Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a room, esp. a room in an inn.

1859		Hotten Dict. of Modern Sl. etc. 40: flowery lodging, or house entertainment; ‘square the omee for the flowery,’ pay the master for the lodging.
1864, 1867, 1870		Hotten Sl. Dict.
1881		Newcastle Courant 16 Sept. 6/5: We’ll have to hook the shlowery and cushion; we’ll have to go by the first train.
1895		Crowe Aus. Sl. Dict. 29: Flowery, lodging.
1979		(con. 1920s) J. White ‘Campbell Bunk’ in History Workshop 26: A rich veing of slang which harked back to an older London street culture [...] Words which were not current in ordinary working-class speech [...] flowery (lodging) .
2019		P. Baker Fabulosa 292/1: flowery lodgings, accommodation.

2. a cell.

1925		E. Jervis 25 Years in Six Prisons 16: I talked to him of his ‘flowery’ (‘flowery dell’ rhymes with ‘cell’, hence ‘flowery’).
1930		(con. 1910–20s) D. Mackenzie Hell’s Kitchen 118: Flowery Dell ... a prison cell.
1935		Dly Standard (Brisbane) 10 July 4/6: ‘I was with the push, and we worked bad smash. We met the squad on the drag, got wiped, up and finished in flowery’.
1938		F.D. Sharpe Sharpe of the Flying Squad 248: Then I takes me mug and I bangs and rattles it on the door of the Flowery until the screw comes.
1943		J. Phelan Letters from the Big House 35: Ginger’s still there, in the next flowery.
1956		‘Charles Raven’ Und. Nights 106: You can help P.O. Ferris get a Condemned Flowery Dell ready for him.
1958		(con. 1940s) B. Behan Borstal Boy 191: Sad and lonely in me flowery dell.
1959		J. Gosling Ghost Squad 25: Thieves’ argot, spoken properly, is a foreign language which needs to be learned [...] Among the words and phrases derived from rhyming slang: [...] ‘Flowery’ is a cell (Flowery Dell).
1962		B. McGhee Cut and Run (1963) 102: Apart from one hour’s exercise and on a Sunday [...] you were hardly outside your ‘flowery’.
1979		F. Norman Too Many Crooks Spoil the Caper 105: I’m going to wind up in an unmarked grave or dubbed up in a flowery dell.
1981		P. Wright Cockney Dialect and Sl. 107: ‘flowery dell’, prison cell.
1999		R. Walton ‘Cockney Jack’ 🌐 We’ll see if a black and white in a flowery dell will teach you not to steal bees and honey again.
2001		D. Looser Boobslang [U. Canterbury D.Phil. thesis] 71/2: flowery dell n. a cell.
2002		D. Shaw ‘Dead Beard’ at www.asstr.org 🌐 One thing I did know for sure and that was that Lingers was doing a long spell in one of Her Majesty’s flowery dells with a lot of jack tars in the window.
2019		P. Baker Fabulosa 292/1: flowery prison cell.