INVENTIONS GALORE

IF William Felton’s book shows the great improvements that had taken place in English carriage-building during the latter half of the eighteenth century, William Bridges Adams’s English Pleasure Carriages, published in 1837, sufficiently shows the enormous improvements which had followed upon Obadiah Elliott’s invention of the elliptic springs.47 In the first place you had a whole series of light, perchless carriages being built, and in the second you had the new macadamised roads upon which to run them.

In treating of all these various carriages, it is difficult to know where to begin. A mere catalogue with a few lines of description cannot be very satisfactory, and yet there seems no other method to adopt. Bridges Adams, who was a coachbuilder himself and the inventor of several novel carriages, is a good guide, but one could have wished that his book had been illustrated by anything rather than those fearsome diagrams which mean so little to any one but a coachbuilder himself. From the beginning of the century, indeed, illustrations of carriages began to take on that diagrammatic aspect which the trade-papers still maintain; while at the same time the old prints and caricatures began to disappear. It is a pity, but it cannot be helped.

“Though it would be difficult,” says Bridges Adams, “to describe every particular variety of carriage now in use, it is comparatively easy to set forth the leading features—the original models, as it were, of each particular class. The distinguishing characteristics are to be found in the form of the bodies and not in the mechanism of the springs or framework. Thus a particular shaped body entitles the carriage to the term Chariot, whether it be constructed with under springs or C springs, or with both, or whether it be with or without a perch. This rule obtains throughout the whole varieties of carriages; and in those bodies which are formed by a combination”—as now began to be the case—“it is customary to call them by a double name—as Cab-Phaeton, Britzschka-Chariot, Britzschka-Phaeton, &c.” Accordingly, I shall endeavour in a brief catalogue to point out such changes as were being made in each broad class of vehicle.

The coach was still being made with a perch. It was not hung so high, but in other respects it differed but little from its predecessors. The Salisbury boot, which carried the coachman’s seat, and the hammercloth, were still used, but for travelling long distances were removed, a smaller platform being substituted in their place. In the Driving Coach, a novelty which now became popular with gentlemen of means, and at a later date came to be commonly known as the four-in-hand, the wheels were rather nearer together, and the perch was short and straight. This had the boots which, as we have seen, had been already added to the mail-coaches for the convenience of outside passengers. “The boots and body,” says Bridges Adams, “are framed together, and suspended on springs before and behind—the connection with the carriage being by means of curved blocks.”

Another variety of the coach was the barouche, which, though, I suppose, not technically a coach at all, if one accepts Thrupp’s definition—for it was roofless—is generally classed with this kind of vehicle. There had been, I believe, a barouche in England so early as 1767, but it was not popular until a much later date. The barouche was simply a coach-body without its upper portion—an open carriage, that is to say, with high driving seat, and a hood fixed to the back if required—not indeed unlike an opened landau to look at. It was purely a town carriage. Its driving seat, similar to that in a landau, was built to hold both coachman and footman, “the hinder part being unprovided with a standard, which would,” says Bridges Adams, “be useless, as when the head is down there is little convenience for the servant’s holders, and he would moreover be unpleasantly placed, looking down on the sitters within, and listening to all the conversation,” a matter of course which he would have been only too pleased to do. The barouche would hold four or six persons, and in fine weather was considered to be “the most delightful of all carriages.” There was, too, a certain amount of state about it, and several noble families continued to drive in them long after most other people had given them up. When Ackermann, the publisher, invented his patent movable axles about 1816, the barouche was one of the carriages to which these axles were fitted. A print of this carriage is shown in the accompanying illustration. A barouchet, corresponding to the landaulet, was also built at this time, but was never popular. Bridges Adams speaks of it as a graceless carriage for one horse.

The town chariot, or coupÉ, as it was called in France, and indeed, at a later date in England, was being built lower than before, but otherwise remained unaltered. The high driving seat was still removed to transform the carriage into a post-chaise. Amusing instructions for buying a chariot are given by John Jervis, an old coachman, in the second volume of the Horse and Carriage Oracle, 1828. “The form of Carriages,” he opines, “is as absurdly at the Mercy of Fashion, as the Cut of a Coat is—however, if the Reader is willing to let the Builder please himself with the form of the Exterior, he will not be quite so polite as to submit the construction of the Interior entirely to the caprice of his Coachmaker.” Don’t, he advises, have too much stuffing inside: “The present fashion of Stuffing is preposterous, it reduces a Large Body to the size of a small One: however,” he adds obligingly, “if you like to ride about for the benefit of public inspection, as your friends, my Lady Look-out, the Widow Will-be-seen—and Sir Simon Stare, do, pray, study Geoffrey Gambado on the Art of sitting politely in Carriages, with the most becoming attitudes, &c., and choose wide Door Lights and full Squabbing;—if you wish to go about peaceably and quietly, like Sir Solomon Snug, and are contented with seeing without being seen, adopt the contracted Lights, and common Stuffing, which, among others, have this great advantage that when you sit back, you may have the side Window down, and a thorough Air passing through the Carriage, without it blowing directly in upon you: this, to Invalids who easily catch Cold, is very important.” The lining of the chariot, he recommends, should be “green, with Lace to correspond, and the Green silk Sun Shades of the same Colour,” green being pleasant to the eye. Venetian blinds, he says, are very nice in warm weather, and should be painted verdigris green on the inside and on the outside a colour which matches with that of the coach-body. Further instructions follow. You are advised never to permit officious strangers to shut your carriage door—a piece of sound advice which might well be followed to-day when seedy people expect a small tip for having watched you get into a cab—and if your coachman sees any one about to do so, he is to say “loudly and imperatively, ‘Don’t meddle with the Door!’”

The chief maker of these chariots was the celebrated Samuel Hobson, “who may be truly said to have improved and remodelled every sort of carriage, which came under his notice, especially as regards the artistic form and construction, both of body and carriage.” “Hobson’s Chariots,” indeed, were in a class by themselves. “He lowered the wheels of coaches and chariots,” says Thrupp, “to 3 ft. 3 in. in front and 4 ft. 5 in. behind, and lengthened the carriage part once more to such a true proportion to the whole vehicle as has approved itself as correct to each succeeding generation of Coachbuilders and users of carriages. He lowered the body, too, so that it could be entered by a moderate double step instead of the three-fold ladder previously in use.”

Mr. Jervis’s remarks about the coachmaker’s being allowed to choose the exterior of his customer’s carriage no doubt followed on the practice, mentioned by Bridges Adams, of building particular carriages upon a general chariot basis. Of these hybrids, perhaps the most popular was the Briska-chariot. The briska itself (more correctly the britzschka) had been introduced into England from Austria about 1818 by Mr. T. G. Adams, though Bridges Adams thinks that it was first brought here at a rather later date by the Earl of Clanwilliam, “who liked it for its lightness; for which reason it probably obtained, amongst coachmen and mechanics, the translated name Brisker or Brisky.” In England it was made in various sizes and with various modifications. A small one for one horse was “a light open carriage, fitted with a leathern top over the front inside seat; which top had a glazed front and sides, or glazed front and Venetian blinds to the sides.” Its chief characteristics were a small seat at the back of the main body and a straight bottom line to the body itself—this giving it “a ship-like and fast-going appearance.” Ten years after its introduction it was so immensely popular as to threaten every other carriage; nor was this altogether surprising, for in addition to being liked for the sake of its own lightness, it lent itself so well to every variety of purpose. And of these modified briskas, the briska-chariot was one of the most favoured. It was in particular demand with those travelling abroad, inasmuch as its great length enabled its passengers to lie at full length. Another variety, the droitzschka or drosky, was a modification of the Russian vehicle of that name. This was built low, an open perch carriage with a hood, used chiefly by “languid, aged, or nervous persons, and children.” The drosky seems to have given the idea to Mr. David Davies for his pilentum, which was very similar in appearance. This Mr. Davies is also supposed to have been the inventor of the popular cab-phaeton, a one-horse, low-hung carriage suspended on four elliptic springs. On the Continent this carriage became known as a milord, once most aristocratic, but by 1850 little better than a hack. It was somewhat similar in appearance to the victoria.

The phaeton was still made, but was being superseded by the briska. The main seat of the carriages, as in the old perch-high phaetons, was still over the front axle, but the body was now hung low on elliptic springs. Such a perchless carriage was called by Adams “the very simplest form of wheeled vehicle in ordinary use. It is literally a long box, with an arm-chair in front, and a bench behind.” And that is a remarkably good description. Here, too, as with the chariots, there were also various hybrids.

Landaulets were very popular in London, and were made in great quantities by the firm with which Obadiah Elliott himself was connected. A patent roof and Ackermann’s movable axles are shown in the accompanying illustration of this carriage.

We come now to the two-wheeled carriages. Of these the most fashionable was still the curricle, though Bridges Adams considered the shape of the body “certainly unsightly.” It is interesting to notice in this connection that the mode of attaching the two horses to the curricle was “precisely that of the classic car, only more elegant.” It was in a curricle that Charles Dickens rode about so soon as he was able to afford the luxury of a private carriage. The cabriolet, somewhat similar to it in form, was simply the old one-horse chaise brought up to date. The body resembled a nautilus shell, thus differing from the popular two-wheeled carriage called a tilbury. This had been built first by a carriage-maker of the same name. It was constructed without a boot (or hind seat) and was a very light carriage, with, however, rather too much ironwork and too many springs—seven in all—about it. Italy and Portugal seem to have taken to this particular gig and numerous consignments were sent south by water. Another vehicle, not very different, was the stanhope, also built by Tilbury to the order of the Hon. Fitzroy Stanhope, a brother of Lord Petersham. This was much like the old rib chair, but hung from four springs. The only difference, so far as the shape of their bodies goes, between the tilbury and the stanhope is to be found in the fact that in the stanhope it is rather larger and more capacious. The dennet, invented by a Mr. Bennett of Finsbury, had a body resembling that of a phaeton. It had three springs, and Bridges Adams, without being certain upon the point, thinks that it took its name from these three springs, which were named after the three Misses Dennet, “whose elegant stage-dancing was so much in vogue about the time the vehicle was first used.” The lightest of all these carriages, however, was the common gig, such as that arch-joker, Theodore Hook, was accustomed to drive in, which at this time was “simply an open railed chair, fixed on the shafts, and supported on two side springs, the harder ends of which were connected to the loop irons by leathern braces—to give more freedom to the motion.” Small alterations in the gig, such as the addition of a deep boot and Venetian blinds to the lockers (to carry dogs) led to the first dog-cart. Here the passengers sat back to back. Tandem-carts were very similar, though here the driver’s seat was raised. The dog-cart itself gave rise to numerous varieties, such as the Newport, the Malvern, the Whitechapel, the sliding body, and the Norwich carts.

In America the buggy, a light waggon, the sulky, the fantail gig, the tub-bodied gig, the chariotee, and the public sociable were the chief carriages. The rockaway, made first in 1830, was a light waggon with wooden springs on the outside of the body. The volante, much used at this time by the Spanish ladies of South America and Cuba, was a hooded gig upon two high wheels. But in America, as in Europe, no entirely new bodies or methods of framing were needed, and such little differences as there were are only of interest to the coachbuilder or the expert.

Before passing, however, to the public conveyances, to which, it would seem, most carriage-builders of an inventive turn were now giving their attention, I may mention one or two particularly quaint or fanciful carriages which do not readily fall into a recognised class.

About this time several people seem to have been at pains to produce a three-wheeled carriage, “apparently designed,” says Croal, “to overcome an element of danger in the ordinary two-wheeled gig, in which so much of the business and pleasure of travelling took place.” In America, the chief experiments in this direction were made by Dr. Nott, president of Union College at Schenectady, who produced a three-wheeled chariot, in which he drove about.48 “The body of the vehicle was supported by the near axle on two wheels, while a third wheel in front was in close connection with the shafts, so that it revolved with them as they turned. By this arrangement the body of the carriage could be hung low, supported entirely by the wheels, while the third wheel in front, revolving in a small circle with the shaft, enabled the occupants to make a short and safe turn.” What became of this weird vehicle is not known, but its inventor’s memory was enshrined in a song, one verse of which runs as follows:—

A six-wheeled carriage was also proposed by Sir Sidney Smith. Here, 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:—

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:—

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.’”

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.

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.”

Another hansom, the tribus, may be noticed here, though it was not invented until 1844. In this carriage the driver’s seat was at the back on a level with the roof, and the door to his left at the back—the reason of this being that the driver could open or close it without leaving his seat. Another peculiarity was the presence of five windows, two in front, one at either side, and a fifth at the back underneath the driver’s seat. The tribus was the invention of Mr. Harvey, who also built a curricle tribus, for two horses, but neither was successful. The quartobus (1844) of Mr. Okey, a four-wheeled vehicle to hold four inside passengers, was likewise withdrawn after a short trial.

Roch’s Patent Dioropha, 1851