Esoteric London

Somerset House, Strand, WC2. Photo ©RogerDean 2013

Walks in and Around London – Uncle Jonathan, 1884:

If we went to Covent Garden Market at about five or six o’clock one morning, we should find many […] boys and girls waiting to purchase their stock in trade. There are the flower-girls, choosing and buying their bunches of flowers and fern-leaves, which they will carry to their homes. Arranging them there, and making them into neat little ‘button-holes,’ they will sally forth after their meagre meal, to the various railway stations from which the streams of City people are pouring into the streets. The sweet scent of their daintily arranged flowers, and their cry of ‘Sweet Violets,’ soon bring cus­tomers. For busy City people like a flower, to remind them of what is beauti­ful outside the smoky town.