The Wallflower Girl

This engraving was published in Henry Mayhew's study of 'London Labour and the London Poor: The condition of those that will work, cannot work, and will not work', first published in 1851, with an additional volume in 1861. This illustration has the date 1864 which refers to a revised reprint of the publication in 1865. Mayhew commissioned the photographer Richard Beard to make daguerreotype portraits of some of the 'street folk' he interviewed. These were copied to make engravings to accompany the text of the publication.
The wallflower girl was aged 11 years when photographed and described by Mayhew as clad in an old, but not torn, dark print frock, hanging so closely, and yet so loosely... as to show the deficiency of under-clothing' and a broken black chip bonnet'. 'Although barefoot, she trotted along, in a gait at once quick and feeble—as if the soles of her little feet were impervious, like horn, to the roughness of the road. She had a round, chubby, and even rosy face, and quite a healthful look'
Working alongside the girl was her 15 year old half sister who provided Mayhew with a full account of their lives. The girls lived with a half-brother in a room near Drury Lane, the tenants of an Irish couple whose bed was divided by a curtain from the area and single bed occupied by the children. Also of Irish heritage the children had been born in London but the older sister told Mayhew. 'We don’t know anything about our fathers. We were all ‘mother’s children.' Their Mother who had worked as a charwoman had died 7 years ago and the children has supported themselves since her death, the 2 sisters selling flowers and the brother working as a costermonger's boy.. All 3 children could read and write, having been sent to school by their Mother, as practising Roman Catholics they attended mass every Sunday and they 'never troubled the parish' to support them'.
The girls bought their stock primarily from the nearby Covent Garden and sold a variety of flowers when in season including roses, carnations, violets and primroses. The majority of their buyers were 'gentlemen'