In addition to the developments in locomotion spoken of in the previous
chapter, there have been various others to which reference should be made.
The principle of a manu-motive machine, furnished with wheels, by means of
which an individual could propel himself along a road with greater speed
and less exertion than in walking, goes back to the very earliest days of
human history, evidences of an attempt to adapt such principle having come
down to us from the times both of the Egyptians and the Babylonians.
In the last quarter of the eighteenth century and the first half of the
nineteenth, various contrivances were introduced in our own country under
such names as "the velocipede," "the dandy horse," "the hobby horse," "the
wooden horse," and the particular form of bicycle known as "the
bone-shaker." The last-mentioned became, in spite of its drawbacks, a craze
in the late '60's; but it was the substitution of indiarubber for iron
tires, and the production, in 1885, by J. K. Starley, of the modern
rear-driven "safety," that established the practical utility of the
bicycle. A succession of improvements followed, including pneumatic tires,
free wheels, two-speed and three-speed gears, the adaptation of the bicycle
to the use of ladies, and the supplementing of the bicycle by tricycles,
sociables, tandems and the motor-cycle.
Cycles have been well defined as "the poor man's carriage"; but they are
to-day favoured by every class of the community. Thanks, more especially,
to the numerous local cycling clubs and the great touring clubs, of which
the latter count their members by tens of thousands, cycles have materially
developed the taste for travel; they have led to indulgence in outings or
pleasure trips at home and abroad to an extent previously unknown; they
have vastly increased the means of {473}communication; they have exercised
a powerful influence on our general social conditions, and they have
become, in a variety of ways, and with different modifications of the
bicycle or the tricycle principle, an important auxiliary to the despatch
of business.
Cycling has thus attained to a place of recognised usefulness in the
professions, in trade, in country life, in the Post Office and even in the
Army. It is no longer a hobby, a craze or exclusively a source of
recreation. The cycle has definitely and permanently established its
position as one of the most popular of "carriages," and, in doing so, it
has itself led to the creation of a very considerable industry.
By 1895 the demand for cycles had become so great that it was then
impossible for the manufacturers to meet all requirements. Over-speculation
and over-production, accompanied by severe foreign competition, followed,
and for a time the position of the home industry was very unsatisfactory.
It has since re-established itself on sounder lines and now constitutes an
enterprise of considerable local importance in various parts of the
country, including Coventry, Birmingham, Nottingham and Wolverhampton.
Public prejudice and State policy were factors in the arrested development,
in this country, of the application of mechanical power to road vehicles,
so that while such application has its ancient history equally with the
bicycle, the actual expansion thereof--on such lines that it has now become
the dominating feature in road transport generally--has been brought about
in quite recent times.
When, in the early years of the nineteenth century, general attention was
attracted to the possibilities and prospects of using locomotives on the
railway in place either of horses or of stationary engines, further
projects were mooted for employing steam-propelled vehicles on ordinary
roads. Trade expansion and the inefficiency of existing road-transport
conditions combined to strengthen these proposals, and from about 1827 to
1835 or 1840 much enterprise was shown in the construction of
steam-carriages, and more especially steam-coaches and steam-omnibuses of
which various regular services, in London or in the country, were run with,
at first, considerable success. The vehicles in question were designed
mainly for the conveyance of passengers, and some of them {474}attained a
speed of over twenty miles an hour. There were even those who anticipated
that steam-carriages on roads would be successful rivals of the locomotive
on rails. Alexander Gordon, civil engineer, and an ardent supporter of
steam-driven road vehicles as against railways, wrote in "An Historical and
Practical Treatise upon Elemental Locomotion by means of Steam Carriages on
Common Roads" (1832):--
"It will be found that, with the exception of the Liverpool and Manchester
line, and of those lines formed solely for the purpose of conveying heavy
materials on a descending road, railways are, at least, of very
questionable advantage where there is the possibility of having a good
turnpike road and steam carriages.... Rail-roads have a very formidable
rival in steam communication upon the common road, and the latter is of
vastly greater advantage than the former."
Opposition, however, to steam-driven road coaches was hardly less vigorous
than the opposition offered to the rail locomotive itself. Not only were
obstructions constantly placed on the roads to prevent the steam-coaches
from passing, but country squires, horse-coach proprietors, post-horse
owners and representatives of the turnpike road interests combined to show
the most active hostility to the new form of locomotion. The turnpike road
trustees sought to make the running of the steam-coaches impossible by
imposing prohibitive tolls on them. It was shown in evidence before a
Parliamentary Committee that where on the road between Liverpool and
Prescot horse-coaches would pay a 4s. toll, the steam-coach was charged £2
8s., while on other roads the tolls in the case of the latter were equally
extortionate.
There were pioneers in those days who devoted time, toil and fortune to
attempts to establish steam locomotion on the roads, only, one after the
other, to retire from the contest discomfited and impoverished.
Among them was Sir Goldsworthy Gurney, who laboured for five years and
expended £30,000 on his attempts to bring steam-carriages into practical
and permanent use. Finding, at last, that the turnpike trustees controlled
the situation, Gurney and other steam-carriage builders petitioned
Parliament to investigate the subject of the opposition shown to them, and
a Select Committee of the House of Commons was appointed for this purpose
in 1831. It reported in favour of {475}steam road-carriages, and
recommended a repeal of the old turnpike Acts. A Bill to this effect was
passed in the Commons but thrown out in the Lords. Disheartened by his
losses, Gurney ceased to build and to run coaches on his own account and
tried to form a company. He failed in the attempt, and he then appealed to
Parliament to make him some recompense for all he had done in the interests
of the public. A proposed grant of £10,000 was objected to, however, by the
Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Gurney got nothing. Concluding that it was
useless to continue his attempts in the face of so much discouragement, he
sold off his stock-in-trade and retired from the business.
By 1835 nearly all the steam-carriages had been taken off the road, and by
1840 the considerable industry which had been developed was engaged almost
exclusively--so far as it survived at all--in the production of traction
engines, only spasmodic attempts being made between 1840 and 1860 to
produce improved types of steam-carriages for private use.
In 1861 traction engines had so far increased in numbers that a Locomotive
Act was passed mainly to fix a scale of tolls applicable to them on all
turnpike roads; though this Act further stipulated that each "locomotive"
should be in charge of at least two persons, and that the speed should not
exceed ten miles an hour when the vehicle was passing along any turnpike
road or two miles an hour when passing through a city, town or village. An
amending Act, which became law in 1865, laid down that each locomotive
should be in charge of three persons; that one of these must walk in front
carrying a red flag, and that the maximum speed should not exceed four
miles an hour on the highway or two miles an hour in passing through a town
or village. Various other restrictions were also imposed.
It was this "red flag Act" that virtually killed off the self-propelled
road-vehicle business here for the time being, except as regarded traction
engines proper. A few enthusiasts made steam-carriages as a hobby, and
certain manufacturers made them for export to the colonies or to India,
where there were no such restrictions on their use as in this country. In
India, especially, these carriages were found very serviceable in
localities then unprovided with railways, though any {476}manufacturer who
even tested their capacity on a public road in England was liable to
prosecution.
British inventors, thus effectively prevented by hostile legislation from
improving self-propelled road-vehicles, turned their attention, instead, to
tricycles and bicycles, while continental inventors, not being hampered by
legislative restrictions in their own country, first converted the tricycle
into a motor-vehicle, then applied the motor principle to four-wheeled
waggonettes, and finally evolved some useful types of motor-vehicles which,
by 1895, were being widely adopted on the Continent and more especially in
Paris.
A few bold pioneers who introduced them here were repeatedly prosecuted and
fined. The general position had, in fact, become even worse since 1865,
because not only was a motor-car still regarded in the eye of the law as
the equivalent of a traction engine or "locomotive," but, under the
Highways and Locomotives (Amendment) Act, 1878, every county council was
authorised to exact up to £10 for a licence which would allow of the use of
such traction engine or "locomotive" only within the boundary of the
authority in question, a fresh licence being thus required for each county
council district through which a vehicle might pass. The only exceptions
were locomotives used solely for agricultural purposes. Notwithstanding all
these restrictions, there were--exclusive of vehicles of the agricultural
type--about 8000 traction engines in use on our roads in 1895.
Much vigorous and practical protest led to the passing of the Locomotives
on Highways Act of 1896, which became the Magna Charta of automobilism in
this country. Making at last a distinction between motor-cars and traction
engines, it relieved from the said restrictions any vehicle, propelled by
mechanical power, the weight of which (unloaded) did not exceed three tons,
or, together with that of a trailer (also unloaded), four tons. It further
sanctioned the driving of such vehicle at a speed of up to fourteen miles
an hour, but gave authority to the Local Government Board to reduce the
speed if it thought fit--an authorisation of which the Board availed itself
by fixing the speed limit at twelve miles an hour.
A great impetus was given to the use of light vehicles, and November 14,
1896, when, under the Act, the motor-car became a legal vehicle in this
country, is known in automobile {477}circles as Emancipation Day. But the
Act afforded no relief in the case of motor-vehicles suitable for trade or
public service purposes. Within the weights specified vehicles of these
types would have been commercially unprofitable because they could not have
carried a paying load. Above the said weights they were still regarded by
the law, and were subject to the same regulations, as road locomotives or
traction engines.
Strong representations on the subject were made by the Royal Automobile
Club (then the Automobile Club of Great Britain and Ireland), the Society
of Motor Manufacturers and Traders and the Commercial Motor Users'
Association, which bodies claimed the right of the trading interests of the
country to a greater degree of reasonable consideration. These further
protests again led to good results. In 1903 a Motor-car Act was passed
which, among other things, raised the speed limit to 20 miles an hour
(subject to authority given to the Local Government Board to reduce the
limit to 10 miles an hour in dangerous areas), and provided for the
licensing of drivers and the registration and identification of cars, with
a view to checking reckless driving; while power was, also, given to the
Local Government Board to increase the maximum weights allowed by the
earlier Act. In January, 1904, the Board appointed a Departmental Committee
to inquire into the question of increasing the maximum tare, and, after
taking counsel with technical experts, trading bodies and commercial
authorities, it finally issued the Heavy Motor-car Order, 1904, effecting
changes in the maximum weights (unladen) as follows:--
MOTOR CAR MOTOR CAR AND TRAILER
Act of 1896 3 tons 4 tons.
Order of 1904 5 tons 6½ tons.
This Order, which came into force on the 1st of March, 1905, made possible
the provision of commercial motor-services, and the full development of the
motor industry, on present-day lines. It led, especially, to the creation
of new types of vehicles previously unknown here, and, by allowing "heavy
motor-cars"--the designation now applying to motor-vehicles over two tons
in weight--to take their place in ordinary road traffic, foreshadowed
changes in inland {478}transport to which one could hardly attempt, at
present, to fix any limit.
In respect to pleasure cars, detailed figures published in the issue of
"The Car" for December 14, 1910, show that the number of these (as distinct
from heavy motor-vehicles), registered in the United Kingdom at that date,
and allowing as far as possible for those which had lapsed, was 124,860. Of
motor-cycles there were 86,414. These figures convey some idea of the
extent to which the automobile has been not only substituted for private
horsed-carriages, as used for ordinary urban and social purposes, but
adopted, also, for those longer journeys or tours which the improved means
of locomotion have brought so much into vogue.
How the country is being opened up more and more to motor traffic may be
shown by some references to the work in this direction by the Royal
Automobile Club and the Automobile Association and Motor Union.
Founded in 1897, the Royal Automobile Club is an influential body with
many-sided activities, including the provision of a club house in Pall Mall
well deserving the designation of "palatial," and typical of the high
standing to which automobilism has attained. More, however, to my present
purpose than the social advantages offered by the club is the fact that the
R.A.C. not only advises its members or associates as to the best route in
regard to any tour they propose to make by motor, at home or abroad, but
provides them with a complete typewritten itinerary and specially-designed
maps for such tour, the information given being kept up to date by means of
reports made by the members themselves. The inquirer is given, also, a
guide-book for the district in question written from the point of view of
the traveller by road; he receives some confidential notes concerning the
hotels _en route_, and he may arrange to retain the services, for periods
of an hour, a half-day, a day, or a week, of local guides--clergymen,
writers, secretaries of local societies and others--who are qualified
authorities on art, archæology, architecture, natural history, topography,
etc., besides having an intimate knowledge of the localities visited. In
the Club itself there is a well-stocked "Travel Library," from which books
can be borrowed. Should the member or the associate on tour come into
conflict with the law in regard to alleged offences under {479}the Motor
Acts, the R.A.C. will defend him in any police court in the United Kingdom
free of charge, though it reserves to itself the right to refuse such
assistance in the case of those who may have been guilty of inconsiderate
driving.
Much has been done by the R.A.C. in the provision of road direction posts.
It has, for example, put up posts or direction boards along the whole of
the Great North Road from London to Berwick. It erects danger signs at
especially dangerous places, though at these only, as it considers
undesirable any undue multiplication of such signs by private agencies. The
R.A.C. is, further, most vigilant in defending the common interests of
motorists when these are endangered by Parliamentary Bills or in other
ways.
The Automobile Association and Motor Union also has its Touring Department,
for home or foreign travel. It offers, like the R.A.C., free defence of
members prosecuted for offences against the Motor Acts; it has an "hotel
system" of its own, and it has shown much activity in the placing of
direction posts and danger signs on important roads throughout the United
Kingdom.
A special feature of the A.A. and M.U.'s operations is the patrolling, by
men in uniform--and provided with bicycles or motor cycles--of 14,000 miles
of roads throughout England, Wales and Scotland. It is the duty of these
patrols to give to members information of interest concerning the road, to
warn them of any dangers on the highway, and to render them all possible
assistance in case of need. They are able to undertake minor roadside
repairs; they procure, in case of need, fresh petrol supplies from the
nearest store; while each is qualified to give first aid in case of
accident, much excellent service being rendered by them on the roadside not
only to members but to the public. Agents and repairers have also been
appointed by the A.A. and M.U. in all important cities and towns and in
numerous hamlets at intervals of a few miles along every main road. The
agents receive or deliver letters or telegrams, and are helpful in many
ways to the members.
In addition to these central organisations in London there are now
Associated Automobile Clubs throughout the United Kingdom which show a
great deal of local activity and offer many advantages to their own
members.
{480}It is, again, the now general use of the automobile that has given to
the improvement of the roads the greatest degree of stimulus it has
received since the days of McAdam and Telford.
Speaking generally, excellent results have followed from the policy adopted
by the State in transferring the charge of main roads from turnpike
trustees to the county councils, and, also, in encouraging rural district
councils to pay more attention to local highways other than main roads. In
1908-9, for example, the county councils spent on 27,749 miles of main
roads a total of £2,739,591, and the rural district councils spent on the
95,144 miles of road under their own control a total of £2,160,492 on
maintenance and repairs and £52,067 on improvements. Nor is there any
reason for supposing that, under the conditions operating to-day, this
expenditure is wasted or ill-spent, as was the case with so much of the
outlay on roads in the pre-McAdam days of non-scientific road-making.
While the roads were being adapted to the requirements of ordinary traffic,
their shortcomings from the point of view of the traffic of motor-cars and
traction engines were made apparent, and called for special attention. It
was not only that the suction of the india-rubber tyres raised clouds of
dust and, also, injured the macadamised roads by depriving the top layer of
stones of their proper binding, but the greater speed at which the
motor-cars were driven made it especially necessary that the roads should
be alike wide and straight, with as few awkward, if not dangerous, turns,
twists or corners as possible.
The increasing use of traction engines is indicated by a report on the
county roads issued by the Kent County Council. The number of traction
engines licensed by that body during the year ending March 31, 1911, for
use in the county, was 101, as compared with only 37 in the previous year.
Action was called for all the more because cycling and automobilism have
increased the use of the roads of the United Kingdom in general to an
extent that probably surpasses their use even in the palmy days of the
Coaching Era. At that time it was almost exclusively along the main roads
between leading cities that the coaches went in such numbers; whereas
cyclists and motorists in search of the picturesque may discard main roads
and proceed, instead, along highways {481}and by-ways where the stage-coach
was never seen. The sum total of the road traffic to-day may thus be in
excess of that of the Coaching Age, though, perhaps, appearing to be less
because it is better distributed.
For like reasons it became necessary that not only the main roads, but the
highways and by-ways, also, should receive adequate attention.
Under the Development and Road Improvement Funds Act, 1909, there was
constituted, in 1910, a body known as the Road Board, having for its
special function the administration of a "Road Improvement Grant." The
Board was to have power, with the approval of the Treasury, (a) to make
advances to county councils and other highway authorities in respect to the
construction of new roads or the improvement of existing roads, and (b)
itself to construct and maintain any new roads, which appear to the Board
to be required for facilitating road traffic.
The funds available for the Road Improvement Grant arise from the motor
spirit duties and the motor-car license duties, the last-mentioned being £1
for motor-bicycles and motor-tricycles, of whatever horse-power, and from
£2 2s. to £42 for motor-cars, according to their horse-power. Motorists
thus directly contribute towards the improvement of the roads, and the
principle involved is the same as that under which road-users formerly paid
tolls on turnpike roads; but the present application of this principle is
obviously a great improvement on the system of turnpikes, with its
excessive cost of toll-collection and other disadvantages.
The amount likely to be available for grants by the Board is estimated at
about £600,000 a year; but, owing to an accumulation of funds before
operations were begun, the Board started with resources amounting to
£1,600,000. The grants actually made to September 30, 1911, were:--
£
Improvement of road crusts 321,445
Road widenings and improvement of
curves and corners 44,856
Road diversions 16,906
Construction and improvement of bridges 23,947
-------
Total 407,154
{482}Inasmuch as applications were made to the Board up to June 30, 1911,
for advances amounting in the aggregate to close on £8,000,000, there would
seem still to be a great deal that requires to be done to the roads of the
country to adapt them to the traffic conditions of to-day. It will be seen,
however, that the combined operations of the Royal Automobile Club, the
Automobile Association and Motor Union, and the Road Board constitute, in
effect--and more especially from the point of view of provision of
facilities for through traffic under satisfactory conditions--a national
road policy far in advance of anything this country has ever seen before.
These road improvements appeal to the motorist, delighting in cross-country
journeys, still more than they do to the urban trader, whose road transport
does not, generally speaking, extend beyond a certain radius. But within
the limits of such radius the substitution of commercial motors for
horse-drawn vehicles is undergoing an expansion which seems to be
restricted only by the extent of the motor-car manufacturers' powers of
production, while already the use of so many commercial motors is
accentuating certain changes in commercial conditions which--as it is one
of the objects of the present work to show--have ever been powerfully
influenced by the transport facilities of the day.
With the large wholesale and retail houses the use of the road motor is a
matter not simply of economy in transport but, to a still greater degree,
of doing a larger business, in less time, and over a wider area, than if
horsed vehicles were used.
When urban traders send motor-vehicles a distance of over twenty or even
thirty miles into the outer suburbs, and when those vehicles can cover from
fifty to sixty miles in a day, distributing fresh supplies to suburban or
country shopkeepers, delivering purchases to local residents, or calling on
them to leave groceries, meat and other household necessaries, the
possibilities of an expansion of business by the said traders are greatly
increased, more especially when the local residents within the radius in
question find that if they give an order to the van-man, or send it by post
one day, the motor-vehicle will generally supply their wants the next day
or the day following. Under this arrangement the big traders, or the big
stores, in town are enabled to make their already big {483}businesses
bigger still--to their own advantage, but with a corresponding disadvantage
to the local shopkeepers.
In another direction the commercial motor is assisting the operations of
trading companies, caterers, grocers, tea-dealers, tobacconists, etc., who,
instead of having a single huge block of departmental shops or stores, have
numerous branches in all parts of London, furnishing them with viands,
provisions or stock from a head depôt. In all such instances as
these,--more especially when cooked food is distributed from a central
kitchen,--the superiority of the motor-vehicle over the horsed van is
self-evident; while the further advantage is gained that the branch
establishments can be devoted wholly, or almost exclusively, to the serving
of customers, without any need for extensive kitchen arrangements or
store-rooms of their own. Alternatively, the premises used for these
branches need be no larger than is necessary to meet day-by-day
requirements, whereas an independent trader, having only a single
establishment, would want much more accommodation, involving higher rent,
rates, taxes and expenses generally.
Once more the gain is on the part of the big trader as against the small
one; and once more we have evidence of the increasing tendency for the
former to supersede the latter. In fact, the real competition to-day is no
longer between large traders and small traders. It is a competition between
the commercial giants themselves. It is a contest in which the small
shopkeeper is little better than an interested spectator, with nothing more
to hope for than that the particular giant who wipes out his business will,
at least, be so far considerate as to offer him a situation.
In the recesses of Wild Wales there has been seen a commercial
motor-vehicle which was virtually a shop or a general stores on
wheels--something after the style of the familiar gypsies' van, though of a
far superior type. There are evidently endless possibilities in this
direction. The time may come when it will not be necessary for the rural
resident to go to the shops in even the nearest town. The shops
themselves--or equivalents thereto--will be brought to the very door. To a
certain extent there will thus be a reversal to the habits of former days;
but between the packhorse, or the pedlar, and the motor-shop-on-wheels
there will be a distinct and a very wide difference, representing
generations of both scientific {484}and economic progress. Do not such
possibilities still further suggest, also, the eventual supersession of the
small trader by the large one?
In almost every class of trade or business the commercial motor is being
steadily substituted for horsed vehicles. There are large retail houses in
London which have each their "fleets" of up to fifty or sixty motor-vans or
lorries.[65] The carrying companies would hardly be able to provide their
extensive suburban services of to-day without road motors. Fishmongers, ice
merchants and fruit salesmen, who especially require to have a speedy means
of distributing their wares, favour the commercial motor no less than do
the managers of evening newspapers. Laundry companies--to whose business a
great impetus has been given of late years by the increasing resort to
residential flats--find commercial motors of great service in the
collections that have to be made on Mondays and Tuesdays and the deliveries
effected on Fridays and Saturdays. Furniture-removers, by resorting either,
for small removals, to motors carrying pantechnicons, or, for large
removals, to traction-engines and regular road trains, can now cover
distances of up to 100 or 150 miles a day, the "record" down to the autumn
of 1911 being 166 miles in a day. Brewers, mineral-water manufacturers, oil
companies, coal merchants, pianoforte-makers, brick-makers and scores of
other traders, besides, are all taking to the new form of street or road
transport.
Motor-vehicles are likewise succeeding horsed vehicles for fire-engines,
municipal water-carts and dust-carts, street ambulances, Post Office
mail-vans,[66] char-a-bancs and estate cars, the last-mentioned being
constructed so that they can be used either for passengers or for goods.
Theatrical companies on tour use motor-vehicles for the conveyance of
themselves, _plus_ belongings and scenery. Political propagandists, also on
tour, move in their motor-van from one village to another with an ease that
no other road vehicle could surpass. Religious missions are being sent out
in motor-vans fitted up as {485}chapels, and duly dedicated to their
special purpose. Finally, after having had, through life, the advantage of
all the numerous and varied motor services here mentioned, one may now be
conveyed to one's last resting-place in what a writer in "Motor Traction"
for June 24, 1911, describes as "a properly-equipped motor hearse."
So considerable is the expansion which the use of commercial motors has
undergone, and so great and varied are the interests represented, that
there is now a Commercial Motor Users' Association which, among other
purposes, seeks to resist the placing of undue restrictions on users, and
to extend their rights and privileges. The administration of the
Association is vested in an executive committee (on which the principal
industries using self-propelled vehicles for industrial purposes are
represented) and various sub-committees.
Of the motor-omnibus as a competitor with the electric tramway I have
spoken in the previous chapter. It is a no less serious competitor with the
horse omnibus which in London, at least, if not in other cities as well, it
is rapidly driving off the streets altogether. The position in London is
suggested by the following figures, which give the numbers of
horse-omnibuses and motor-omnibuses licensed in the years stated:--
YEAR. HORSE. MOTOR.
1902 3736 10
1903 3667 29
1904 3623 13
1905 3551 31
1906 3484 241
1907 2964 783
1908 2557 1205
1909 2155 1133
1910 1771 1180
1911[67] 863 1665
On October 25, 1911, the London General Omnibus Company, who at one time
had 17,800 horses, ran their last horse-omnibuses, these being then
definitely withdrawn by them in favour of motor-omnibuses.
A like story is to be told of the rapid substitution of motor-cabs,
popularly known as "taxis," for the horse-cabs which, succeeding the
earlier hackney coaches, had helped to render so disconsolate the formerly
important and influential, though now utterly vanished, body known as
"Thames watermen."[68] Once more, in fact, the supplanters are being
{486}supplanted. "Growlers" and "crawlers" have had their day, and the
smarter-looking and quicker-moving taxis are leaving them to share the fate
of the stage-coach when it came into competition with the better form of
transport represented by the railway.
How far the substitution of motor-cabs for horsed cabs has already gone in
London will be gathered from the following table, taken from the report
(issued in July, 1911) of the Home Office Departmental Committee on Taxicab
Fares in the London Cab Trade:--
MOTOR-CABS HORSE-CABS LICENSED.
YEAR. LICENSED. Hansom. Four-wheel. Total.
1906 96 6648 3844 10,492
1907 723 5952 3866 9818
1908 2805 4826 3649 8475
1909 3956 3299 3263 3562
1910 6397 2003 3721 4724
1911[69] 7165 1803 2583 4386
How the horse is steadily disappearing from the streets and roads is
indicated by the records of a traffic census carried out by Mr. H. Hewitt
Griffin on Putney Bridge, in Fleet Street, E.C., and in the Edgware Road,
and published in the issues of "Motor Traction" for July 15, May 6, and
October 7, 1911, respectively.
Mr Griffin has taken his Putney Bridge census for seven years in
succession, and, comparing 1905 with 1911, he gives net results which may
be summarised as follows:--
A TWELVE HOURS' CENSUS ON
Sunday, Sunday,
TYPE OF VEHICLE. June 25, 1905. July 2, 1911.
Horse-drawn buses 1613 33
Motor-buses _nil_ 1529
Horse cabs, carriages, etc. 715 225
Motor-cars, cabs, etc. 361 1943
The Fleet Street traffic census, taken for five successive years, yielded
the following results for 1907 and 1911:--
A TWELVE HOURS' CENSUS ON {487}
TYPE OF VEHICLE. April 23, 1907. April 19, 1911.
Horse-drawn buses 2241 95
Motor-buses 995 2684
Horse-cabs 1902 391
Motor-cabs (taxis) 48 1616