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.