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-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 |