 | OF THE SELLERS OF TREES, SHRUBS, FLOWERS (CUT AND
IN POTS), ROOTS, SEEDS, AND BRANCHES. London Labour and the London Poor, volume 1 |  |
OF THE STREET SALE OF LAVENDER.
The sale of green lavender in the streets is
carried on by the same class as the sale of
flowers, and is, as often as flowers, used for
immoral purposes, when an evening or night
sale is carried on.
The lavender is sold at the markets in
bundles, each containing a dozen branches.
It is sold principally to ladies in the suburbs,
who purchase it to deposit in drawers and ward-
robes; the odour communicated to linen from
lavender being, perhaps, more agreeable and
more communicable than that from any other
flower. Nearly a tenth of the market sale may
be disposed of in this way. Some costers sell it
cheap to recommend themselves to ladies who
are customers, that they may have the better
chance for a continuance of those ladies' cus-
tom.
The number of lavender-sellers can hardly be
given as distinct from that of flower-sellers, be-
cause any flower-girl will sell lavender, "when
it is in season." The season continues from the
beginning of July to the end of September. In
the winter months, generally after day-fall, dried
lavender is offered for sale; it is bought at the
herb-shops. There is, however, an addition to the
number of the flower-girls of a few old women,
perhaps from twenty to thirty, who vary their
street-selling avocations by going from door to
door in the suburbs with lavender for sale, but
do not stand to offer it in the street.
The street-seller's profit on lavender is now
somewhat more than cent. per cent., as the
bundle, costing 2½d., brings when tied up in
sprigs, at least, 6d. The profit, I am told, was,
six or seven years ago, 200 per cent; "but
people will have better penn'orths now." I
was informed, by a person long familiar with the
trade in flowers, that, from twenty to twenty-five
years ago, the sale was the best. It was a fash-
ionable amusement for ladies to tie the sprigs of
lavender together, compressing the stems very
tightly with narrow ribbon of any favourite
colour, the heads being less tightly bound, or
remaining unbound; the largest stems were in
demand for this work. The lavender bundle,
when its manufacture was complete, was placed
in drawers, or behind books in the shelves of a
glazed book-case, so that a most pleasant atmo-
sphere was diffused when the book-case was
opened.
| OF THE SELLERS OF TREES, SHRUBS, FLOWERS (CUT AND
IN POTS), ROOTS, SEEDS, AND BRANCHES. London Labour and the London Poor, volume 1 | |