Jetée de fleurs à la Saint-Valentin

Throwing flowers away! These women clearly hadn’t heard the romantic story of the entrepreneurial Flower Maid of Leipzig, as told in 1905:

“A Flower-Girl's Romance: A story is told of a honest little flower girl in Leipzig, who regarded daintiness as an asset. In the late afternoon she would start off, hatted, gloved, and shod sweetly, in a cab full of flowers. As the cab halted at the selected restaurants she pulled off her gloves and hat, walked in with her tray of flowers, and always came out again with her tray empty and her apron pocket full. Then she would finish the evening with a turn at the nearest dance-hall. Every student knew the flower-maid - and she married a middle-aged merchant.”

Perhaps not what is going on in the photo but a “Motor Car Battle of Flowers” was a popular feature of high-society motoring events before and well after WWI, perhaps to enthuse bored women obliged to attend by their car-mad spouse. Events required processional cars to be florally decorated for a prize.

Longer established across Europe, such events were declared to be “quite a society function” in 1904 London. There had certainly been one at the 1902 Earl’s Court Motor Show followed by one at the Bexhill-on-Sea races in June and in subsequent years. One was included in motoring events in Cannes in 1905, “sure to attract many spectators from far and near”. At the July 1909 event in Vichy, occupants of at least one flower decorated car “threw flowers at the cosmopolitan crowd”.

These two ladies appear already married to rich merchants but such had to be careful throwing flowers as, during a 1927 Motor Car Battle of Flowers event in Cannes, one of the film-star Dolly Sisters, Rosy, managed to throw out her 500,000franc/£4000, 245-pearl necklace as well...

The car is a cab with its typical glazed division behind the driver for privacy. The driver has his authority ‘badge’ around his neck. Don’t think it’s a London scene – the trim to the drivers cap is unfamiliar – a Parisian Cab?