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Hansom cab
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A hansom cab is a kind of horse-drawn carriage designed and patented in 1834 by Joseph Hansom, an architect from York.
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A hansom cab is a kind of horse-drawn carriage designed and patented in 1834 by Joseph Hansom, an architect from York. The vehicle was developed and tested by Hansom in Hinckley, Leicestershire, England. Originally known as the Hansom safety cab, its purpose was to combine speed with safety, with a low centre of gravity that was essential for safe cornering. Hansom's original design was heavily altered by John Chapman to improve its practicability, but retained Hansom's name.
Cab is a shortening of cabriolet, reflecting the design of the carriage. It replaced the hackney carriage as a vehicle for hire; with the introduction of clockwork mechanical taximeters to measure fares, the name became taxicab. Hansom cabs enjoyed immense popularity as they were fast, light enough to be pulled by a single horse (making the journey cheaper than travelling in a larger four-wheel coach) and were agile enough to steer around horse-drawn vehicles in the notorious traffic jams of nineteenth-century London. They were always seen as rather 'racy' and were not used by respectable ladies on their own.
The cab, a type of fly, sat two passengers (three if squeezed in) and a driver who sat on a sprung seat behind the vehicle. The passengers were able to give their instructions to the driver through a trap door near the rear of the roof. They could also pay the driver through this hatch and he would then operate a lever to release the doors so they could alight. The passengers were protected from the elements by the cab itself, as well as by folding wooden doors which enclosed their feet and legs, protecting their clothes from splashing mud. Later versions also had an up-and-over glass window above the doors to complete the enclosure of the passengers. Additionally, a curved fender mounted forward of the doors protected passengers from the stones thrown up by the flying hooves of the horse.
There were up to 3000 hansom cabs in use at the height of their popularity and they quickly spread to other cities in the United Kingdom, as well as continental European cities, particularly Paris, Berlin, and St Petersburg. The cab was introduced to other British Empire cities and to the United States during the late 19th century, being most commonly used in New York City.
Hansom Cab Company
The Hansom Cab Company was organized to provide transportation in New York City and Brooklyn, New York, in May 1869. The business was located at 133 Water Street (Manhattan), at the offices of Duncan, Sherman & Co., which served as bankers to the firm. The enterprise was organized by Ed W. Brandon who became its president. Two orders for a cargo of cabs were sent to carriage makers in New York City. A fare of thirty cents for a single person was designated for distances not exceeding one mile, and forty cents for two people. A fraction of a mile counted as a mile. A rate of seventy-five cents was determined for one or two persons for a length of time not exceeding one hour.
The cab enjoyed popularity in the United Kingdom until the 1920s, when cheap cars and the expansion of reliable mass-transport systems led to a decline in usage. The last licence for a horse-drawn cab in London was issued in 1947.
A beautifully restored hansom cab once owned by Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt is on display at the Remington Carriage Museum in Cardston, Canada. Another surviving example—owned and operated by the Sherlock Holmes Museum in London—is not permitted to enter any of the Royal Parks because it is considered a commercial vehicle. Both The Royal Parks Agency and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport have refused to grant permission for the hansom cab to be driven along any of the park roads, though motor taxis have unrestricted access.
In popular culture
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories make frequent mention of hansom cabs.
- Many versions of the Jack the Ripper story feature hansom cabs, not merely to reflect the period of the real-life events, but because in many interpretations it is thought the Ripper himself employed a cab or coach and even an accomplice cabbie to carry out his appalling murders.
- In The Magician's Nephew, part of the children's fantasy series The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis, Jadis, the evil Queen, makes use of a hansom cab.
- In Laurie R. King's series of Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes books, cabs feature as a declining means of transport.
- "The Adventure of the Hansom Cab" is the third and final story in Robert Louis Stevenson's The Suicide Club cycle (1878). Retired British soldier Lieutenant Brackenbury Rich is beckoned into the back of an elegantly-appointed hansom by a mysterious cabman who whisks him off to a party.
- In 1886, Fergus Hume published his novel The Mystery of a Hansom Cab, set in Gold Rush-era Melbourne, Australia. The story was filmed in Australia in 1911, under the same title.
- The 1889 film Leisurely Pedestrians, Open Topped Buses and Hansom Cabs with Trotting Horses, photographed by William Friese-Greene, shows Londoners walking along Apsley Gate, Hyde Park, with horse-drawn conveyances passing by.
- In 1895, Gentleman Joe, The Hansom Cabbie, a farcical musical comedy with music by Walter Slaughter and a libretto by Basil Hood, opened in London.
- In the comic series Scarlet Traces Britain has developed advanced mechanical hansoms based on reverse-engineered Martian technology.
- George Orwell's famous essay Politics and the English Language mentions preferring... hansom cabs to aeroplanes as one example of an archaism to which fretting about the state of the English language might be compared by some people, with whom he disagrees.
See also
External links
- National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution.
- on Carriage Association of America website.
- Sherlock Holmes International Society.
- The Secretary of State for Culture Media and Sport
- Sherlock Peoria.
- Farlex, Inc.
- Project Gutenberg.
- Official website for Laurie R. King; features a cab-driving scene.
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