OLD ORDER PASSES.

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLV, Issue 83, 9 March 1925, Page 5

OLD ORDER PASSES.

FLOWER GIRLS MAKE WAY

LONDON, Feb. 11. Despair temporarily prevailed among the tiower “girls” at Piccadilly Circus, when the police ordered them to move on, as alterations were being made for the construction of an underground station.

This will also necessitate the removal of the statue of Eros, the God of Love in Greek mythology. One girl refused to budge. She defied the police and did a brisk business. Cudgels on behalf of the flower girls were, taken up by Mrs Pennington Bickford, wife of the Australian vicar at St. Clement, Danes, who has always befriended them. She arranged a deputation to the Vine .Street Police station, which resulted in the police undertaking to find the girls separate pitches in Piccadilly Circus, where they would not impede traffic. Meanwhile Eros poses bravely on his threatened pedestal, with a bunch of daffodils placed under one wing by an old Cambridge blue, in memory of a celebrated “rag,” when undergraduates stole the string from the love god’s bow and decorated him with a red flannel petticoat. Later the flower girls were inundated by offers of help. They took up their new pitches and trade boomed owing to the publicity. “The girls are safe now,” said Mrs Bickford. “Their plight has touched the Duke of Westminster, who has offered them three sites on his property.” Two others have stands at the Piccadilly underground station, these being the oldest “girls,” for which reason they were allowed the sheltered position. One diehard still maintains her post in a breach in the hoarding round the statue of Eros, but she must soon go. She is wearing the black straw hat of her girlhood in order to leave the Circus as slie entered it years ago.