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 1d. to 3d. 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 1d.), small early wallflowers, candy-tufts, southernwood (called “lad’s love” or “old man” by some), and daffodils, (but daffodils were sometimes dearer than 3d.). 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 3d. to 5s.; pinks at from 3d. for the common pink, to 2s. for the best single clove, and 4s. for the best double; stocks, as they are small and single, to their being large and double, from 3d. (and sometimes less) to 2s.; dahlias from 6d. to 5s.; fuschias, from 6d. to 4s.; rose-bushes from 3d. to 1s. 6d., and sometimes, but not often, much higher; musk-plants, London pride, lupins, &c., are 1d. and 2d., 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 5s. to 20s., 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 1½d. a dozen, and has to transfer the roots and soil to the pots, and then offer them for sale. The profit thus is about 4s. 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 6d. to 1s. 6d. 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 6d. and 1s., and some 1s. 6d. 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 4s. 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 3l. 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 1s. for 2d. 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 2l. 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 10s. or 15s. 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 4l. on my roots five or six years back, I make only 3l. 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-roses38,880
China-roses38,880
Fuschias38,800
Geraniums12,800
Total number of flowers in pots sold in the streets129,360
FLOWER-ROOTS.
Primroses24,000
Polyanthuses34,560
Cowslips28,800
Daisies33,600
Wallflowers46,080
Candytufts28,800
Daffodils28,800
Violets38,400
Mignonette30,384
Stocks23,040
Pinks and Carnations19,200
Lilies of the Valley3,456
Pansies12,960
Lilies660
Tulips852
Balsams7,704
Calceolarias3,180
Musk Plants253,440
London Pride11,520
Lupins25,596
China-asters9,156
Marigolds63,360
Dahlias852
Heliotrope13,356
Poppies1,920
Michaelmas Daisies6,912
Total number of flower-roots sold in the streets750,588