Cleveland Museum of Art

Covent Garden Flower Women

John Thomson

Date

1877

Medium

woodburytype

Culture

England, 19th century

Department

Photography

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

Thomson’s collaborator, reporter Adolphe Smith said that “The familiar sight of a poor woman holding a pale child in her arms and offering modest violets to the pedestrian, is pregnant with a poetry which rags, and dirt fail to obliterate.” The jobs, which were passed down between generations, required worked long hours and yielded a meager income. These are the real-life counterparts of Eliza Doolittle in the musical My Fair Lady , who started out selling flowers in Covent Garden.

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