
popular flowers, such as polyanthuses, daisies, violets, and primroses,
are not raised from seed, except in the nursery gardens:--
Seeds. Twenty-fifths. Value.
Mignonette Three £24
Stocks (of all kinds) Two 16
Marigolds (do.) One 8
Convolvulus (do.) „ 8
Wallflower „ 8
Scarlet-beans and Sweet-peas „ 8
China-asters and Venus’ looking-glass „ 8
Lupin and Larkspur „ 8
Nasturtium „ 8
Parsley Two 16
Other Pot-herbs One 8
Mustard and Cress, Lettuce, and the }
other vegetables } Two 16
Grass One 8
Other seeds Seven 56
----
Total expended annually on street-seeds £200
OF CHRISTMASING--LAUREL, IVY, HOLLY, AND MISTLETOE.
In London a large trade is carried on in “Christmasing,” or in the
sale of holly and mistletoe, for Christmas sports and decorations. I
have appended a table of the quantity of these “branches” sold, nearly
250,000, and of the money expended upon them in the streets. It must
be borne in mind, to account for this expenditure for a brief season,
that almost every housekeeper will expend something in “Christmasing;”
from 2_d._ to 1_s._ 6_d._, and the poor buy a pennyworth, or a
halfpennyworth each, and they are the coster’s customers. In some
houses, which are let off in rooms, floors, or suites of apartments,
and not to the poorest class, every room will have the cheery
decoration of holly, its bright, and as if _glazed_ leaves and red
berries, reflecting the light from fire or candle. “Then, look,” said a
gardener to me, “what’s spent on a Christmasing the churches! Why, now,
properly to Christmas St. Paul’s, I say _properly_, mind, would take
50_l._ worth at least; aye, more, when I think of it, nearer 100_l._
I hope there’ll be no ‘No Popery’ nonsense against Christmasing this
year. I’m always sorry when anything of that kind’s afloat, because
it’s frequently a hindrance to business.” This was said three weeks
before Christmas. In London there are upwards of 300,000 inhabited
houses. The whole of the evergreen branches sold number 375,000.
Even the ordinary-sized inns, I was informed, displayed holly
decorations, costing from 2_s._ to 10_s._; while in the larger inns,
where, perhaps, an assembly-room, a concert-room, or a club-room,
had to be adorned, along with other apartments, 20_s._ worth of
holly, &c., was a not uncommon outlay. “Well, then, consider,” said
another informant, “the plum-puddings! Why, at least there’s a hundred
thousand of ’em eaten, in London, through the Christmas and the month
following. That’s nearly one pudding to every twenty of the population,
is it, sir? Well, perhaps, that’s too much. But, then, there’s the
great numbers eaten at public dinners and suppers; and there’s more
plum-pudding clubs at the small grocers and public-houses than there
used to be, so, say full a hundred thousand, flinging in any mince-pies
that may be decorated with evergreens. Well, sir, every plum-pudding
will have a sprig of holly in him. If it’s bought just for the
occasion, it may cost 1_d._, to be really prime and nicely berried. If
it’s part of a lot, why it won’t cost a halfpenny, so reckon it all at
a halfpenny. What does that come to? Above 200_l._ Think of that, then,
just for sprigging puddings!”
Mistletoe, I am informed, is in somewhat less demand than it was,
though there might be no very perceptible difference. In many houses
holly is now used instead of the true plant, for the ancient ceremonies
and privileges observed “under the mistletoe bough.” The holly is not
half the price of the mistletoe, which is one reason; for, though there
is not any great disparity of price, wholesale, the holly, which costs
6_d._ retail, is more than the quantity of mistletoe retailed for
1_s._ The holly-tree may be grown in any hedge, and ivy may be reared
against any wall; while the mistletoe is parasitical of the apple-tree,
and, but not to half the extent, of the oak and other trees. It does
not grow in the northern counties of England. The purchasers of the
mistletoe are, for the most part, the wealthier classes, or, at any
rate, I was told, “those who give parties.” It is bought, too, by the
male servants in large establishments, and more would be so bought,
“only so few of the great people, of the most fashionable squares and
places, keep their Christmas in town.” Half-a-crown is a not uncommon
price for a handsome mistletoe bough.
The costermongers buy about a half of the holly, &c., brought to the
markets; it is also sold either direct to those requiring evergreens,
or to green-grocers and fruiterers who have received orders for it from
their customers, or who know it will be wanted. A shilling’s worth may
be bought in the market, the bundles being divided. Mistletoe, the
costers--those having regular customers in the suburbs--receive orders
for. “Last December,” said a coster to me, “I remember a servant-girl,
and she weren’t such a girl either, running after me in a regular
flutter, to tell me the family had forgot to order 2_s._ worth of
mistletoe of me, to be brought next day. Oh, yes, sir, if it’s ordered
by, or delivered to, the servant-girls, they generally have a little
giggling about it. If I’ve said: ‘What are you laughing at?’ they’ll
mostly say: ‘Me! I’m not laughing.’”
The costermongers go into the neighbourhood of London to procure the
holly for street-sale. This is chiefly done, I was told, by those who
were “cracked up,” and some of them laboured at it “days and days.” It
is, however, a very uncertain trade, as they must generally trespass,
and if they are caught trespassing, by the occupier of the land, or
any of his servants, they are seldom “given in charge,” but their
stock of evergreens is not unfrequently taken from them, “and that,
sir, that’s the cuttingest of all.” They do not so freely venture upon
the gathering of mistletoe, for to procure it they must trespass in
orchards, which is somewhat dangerous work, and they are in constant
apprehension of traps, spring-guns, and bull-dogs. Six or seven hundred
men or lads, the lads being the most numerous, are thus employed
for a week or two before Christmas, and, perhaps, half that number,
irregularly at intervals, for a week or two after it. Some of the lads
are not known as regular coster-lads, but they are _habitués_ of the
streets in some capacity. To procure as much holly one day, as will
sell for 2_s._ 6_d._ the next, is accounted pretty good work, and 7_s._
6_d._ would be thus realised in six days. But 5_s._ is more frequently
the return of six days’ labour and sale, though a very few have cleared
10_s._, and one man, “with uncommon luck,” once cleared 20_s._ in six
days. The distance travelled in a short winter’s day, is sometimes
twenty miles, and, perhaps, the lad or man has not broken his fast,
on some days, until the evening, or even the next morning, for had he
possessed a few pence he would probably have invested it in oranges or
nuts, for street-sale, rather than “go a-gathering Christmas.”
One strong-looking lad, of 16 or 17, gave me the following account:--
“It’s hard work, is Christmasing; but, when you have neither money nor
work, you must do something, and so the holly may come in handy. I live
with a elder brother; he helps the masons, and as we had neither of us
either work or money, he cut off Tottenham and Edmonton way, and me
the t’other side of the water, Mortlake way, as well as I know. We’d
both been used to costering, off and on. I was out, I think, ten days
altogether, and didn’t make 6_s_. in it. I’d been out two Christmases
before. O, yes, I’d forgot. I made 6_d._ over the 6_s._, for I had half
a pork-pie and a pint of beer, and the landlord took it out in holly.
I meant to have made a quarter of pork do, but I was so hungry--and
so would you, sir, if you’d been out a-Christmasing--that I had the
t’other quarter. It’s 2_d._ a quarter. I did better when I was out
afore, but I forget what I made. It’s often slow work, for you must
wait sometimes ’till no one’s looking, and then you must work away like
anything. I’d nothing but a sharp knife, I borrowed, and some bits
of cord to tie the holly up. You _must_ look out sharp, because, you
see, sir, a man very likely won’t like his holly-tree to be stripped.
Wherever there is a berry, we goes for the berries. They’re poison
berries, I’ve heard. Moonlight nights is the thing, sir, when you knows
where you are. I never goes for mizzletoe. I hardly knows it when I
sees it. The first time I was out, a man got me to go for some in a
orchard, and told me how to manage; but I cut my lucky in a minute.
Something came over me like. I felt sickish. But what can a poor fellow
do? I never lost my Christmas, but a little bit of it once. Two men
took it from me, and said I ought to thank them for letting me off
without a jolly good jacketing, as they was gardeners. I believes they
was men out a-Christmasing, as I were. It was a dreadful cold time
that; and I was wet, and hungry,--and thirsty, too, for all I was so
wet,--and I’d to wait a-watching in the wet. I’ve got something better
to do now, and I’ll never go a-Christmasing again, if I can help it.”
This lad contrived to get back to his lodging, in town, every
night, but some of those out Christmasing, stay two or three days
and nights in the country, sleeping in barns, out-houses, carts, or
under hay-stacks, inclement as the weather may be, when their funds
are insufficient to defray the charge of a bed, or a part of one,
at a country “dossing-crib” (low lodging-house). They resorted, in
considerable numbers, to the casual wards of the workhouses, in
Croydon, Greenwich, Reigate, Dartford, &c., when that accommodation was
afforded them, concealing their holly for the night.
As in other matters, it may be a surprise to some of my readers to
learn in what way the evergreens, used on festive occasions in their
homes, may have been procured.
The costermongers who procure their own Christmasing, generally hawk
it. A few sell it by the lot to their more prosperous brethren. What
the costers purchase in the market, they aim to sell at cent. per cent.
Supposing that 700 men and lads gathered their own holly, &c., and each
worked for three weeks (not regarding interruptions), and calculating
that, in the time they cleared even 15_s._ each, it amounts to 525_l._
Some of the costermongers deck their carts and barrows, in the general
line, with holly at Christmas. Some go out with their carts full of
holly, for sale, and may be accompanied by a fiddler, or by a person
beating a drum. The cry is, “Holly! Green Holly!”
One of my informants alluded incidentally to the decoration of the
churches, and I may observe that they used to be far more profusely
decked with Christmas evergreens than at present; so much so, that a
lady correspondent in January, 1712, complained to “Mr. _Spectator_”
that her church-going was bootless. She was constant at church, to hear
divine service and make conquests; but the clerk had so overdone the
greens in the church that, for three weeks, Miss Jenny Simper had not
even seen the young baronet, whom she dressed at for divine worship,
although he pursued his devotions only three pews from hers. The aisle
was a pretty shady walk, and each pew was an arbour. The pulpit was
so clustered with holly and ivy that the congregation, like Moses,
heard the word out of a bush. “Sir Anthony Love’s pew in particular,”
concludes the indignant Miss Simper, “is so well hedged, that all my
batteries have no effect. I am obliged to shoot at random among the
boughs without taking any manner of aim. Mr. Spectator, unless you’ll
give orders for removing these greens, I shall grow a very awkward
creature at church, and soon have little else to do there but to say
my prayers.” In a subsequent number, the clerk glorifies himself that
he had checked the ogling of Miss Simper. He had heard how the Kentish
men evaded the Conqueror by displaying green boughs before them, and
so he bethought him of a like device against the love-warfare of this
coquettish lady.
Of all the “branches” in the markets, the costers buy one-half. This
season, holly has been cheaper than was ever known previously. In
some years, its price was double that cited, in some treble, when the
December was very frosty.
OF THE SALE OF MAY, PALM, ETC.