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#SohoFlowers

after hours
up the stairs
behind the veil
in the basement
secret songs of Soho flowers

darkness falls on glitter streets
naked books and dirty looks
members only

fishnets lure
in walkers court

kiss curls
smoke signals
eros arrows
lovers bliss
lovers kiss

sharp suits in terrazzo bars
moving images
cutting edge
dance to the trumpet call of midnight jazz

Marx’s star burns bright above
fierce angel Blake
stretch forth your wings
guard with special care
your beautiful Soho flowers
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#AgnesPegg was the last flower seller of Piccadilly Circus. Her career spanned over 50 years. Her pitch was outside the London Pavilion along with her famous cries “violets, violets, lovely violets” she sold orchids and roses to the theatre goers.

“In his 1851 work London Labour and the London Poor, Henry Mayhew wrote that many of the flower girls on the streets of London were of “an immoral character,” and worked as prostitutes as well; but others were young children, “very persevering, … who will run along, barefooted, with their ‘Please, gentleman, do buy my flowers. Poor little girl!’ — ‘Please, kind lady, buy my violets. O, do!’” He estimated there were between 400 and 800 flower sellers on the streets, but said it was impossible to be certain of a number, because when oranges were cheap and tasty, the flower girls sold those instead — or they sold watercress, or onions.

By 1889, the publication Toilers in London put the number of city flower sellers at 2,000. They had not been a fixture on London streets for long, but had become plentiful so quickly that it was hard to imagine the metropolis without them. They stood in the main thoroughfares, and at the entrances to hospitals and cemeteries, and they sold to people of all classes, even “the poorest and the lowest. … The love of flowers is one of the most hopeful symptoms in the condition of the very poor in London.”

London Labour and the London Poor, Volume 1. Henry Mayhew, 1861”

quote by from her book The Cowkeepers Wish by Kirsten von Hartog