as in Bridges Adams’s various equirotal carriages (never successful
and particularly ugly, so far as the pictures of them are concerned),
the wheels were all of equal size. Great things were promised of it,
but that was all. The question, however, of safety carriages was being
very widely considered. Accidents must have been all too frequent.
Runaway horses and high gigs between them were constantly bringing the
more reckless drivers to an untimely end. In 1825 a good proposal was
made for a safety gig, which was to have a contrivance fixed to the
shafts so that they should remain in a horizontal position, whether
the horse were between them or not. Experiments were also made with
some such contrivance as Sir Francis Delavel had first tried with his
eighteenth-century phaeton. And then came a time when almost every
coachbuilder had some “pet dodge” with which the dangers of travelling
were supposed to be reduced to a minimum.
In Ireland, where at a very early date a rough, flat-boarded waggon on
two solid wheels had been used for passenger-traffic—in which case
the passengers sat on the boards back to back with their legs dangling
over the sides—a peculiar vehicle called a _noddy_ was now popular. A
writer in _Blackwood’s Magazine_ for 1826 speaks of this carriage.
“A chaise and pair, miserable in show and substance as both
really were, was a species of luxurious conveyance to which
the ambition of the middle class of travellers in Ireland
before 1800 never ventured to aspire. Such as were content
with a less dignified mode of travelling on wheels, the
city of Dublin accommodated with a vehicle unparalleled, I
believe, in any part of the world, and singular in name as
well as construction. It was called a _Noddy_, drawn by one
horse, and carrying two, or if not of overgrown dimensions,
three passengers. The body of this ‘leathern convenience,’
which bore some resemblance to an old-fashioned phaeton,
‘beetled o’er its base’ in front, the better to protect the
inmates; and being slung from cross-bars by strong braces
instead of springs, nodded formidably at every movement of the
horse, hence deriving the appropriate appellation of Noddy.
In case of rain blowing in, a curtain of the same material
afforded its friendly shelter, wrapping the passengers in
total darkness, though, as far as the prospect was concerned,
the inconvenience was little; the only visible object when
it was withdrawn being the broad back and shoulders of the
brawny driver, who rested his legs upon the shaft, and his
sitting part on a sort of stool a very little way removed
from the knees of the person seated within. Simple, awkward,
and uneasy as this contrivance was, it was not disdained even
by senators at an earlier period than that of which I write;
and a nobleman, some thirty years older than myself, too, of
high rank and large estate, assured me that it was his usual
conveyance to and from college accompanied by a trusty servant
or private tutor.”
The ordinary _jaunting car_ and the larger _bian_—the invention
of Bianconi, a rich tradesman in Dublin, though for many years an
itinerant dealer—hardly differed in points of construction from
English carriages, though the passengers sat back to back on a seat
that ran parallel to the shafts.
In Wales the _market cart_ was even more primitive than the noddy of
Ireland. This was a low, two-wheeled, springless box of an affair, in
which you sat as best you could on the boards. There was no covering at
all. A rail at the back, extending some way along the sides, helped to
prevent you from falling out behind, if the horse gave a sudden lurch
forward.
Whilst European carriages were thus taking on a soberer aspect, Eastern
coaches were maintaining all their old magnificence. The Maharajah of
Mysore, to take one instance, travelled in a truly marvellous elephant
carriage in the early years of the nineteenth century.
“Its interior was a double sofa for six persons, covered
with dark green velvet and gold, surmounted by an awning of
cloth of gold, in the shape of two small scalloped domes,
meeting over the centre, and surrounded by a richly ornamented
verandah, supported by light, elegant, fluted gilt pillars.
The whole was capable of containing sixty persons, and was
about twenty-two feet in height. It moved on four wheels, the
hinder ones eight feet in diameter, with a breadth of twelve
feet between them. It was drawn by six immense elephants,
an exact match in size, with a driver on each, harnessed to
the carriage by traces, as in England, and their huge heads
covered with a sort of cap made of richly embroidered cloth.
The pace at which the elephants moved was a slow trot, of
about seven miles an hour—they were very steady, and the
springs of the coach particularly easy. The shape of the
body was that of an extremely elegant flat scallop-shell,
painted dark green and gold. This magnificent carriage was
the production of native workmen, assisted by a half-caste
Frenchman.”
Even this vehicle, however, was eclipsed by the state carriage of a
ruling Burmese chief, captured by the British in 1824. “This carriage
presented one entire blaze of gold, silver, and precious stones; the
last-named amounting to many thousands, including diamonds, rubies,
blue and white sapphires, emeralds, amethysts, garnets, topazes,
crystals, and the curious and rare stones known as cat’s eyes. The
carriage stood nearly thirty feet in height,” and was drawn by
elephants. “In form and construction,” says Croal, “in its elaborate
and superior carving, and its grand and imposing effect, this coach
takes rank as one of the most splendid equipages in existence.”
Many changes, meanwhile, were taking place in the public carriages.
Of the mail-coaches I need say nothing at all. Numerous books exist
which retell all those romances of the road which even in these days of
motor-cars cannot be altogether forgotten. The Golden Age of coaching
was at hand, and no print-shop is complete without some score or more
of carefully coloured engravings of one or other of “the Mails.”
They bore particular names—there were Flying Machines and Telegraphs
and the like—and they were larger than in the days when Palmer had
inaugurated the system, but that was all.[49]
Coming to such public vehicles, however, as were in general confined to
the metropolis, we find many changes.
The old hackney-coaches still plied for hire. They had their particular
stands, and the fares were subject to strict, though sometimes
exceedingly quaint, regulations. The first section of the new _Orders_
issued in 1821 may be quoted as bearing upon the structure of the
hackneys.
“It is ordered, constituted, and ordained, that, from and
after the four-and-twentieth Day of _June_ next ensuing the
Day of the Date of these Presents, the Perch of every Coach
shall be Ten Feet long at the least; and such Coach [shall]
have cross Leather Braces before, and not braced down, but
shall hang upon a Level, and not higher behind than before,
and to be decent, clean, strong, and warm, with Glass Windows
on each Side, or Shutters with Glasses of Nine Inches in
Length, and Six Inches in Breadth in each Shutter; and large
enough to carry Four Persons conveniently; and the Horses to
every such Coach shall be able and sufficient for the Business
when such Coach and Horses come from Home, to Ply; on a
Penalty not exceeding Ten Shillings, at the Discretion of the
said Commissioners, to be paid by the Owner of the License,
if the same be not rented out, and in Case the same shall be
rented out, then upon a Renter thereof.”
Leigh Hunt could find little good to say of them. Says he, quoting from
a supposititious poetess:—
“Thou inconvenience! thou hungry crop
For all corn! thou small creeper to and fro
Who while thou goest ever seem’st to stop,
And fiddle-faddle standest while you go;
I’the morning, freighted with a weight of woe,
Unto some Lazar-house thou journiest,
And in the evening tak’st a double row
Of dowdies, for some dance or party drest,
Besides the goods meanwhile thou movest east and west.
“By thy ungallant bearing and sad mien,
An inch appears the utmost thou couldst budge;
Yet at the slightest nod, or hint, or sign,
Round to the curb-stone patient dost thou trudge;
School’d in a beckon, learned in a nudge;
A dull-eyed Argus watching for a fare;
Quiet and plodding, thou doest bear no grudge
To whisking Tilburies, or Phaetons rare,
Curricles, or Mail-coaches, swift beyond compare.”
Dickens was familiar with these hackneys, and in one of the _Sketches
by Boz_ draws a picture of them.
“Take a regular, ponderous, rickety, London hackney-coach, of
the old school, and let any man have the boldness to assert,
if he can, that he ever beheld any object on the face of
the earth which at all resembles it unless, indeed, it were
another hackney-coach of the same date. We have recently
observed on certain stands, and we say it with deep regret,
rather dapper green chariots, and coaches of polished yellow,
with four wheels of the same colour as the coach, whereas
it is perfectly notorious to every one who has studied the
subject, that every wheel ought to be of a different colour,
and a different size. These are innovations, and, like other
miscalled improvements, awful signs of the restlessness
of the public mind, and the little respect paid to our
time-honoured institutions. Why should hackney-coaches be
clean? Our ancestors found them dirty, and left them so. Why
should we, with a feverish wish to ‘keep moving,’ desire to
roll along at the rate of six miles an hour, while they were
content to rumble over the stones at four? These are solemn
considerations. Hackney-coaches are part and parcel of the law
of the land; they were settled by the Legislature; plated and
numbered by the wisdom of Parliament.
“Then why have they been swamped by cabs and omnibuses? Or
why should people be allowed to ride quickly for eightpence a
mile, after Parliament had come to the solemn decision that
they should pay a shilling a mile for riding slowly? We pause
for a reply—and, having no chance of getting one, begin a
fresh paragraph....
“There is a hackney-coach stand under the very window at
which we are writing; there is only one coach on it now, but
it is a fair specimen of the class of vehicles to which we
have alluded—a great, lumbering, square concern, of a dingy
yellow colour (like a bilious brunette), with very small
glasses, but very huge frames; the panels are ornamented with
a faded coat of arms, in shape something like a dissected
bat, the axle-tree is red, and the majority of the wheels are
green. The box is partially covered by an old great-coat,
with a multiplicity of capes, and some extraordinary-looking
clothes; and the straw, with which the canvas cushion is
stuffed, is sticking up in several places, as if in rivalry of
the hay, which is peeping through the chinks in the boot. The
horses with drooping heads, and each with a mane and tail as
scanty and straggling as those of a worn-out rocking-horse,
are standing patiently on some damp straw, occasionally
wincing, and rattling the harness; and now and then, one of
them lifts his mouth to the ear of his companion, as if he
were saying in a whisper, that he should like to assassinate
the coachman. The coachman himself is in the watering-house;
and the waterman, with his hands forced into his pockets as
far as they can possibly go, is dancing the ‘double shuffle,’
in front of the pump, to keep his feet warm....
“Talk of cabs! Cabs are all very well in cases of expedition,
when it’s a matter of neck or nothing, life or death, your
temporary home or your long one. But, besides a cab’s lacking
that gravity of deportment which so peculiarly distinguishes
a hackney-coach, let it never be forgotten that a cab is a
thing of yesterday, and that he never was anything better.
A hackney-cab had always been a hackney-cab, from his first
entry into life; whereas a hackney-coach is a remnant of past
gentility, a victim to fashion, a hanger-on of an old English
family, wearing their arms, and in days of yore, escorted by
men wearing their livery, stripped of his finery, and thrown
upon the world, like a once-smart footman when he is no longer
sufficiently juvenile for his office, progressing lower and
lower in the scale of four-wheeled degradation, until at last
it comes to—a _stand_!”
These new cabs, indeed, were, as Dickens says, a thing of yesterday,
but they had had ancestors. Their immediate forefathers came from
Paris, where they had been known for some time under the name of
_cabriolets de place_. Light two-wheeled carriages, these were,
which had been evolved quite naturally from the original French gig
of the seventeenth century. The popularity of these cabriolets in
Paris naturally led certain enterprising people in London to attempt
their importation, but there was a difficulty to be surmounted. The
proprietors of the hackney-coaches had secured a monopoly for carrying
people in the streets of London. In 1805, however, licences were
obtained for nine cabriolets, which thereupon started to run. In these
two passengers could be carried, and the driver sat side by side with
his fares.
They were not a great success. In the first place they were not
allowed except in certain areas, and in the second passengers did not
apparently appreciate the close proximity of the driver. A number
of years passed before they either increased in numbers or caught
the public fancy. But in 1823, the Mr. Davies who had designed the
cab-phaeton built twelve new cabriolets, which were put on to the
streets for hire at the end of April.
“‘Cabriolets,’ runs a newspaper account, ‘were, in honour
of His Majesty’s birthday, introduced to the public this
[April 23rd] morning. They are built to hold two persons
inside besides the driver (who is partitioned off from his
company), and are furnished with a book of fares for the use
of the public, to prevent the possibility of imposition. These
books will be found in a pocket hung inside the head of the
cabriolet. The fares are one-third less than hackney-coaches.’”
These new cabs, painted yellow, had one novel feature which must have
astonished the inhabitants, for the driver’s seat was a rather comical
affair at the side—entirely _outside_ the hood. In this way privacy
was ensured, particularly if the curtains in front of the hood were
drawn together. “The hood,” says Mr. Moore,[50] “strongly resembled
a coffin standing on end, and earned for the vehicle the nickname of
‘coffin-cab.’” Cruikshank’s picture of one of these, to illustrate
a Sketch by Boz, shows the curious shape of the hood very well. In
a short while these cabriolets became popular—there were over one
hundred and fifty of them in 1830—particularly with the younger
generation. A verse of a then popular song mentions them:—
“In days of old when folks got tired,
A hackney-coach or a chariot was hired;
But now along the streets they roll ye
In a _shay_ with a cover called a _cabrioly_,”
which hints at a slightly incorrect pronunciation! But in a short while
the cockney found it easier to say _cab_, did so, and has done so ever
since.
Dickens describes these cabs in his essay on the London streets:—
“Cabs, with trunks and band-boxes between the drivers’ legs
and outside the apron, rattle briskly up and down the streets
on their way to the coach-offices or steam-packet wharfs; and
the cab-drivers and hackney-coachmen who are on the stand
polish up the ornamental part of their dingy vehicles—the
former wondering how people can prefer ‘them wild beast
cariwans of homnibuses, to a riglar cab with a fast trotter,’
and the latter admiring how people can trust their necks into
one of ‘them crazy cabs, when they can have a ’spectable
’ackney cotche with a pair of ’orses as von’t run away with
no vun’; a consolation unquestionably founded on fact, seeing
that a hackney-coach horse never was known to run at all,
‘except,’ as the smart cabman in front of the rank observes,
‘except one, and he run back’ards.’”
[Illustration: _The Coffin-Cab_
(_From a Drawing by Cruikshank_)]
[Illustration: _London Cab of 1823, with Curtains drawn_
(_From “Omnibuses and Cabs”_)]
There is another sketch of Dickens which merits quotation here. The
two-wheeled cabs were, of course, soon superseded by others of more
modern appearance, and Dickens speaks of the last of the cab-drivers
and his particular cab, with a few instructions upon riding in it.
This cabriolet “was gorgeously painted—a bright red; and
wherever we went, City or West End, Paddington or Holloway,
North, East, West, or South, there was the red cab, bumping up
against the posts at the street corners, and turning in and
out, among hackney-coaches, and drays, and carts, and waggons,
and omnibuses, and contriving by some strange means or other,
to get out of places which no other vehicle but the red cab
could ever by any possibility have contrived to get into at
all. Our fondness for that red cab was unbounded. How we
should have liked to have seen it in the circle at Astley’s!...
“Some people object to the exertion of getting into cabs,
and others object to the difficulty of getting out of them;
we think both these are objections which take their rise
in perverse and ill-conditioned minds. The getting into a
cab is a very pretty and graceful process, which, when well
performed, is essentially melodramatic. First, there is the
expressive pantomime of every one of the eighteen cabmen on
the stand, the moment you raise your eyes from the ground.
Then there is your own pantomime in reply—quite a little
ballet. Four cabs immediately leave the stand, for your
especial accommodation; and the evolutions of the animals
who draw them are beautiful in the extreme, as they grate
the wheels of the cabs against the curb-stones, and sport
playfully in the kennel. You single out a particular cab, and
dart swiftly towards it. One bound, and you are on the first
step; turn your body lightly round to the right, and you are
on the second; bend gracefully beneath the reins, working
round to the left at the same time, and you are in the cab.
There is no difficulty in finding a seat: the apron knocks you
comfortably into it at once, and off you go.
“The getting out of a cab is, perhaps, rather more complicated
in its theory, and a shade more difficult in its execution.
We have studied the subject a good deal, and we think the
best way is to throw yourself out, and trust to chance for
alighting on your feet. If you make the driver alight first,
and then throw yourself upon him, you will find that he breaks
your fall materially. In the event of your contemplating an
offer of eightpence, on no account make the tender, or show
your money, until you are safely on the pavement. It is very
bad policy attempting to save the fourpence. You are very much
in the power of a cabman, and he considers it a kind of fee
not to do you any wilful damage. Any instruction, however, in
the art of getting out of a cab is wholly unnecessary if you
are going any distance, because the probability is that you
will be shot lightly out before you have completed the third
mile.
“We are not aware of any instance on record in which a
cab-horse has performed three consecutive miles without
going down once. What of that? It is all excitement. And
in these days of derangement of the nervous system and
universal lassitude, people are content to pay handsomely for
excitement; where can it be procured at a cheaper rate?”
Thomas Hood also mentions both hackney-coaches and cabs in one of his
comic poems, _Conveyancing_.
“O, London is the place for all
In love with loco-motion!
Still to and fro the people go
Like billows of the ocean;
Machine or man, or caravan,
Can all be had for paying,
When great estates, or heavy weights,
Or bodies want conveying.
“There’s always hacks about in packs,
Wherein you may be shaken,
And Jarvis is not always _drunk_,
Tho’ always _overtaken_;
In racing tricks he’ll never mix,
His nags are in their last days,
And slow to go, altho’ they show
As if they had their _fast days_!
“Then if you like a single horse,
This age is quite a _cab-age_,
A car not quite so small and light
As those of our Queen _Mab_ age;
The horses have been _broken well_,
All danger is rescinded,
For some have _broken both their knees_,
And some are _broken-winded_.”
While these cabs were still running, several experiments were being
made with patent carriages. One of these, placed on the streets for
a short while, was the invention of Mr. William Boulnois. “It was a
two-wheeled closed vehicle,” says Mr. Moore, “constructed to carry
two passengers sitting face to face. The driver sat on a small and
particularly unsafe seat on the top of it, and the door was at the
back. It was, in fact, so much like the front of an omnibus that it was
well known as the _omnibus slice_. Its popular name was the _back-door
cab_. Superior people called it a _minibus_. This cab was quickly
followed by a very similar, although larger, vehicle invented by Mr.
Harvey. It was called a _duobus_.” These two cabs cannot have been
very comfortable; the shafts were too short, and the knowledge that a
possibly heavy coachman was sitting just above your head seems to have
militated against their success.
Another cab, not wholly successful in itself, led the way to the
widely popular _hansom_. This was a carriage invented in 1834 by Mr.
Aloysius Hansom, the architect of the Birmingham Town Hall. Here the
body was “almost square and hung in the centre of a square frame.” The
driver, as before, sat on the roof, but had a small seat fixed there
for his convenience. The doors were in front, on either side of the
driver’s seat. And the wheels were of a prodigious height—being seven
feet six inches. Mr. Hansom, who had obviously seen one of Francis
Moore’s patent carriages of 1790,[51] himself drove this carriage from
Hinckley in Leicestershire to London, and found financial support from
Mr. Boulnois. Further experiments were made—in one model you had to
enter the carriage actually _through_ the wheels, the door being in
this case at the sides—and it was found that the wheels could be made
considerably smaller without danger or inconvenience. Whereupon a
company was formed to purchase the invention for a sum of ten thousand
pounds. Hansom, however, obtained no more than three hundred, the
balance being used to perfect the far from satisfactory cabs which
had been placed on the streets. Such improvements as were carried out
were the work of Mr. John Chapman,[52] then secretary to the Safety
Cabriolet and Two-Wheel Carriage Company, who produced a much safer
vehicle, afterwards purchased by Hansom’s company. This new cab
was placed on the streets in 1836, and proved such a success that
it was imitated by numerous other companies. Legal proceedings were
instituted, but proved both expensive and not particularly successful,
and the “pirate” cabs were allowed to flourish as best they could.
Then, in 1836, was made the first of those four-wheeled cabs,[53] which
were not really cabs at all, but which will never be known by any other
name. The first of these was built by the ingenious Mr. Davies. It
bore superficial resemblance to the chariot. Two passengers could ride
inside, and a third on the box at the coachman’s side. At this date
the old two-wheeled cabs were “a source of acknowledged disgrace, of
many alarming accidents, and of lamentable loss of life,” and a company
was formed to provide “a cheap, expeditious, safe, and commodious mode
of conveyance in lieu of the present disgraceful and ill-conducted
cabriolets.” Two years later Lord Brougham was so pleased with the
appearance of these new cabs that he ordered one for his own use. So
was the first _brougham_ constructed—the earliest private four-wheeled
closed carriage to be drawn by a single horse.
“The original brougham,” says Sir Walter Gilbey,[54] “differed
in many particulars of design, proportion, construction, and
finish from the modern carriage. The body ... was several
inches wider in front than at the back, and though both larger
and heavier, was neither so comfortable nor so convenient....
[It] was held together by heavy, flat iron plates throughout,
and the front boot was connected with the front pillars by
strong outside iron stays, fixed with bolts. The wheels were
at once smaller in diameter and much heavier. [The carriage]
carried a large guard or ‘opera board’ at the back of the body
to protect the occupants from risk of injury in a crush, when
the pole of a carriage behind might otherwise break through
the back panel—an accident now occasionally seen in our
crowded streets. Like all other carriages of the time there
was a sword case in the back panel for weapons. It was painted
olive green, a very fashionable colour at that period.”