Part 33

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.”

“I did well on fuschias last season,” said one of my informants; “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.”