Of the Sale of May, Palm, etc.

The sale of the May, the fragrant flower of the hawthorn, a tree indigenous to this country—Wordsworth mentions one which must have been 800 years old—is carried on by the coster boys (principally), but only in a desultory way. The chief supply is brought to London in the carts or barrows of the costers returning from a country expedition. If the costermonger be accompanied by a lad—as he always is if the expedition be of any length—the lad will say to his master, “Bill, let’s have some May to take back.” The man will almost always consent, and often assist in procuring the thickly green branches with their white or rose-tinted, and freshly-smelling flowers. The odour of the hawthorn blossom is peculiar, and some eminent botanist—Dr. Withering if I remember rightly—says it may be best described as “fresh.” No flower, perhaps, is blended with more poetical, antiquarian, and beautiful associations than the ever-welcome blossom of the may-tree. One gardener told me that as the hawthorn was in perfection in June instead of May, the name was not proper. But it must be remembered that the name of the flower was given during the old style, which carried our present month of May twelve days into June, and the name would then be more appropriate.

The May is obtained by the costermongers in the same way as the holly, by cutting it from the trees in the hedges. It has sometimes to be cut or broken off stealthily, for persons may no more like their hawthorns to be stripped than their hollies, and an ingenuous lad—as will have been observed—told me of “people’s” objections to the unauthorized stripping of their holly-bushes. But there is not a quarter of the difficulty in procuring May that there is in procuring holly at Christmas.

The costermonger, if he has “done tidy” in the country will very probably leave the May at the disposal of his boy; but a few men, though perhaps little more than twenty, I was told, bring it on their own account. The lads then carry the branches about for sale; or if a considerable quantity has been brought, dispose of it to other boys or girls, or entrust them with the sale of it, at “half-profits,” or any terms agreed upon. Costermongers have been known to bring home “a load of May,” and this not unfrequently, at the request, and for the benefit of a “cracked-up” brother-trader, to whom it has been at once delivered gratuitously.

A lad, whom I met with as he was selling holly, told me that he had brought may from the country when he had been there with a coster. He had also gone out of town a few miles to gather it on his own account. “But it ain’t no good;” he said; “you must often go a good way—I never knows anything about how many miles—and if it’s very ripe (the word he used) it’s soon shaken. There’s no sure price. You may get 4d. for a big branch or you must take 1d. I may have made 1s. on a round but hardly ever more. It can’t be got near hand. There’s some stunning fine trees at the top of the park there (the Regent’s Park) the t’other side of the ’logical Gardens, but there’s always a cove looking after them, they say, and both night and day.”

Palm, the flower of any of the numerous species of the willow, is sold only on Palm Sunday, and the Saturday preceding. The trade is about equally in the hands of the English and Irish lads, but the English lads have a commercial advantage on the morning of Palm Sunday, when so many of the Irish lads are at chapel. The palm is all gathered by the street-vendors. One costermonger told me that when he was a lad, he had sold palm to a man who had managed to get half-drunk on a Sunday morning, and who told him that he wanted it to show his wife, who very seldom stirred out, that he’d been taking a healthful walk into the country!

Lilac in flower is sold (and procured) in the same way as May, but in small quantities. Very rarely indeed, laburnum; which is too fragile; or syringa, which, I am told, is hardly saleable in the streets. One informant remembered that forty years ago, when he was a boy, branches of elder-berry flowers were sold in the streets, but the trade has disappeared.

It is very difficult to form a calculation as to the extent of this trade. The best informed give me reason to believe that the sale of all these branches (apart from Christmas) ranges, according to circumstances, from 30l. to 50l., the cost being the labour of gathering, and the subsistence of the labourer while at the work. This is independent of what the costers buy in the markets.

I now show the quantity of branches forming the street trade:—

Holly	59,040	bunches
Mistletoe	56,160	„
Ivy and Laurel	26,640	„
Lilac	5,400	„
Palm	1,008	„
May	2,520	„
Total number of bunches sold in the streets from market-sale	150,768
Add to quantity from other sources	75,000
	225,768

The quantity of branches “from other sources” is that gathered by the costers in the way I have described; but it is impossible to obtain a return of it with proper precision: to state it as half of that purchased in the markets is a low average.

I now give the amount paid by street-buyers who indulge in the healthful and innocent tastes of which I have been treating—the fondness for the beautiful and the natural.

CUT FLOWERS.
Bunches of		per bunch
65,280	Violets	at ½d.		£136
115,200	Wallflowers	„ ½d.		240
86,400	Mignonette	„ 1d.		360
1,632	Lilies of the Valley	„ ½d.		3
20,448	Stocks	„ ½d.		42
316,800	Pinks and Carnations	„ ½d.	each	660
864,000	Moss Roses	„ ½d.	„	1,800
864,000	China ditto	„ ½d.	„	1,800
296,640	Lavender	„ 1d.		1,236
	Total annually			£6,277

FLOWER ROOTS.
		per root
24,000	Primroses	at	½d.	£60
34,560	Polyanthuses	„	1d.	144
28,800	Cowslips	„	½d.	50
33,600	Daisies	„	1d.	140
46,080	Wallflowers	„	1d.	192
28,800	Candy-tufts	„	1d.	120
28,800	Daffodils	„	½d.	60
38,400	Violets	„	½d.	80
30,380	Mignonette	„	½d.	63
23,040	Stocks	„	1d.	96
19,200	Pinks and Carnations	„	2d.	160
3,456	Lilies of the Valley	„	1d.	14
12,960	Pansies	„	1d.	54
660	Lilies	„	2d.	5
850	Tulips	„	2d.	7
7,704	Balsams	„	2d.	64
3,180	Calceolarias	„	2d.	26
253,440	Musk Plants	„	1d.	1,056
11,520	London Pride	„	1d.	48
25,595	Lupins	„	1d.	106
9,156	China-asters	„	1d.	38
63,360	Marigolds	„	½d.	132
852	Dahlias	„	6d.	21
13,356	Heliotropes	„	2d.	111
1,920	Poppies	„	2d.	16
6,912	Michaelmas Daisies	„	½d.	14
	Total annually			£2,877

BRANCHES.
Bunches of		per bunch
59,040	Holly	at 3d.	£738
56,160	Mistletoe	„ 3d.	702
26,640	Ivy and Laurel	„ 3d.	333
5,400	Lilac	„ 3d.	67
1,008	Palm	„ 3d.	12
2,520	May	„ 3d.	31
Total annually from Markets			£1,883
Add one-half as shown			591
			£2,474

TREES AND SHRUBS.
		each root
9,576	Firs (roots)	at 3d.	£119
1,152	Laurels	„ 3d.	14
23,040	Myrtles	„ 4d.	384
2,160	Rhododendrons	„ 9d.	81
2,304	Lilacs	„ 4d.	38
2,880	Box	„ 2d.	24
21,888	Heaths	„ 4d.	364
2,880	Broom	„ 1d.	12
6,912	Furze	„ 1d.	28
6,480	Laurustinus	„ 8d.	216
25,920	Southernwood	„ 1d.	108
Total annually spent			£1,388

FLOWERS IN POTS.
		per pot
38,880	Moss Roses	at 4d.	£648
38,880	China ditto	„ 2d.	324
38,800	Fuschias	„ 3d.	485
12,850	Geraniums and Pelargoniums (of all kinds)	„ 3d.	160
	Total annually		£1,617

The returns give the following aggregate amount of street expenditure:—

	£
Trees and shrubs	1,388
Cut Flowers	6,277
Flowers in pots	1,667
Flower roots	2,867
Branches	2,774
Seeds	200
	£15,173

From the returns we find that of “cut flowers” the roses retain their old English favouritism, no fewer than 1,628,000 being annually sold in the streets; but locality affects the sale, as some dealers dispose of more violets than roses, because violets are accounted less fragile. The cheapness and hardihood of the musk-plant and marigold, to say nothing of their peculiar odour, has made them the most popular of the “roots,” while the myrtle is the favourite among the “trees and shrubs.” The heaths, moreover, command an extensive sale,—a sale, I am told, which was unknown, until eight or ten years ago, another instance of the “fashion in flowers,” of which an informant has spoken.