It is not easy to arrive at any accurate estimate of the number of flower-sellers in the streets of London. The cause of the difficulty lies in the fact that none can be said to devote themselves entirely to the sale of flowers in the street, for the flower-sellers, when oranges are cheap and good, find their sale of the fruit more certain and profitable than that of flowers, and resort to it accordingly. Another reason is, that a poor costermonger will on a fine summer’s day send out his children to sell flowers, while on other days they may be selling water-cresses or, perhaps, onions. Sunday is the best day for flower-selling, and one experienced man computed, that in the height and pride of the summer 400 children were selling flowers, on the Sundays, in the streets. Another man thought that number too low an estimate, and contended that it was nearer 800. I found more of the opinion of my last mentioned informant than of the other, but I myself am disposed to think the smaller number nearer the truth. On week days it is computed there are about half the number of flower-sellers that there are on the Sundays. The trade is almost entirely in the hands of children, the girls outnumbering the boys by more than eight to one. The ages of the girls vary from six to twenty; few of the boys are older than twelve, and most of them are under ten.
Of flower-girls there are two classes. Some girls, and they are 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 2s. a week for the room, the tenant an Irishman out of work paying 2s. 9d., 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 6d. 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 1s. for a dozen bunches, whatever flowers are in. Out of every two bunches I can make three, at 1d. 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 6d. 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 1s. a day, and 9d. 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 1s. 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 1s., 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 2d. a week to pay for 1s. 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 2d. to pay for it for the day. We’ve had a frock in for 6d., 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 2s. a week for the two of us; the rest goes in rent. That’s all we make.”
The brother earned from 1s. 6d. to 2s. a week, with an occasional meal, as a costermonger’s boy. Neither of them ever missed mass on a Sunday.