That’s an incredibly complex process.

Natasha: Yes, it was extremely time-consuming. At the height of the trade, the 1891 census reported 4011 flower-makers in London.

Beatrice: That only created the petals, which then had to be assembled into the flower shapes, held in place with a stalk of twisted wire. You’d cover that stalk with paper or silk, and arrange the flowers into sprays or wreaths. This was a skilled job, you see workshops complaining that it would take several years to train a woman to do it right, and then she would leave to get married. Some of the work that didn’t require tools was done at home, often by women and children of poor families.

That is the dark side to these flowers: these beautiful objects which decorated expensive clothes were often produced by sweatshop labour. The Children’s Employment Commission of 1865 found that the majority of women assembling artificial flowers were under eighteen, with some starting as young as eight. Factories would employ over a hundred flower-makers at a time, working between twelve and, at the height of demand, eighteen hours a day.