For those new to CabbieBlog or readers who are slightly forgetful, on Saturdays I’m republishing posts, many going back over a decade. Some will still be very relevant while others have become dated over time. Just think of this post as your weekend paper supplement.

Fare’s Fair (03.06.11)

As the site is entitled CabbieBlog and is written by a Licensed London Cab Driver I thought on the anniversary of the blog’s 250th post the time was opportune to give a little of the history of London’s cab trade.

The name cab derives from the French, cabriolet de place and London cabbies have a surprisingly ancient heritage, the now defunct Corporation of Coachmen having secured a charter to ply for hire in London back in 1639.

Hackney Carriage is still the official term used to describe taxis and has nothing to do with that area in east London. The name comes from hacquenée, the French term for a general-purpose horse, it literally means, “ambling nag”.

In 1625 there were as few as 20 cabs available for hire and operating out of inn yards, but in 1636 the owner of four hackney coaches, a certain Captain Bailey a retired mariner, dressed his four drivers in livery so they would be easily recognisable and established a tariff for various parts of London and most important of all brought them into the Strand outside the Maypole Inn, and in so doing the first taxi rank had been established, this attracted the attention of other hackney coachmen who flocked there seeking work.

In 1636 Charles I made a proclamation to enable 50 hackney carriages to ply for hire in London, it was left up to the City’s Aldermen to make sure this number was not exceeded.
After the Civil War, in 1654 Oliver Cromwell set up the Fellowship of Master Hackney Carriages by an Act of Parliament, and taxi driving became a profession; their numbers were allowed to increase to 200 hackney carriages. The Act was replaced in 1662 under Charles II by a new act, which required the hackney coaches to be licensed, and restricted their number to 400. In 1688 the number was increased to 600, and then again six years later by an Act of Parliament to 700.

Despite licensing they failed to attract the right sort of passenger, however, so in 1694 a bevvy of females in one cab reportedly behaved so badly in the environs of Hyde Park that the authorities responded by banning hired cabs from the park for the next 230 years.

Between 1711 and 1798 some 24 separate Acts of Parliament were passed dealing specifically with the cab trade and increasing the number of drivers who could ply for hire. In 1711 800 licenses were issued and by 1815 the number had reached 1,200.

In 1833 the number of drivers became unregulated, and there was no longer a restriction on the number of taxis, the only limit was that the driver and vehicle be “fit and proper”, a condition that still applies today. This makes the licensed taxi trade the oldest regulated public transport system in the world, and it is the licensed cabbies in the trade that have demanded that it stays this way. With the passing of The London Hackney Carriage Act, the Metropolitan Police gained control of the trade for the next 169 years.

In December 1834, Joseph Hansom of Hinckley, Leicestershire, registered his Patent Safety Cab but sold the patient for £10,000 before he had it manufactured. Its design was improved by cutting away the body of the cab under the passenger’s seat at an angle, inserting a slope in the floor where the passenger’s feet rested, and raising the driver’s seat some 7ft off the ground; this produced the perfect counterbalance and gave us the most famous Hansom carriage to ply London’s streets. Because of London’s congested streets modern London cabs’ average speed is now lower than the 17mph attainable by the 1834 Hansom carriage.

By mid-Victorian times the drivers had acquired a bit of a reputation, prompting a number of philanthropists – led by a certain Captain Armstrong from St. John’s Wood, the editor of the Globe newspaper – to pay for the erection of London’s distinctive green cab shelters, places where drivers could eat rather than drink alcohol, and where discussion of politics was strictly forbidden, 64 were built although only around a dozen still remain.

In 1887 Gottlieb Daimler, having previously invented the internal combustion engine some four years earlier, built the first petrol-powered cab, but the Metropolitan Police refused to license such a crazy device until 1904.

The taximeter was invented in 1891 by Wilhelm Bruhn and it is from this that the term taxi is derived. The taximeter measures the distance travelled and time taken on all journeys, allowing an accurate fare to be charged. The word comes from the French taxe (“price”) and Greek metron (“measure”). Previous inventions for calculating fares included the “Patent Mile-Index” in 1847 and the ”Kilometric Register” in 1858. These were disliked by cab drivers as they did not want their incomes regulated by machines. Even though Bruhn’s taximeter ended up being thrown in the river by drivers and was not made compulsory until 1907, his invention is still being used today.

The “Knowledge of London”’ was introduced in 1851 by Sir Richard Mayne after complaints that cab drivers did not know where they were going at the time of The Great Exhibition in Hyde Park. Passing the Knowledge involves a detailed recall of 25,000 streets within a six-mile radius of Charing Cross station. The locations of clubs, hospitals, hotels, railway stations, parks, theatres (including the stage door), courts, restaurants, colleges, government buildings and places of worship are also required. In addition, Blue Plaques, statutes and London curiosities can be asked. The examinations take the form of a one-to-one oral test and take over three years to pass.

Taxi Trivia
• Drivers do not have to stop if you hail them, whether or not the yellow ‘taxi’ sign is lit. This is because legally, taxis are not plying for hire when they are moving. However, if they do stop, they are considered ”standing in the street” and cannot refuse a fare under 12 miles or that will take less than one hour.
• Many people believed the original 6-mile limit was to ensure that the poor old horse didn’t get too tired pulling the cab. In fact, it was linked to London’s chain of defences that had been erected during the Civil War in 1642. The defences were approximately 6 miles from the City and Westminster and it was deemed dangerous for Hackney coaches to pass through these robust emplacements.
• Taxi drivers do not have to wear a seat belt when they are working but must belt up when they are driving home.
• Taxi drivers are not legally obliged to give change. If a large note is offered the driver is entitled to take the cash and then offer to post the change to the passenger’s home address.
• The classic London black cab is the Austin FX-4 which was introduced in 1958 remaining in production until 1996. In 1989 a version of the vehicle went on sale in Japan badged as the “Big Ben Novelty Car”.
• In the 1960s the wealthy oil heir Nubar Gulbenkian had a luxurious limousine built on an FX-4 taxi chassis for his own use while in London. “Apparently it can turn on a sixpence”, he used to tell acquaintances, “whatever that is”.
• The reason London taxis are so high is so that the “toffs” didn’t have to remove their top hats.
• The rate of a shilling (5p) was set in 1662 when King Charles II passed an Act to control coachmen; this rate was not to be exceeded unto 1950.
• An Act of Parliament in 1784 gave the Hackney carriage trade the sole right to use their coaches as “hearses and mourning coaches at funerals”.
• The heroic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton was a regular visitor to the old green shelter which originally stood at Hyde Park Corner; the shelter’s regulars presented him with a set of pipes and a pipe rack. His letter of thanks hung proudly on the shelter wall until the shelter was pulled down to make way for the Piccadilly underpass.
• The last horse-drawn Hackney carriage license was surrendered as late as 3rd April 1947.
• Rear-view mirrors became a legal requirement in 1968, but to prevent cabbies from ogling the legs of their lady passengers they couldn’t be adjusted, rendering them almost useless.
• Harold Wilson when Prime Minister wanted to nationalise the taxi trade and force drivers to wear a liveried uniform and be paid a salary.
• London cabbies are expected to abide by laws encompassed in the London Hackney carriage Acts of 1831 and 1843. Among these antiquated laws are terms of one or two months imprisonment for “misbehaviours during employment” and “use of insulting or abusive gestures during employment”.
• Take care that you don’t contravene the Public Health (Control of Disease) Act 1984 when hailing a cab for “No person who knows he is suffering from a notifiable disease shall enter a cab without previously notifying the owner or driver of his condition”.
• When a special Buckingham Palace Brownie Pack was formed for Princess Anne in 1959, one of the other nine-year-olds handpicked to keep her company was the daughter of a London cabbie.
• The actress Keeley Hawes’ father is a cabbie as are both her older brothers. Amy Winehouse’s dad Mitch, in addition to being a musician and singer, drives a London cab. Entertainer Brian Conley’s late father was once a London cabbie.

For those new to CabbieBlog or readers who are slightly forgetful, on Saturdays I’m republishing posts, many going back over a decade. Some will still be very relevant while others have become dated over time. Just think of this post as your weekend paper supplement.

A bear called Martin (27.05.11)

I can never recall a time when we weren’t sharing our home with an animal. My father, and his father before him, held senior positions at London Zoo and from time to time he would, as they say, bring his work home.

Until recently I assumed that London Zoo was the capital’s first menagerie, little realising that not long after the Tower of London was built, it was to become London’s first house for animals.

Exotic creatures have long been considered an appropriate gift from one ruler to another, as early as the 12th century there is evidence that King John (1199-1216) received three boatloads of wild beasts from Normandy. Records show that in 1235 the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II gave Henry III three leopards on the occasion of his wedding to Eleanor of Provence, a lion followed and in 1252 a polar bear complete with its keeper both gifts from Haakon IV of Norway.

The only place to house these dangerous creatures was in England’s most secure citadel, the Tower of London, whose walls provided the perfect enclosure. At that time the creatures were locked away from public view, except the time when the shackled polar bear would be led onto the Thames foreshore to wash and fish for food.

When in 1255 Louis IX of France gave Henry an elephant the Sheriffs of London were asked to build and pay for a 40ft long wooden elephant house, later it was put to good use as one of the Tower’s many prison cells.

The menagerie grew and Edward I created the official position of The Master of the King’s Bears and Apes. By the 16th century the collection was opened to limited public view, and by James I’s reign within the Tower’s confines were recorded a flying squirrel, a tiger, a lioness, five camels and an elephant.

Christopher Wren was charged with designing a lion’s house in 1672. Built-in the southeastern corner it comprised two stories, an attic and cellars. I could never understand when in the modern London Zoo people would eat their lunch in the Lion House for a lion’s faeces have an odour all of their own. In Stow’s Survey of London published in 1720, he records: “The creatures have a rank smell, which hath so affected the air of the place (tho’ there is a garden adjoining) that it hath much injured the health of the man that attends them, so stuffed up his head, that it affects his speech.”

Animal husbandry was in its infancy: ostriches were believed to have the ability to digest iron – one died after being fed no fewer than 80 nails. An Indian elephant housed in St. James’s Palace was given a daily glass of wine from April to September as they believed it couldn’t drink water during those months.

By 1821 the collection had dwindled to four lions, a panther, a leopard, a tiger and a grizzly bear called Martin.

A new keeper was appointed, Alfred Cops, who was devoted to his charges. For the first time in the menagerie’s history Cops went out and purchased animals for the collection. Soon the Tower contained over 280 animals and the public flocked to view them. In one unfortunate incident, a boa constrictor wrapped itself around Cops’ neck as he was feeding it in a bid to entertain the tourists.

A victim of its own success most of the animals were transferred to the new Zoological Society of London, in Regents Park was the society had established London’s first zoo. That transfer started in 1832 and by 1835 the last of Alfred Cops’ collection had been rehomed ending 600 years of exotic animals at The Tower of London.

Now, this whole forgotten chapter is to be celebrated with a special exhibition at the Tower, called Royal Beasts, which opens tomorrow. Watching over the visitors will be one of its most unusual tenants a polar bear which will sit outside the Bloody Tower, where there was once direct access to the Thames. But really to welcome visitors to the exhibition it should have been a bear called Martin.

For those new to CabbieBlog or readers who are slightly forgetful, on Saturdays I’m republishing posts, many going back over a decade. Some will still be very relevant while others have become dated over time. Just think of this post as your weekend paper supplement.

Horses for courses (20.05.11)

With Boris cabs now becoming Public Enemy Number One and with ever more traffic flow restrictions, and councils trying to turn London’s roads back to Victorian times, an average speed of 8 mph is now still no higher than they were a century ago when we used Shank’s Pony. Nevertheless, it is a mistake to imagine that London’s streets would have been more pleasant with four-legged horsepower. A good example is this film of traffic passing in front of the Bank of England in 1903.

By the end of the 19th century, 300,000 horses were working in the capital, each producing four tons of dung a year, amounting to a total of 1 million tons a year which was good for roses, typhoid and dysentery, but little else. Horses were also involved in an average of 175 fatal accidents a year in addition to the deaths caused by transmitted diseases from the dung.

Horsepower lasted well into the last century: Old Kent Road’s horse-drawn tram was taken out of service in 1913; incredibly by 1935 five per cent of transport some 20,000 horse-drawn carts were still to be seen in the capital; as nowadays cabbies were reluctant to any change, the last horse-drawn cab, plied the Victoria Station rank and only retired on 3rd April 1947.

Camden Market, now a shopper’s paradise for the weird and wonderful was once a horse hospital for the 1,300 horses employed in the environs of King’s Cross, treating among other injuries those caused by animals slipping on wet cobblestones.

London’s equine past is commemorated in several street names. Horseferry Road led to one of the few crossings across the Thames, this one from the 16th century was used until 1750 and owned by the Bishops of Lambeth.

Jacob the Circle Dray Horse, Queen Elizabeth Street: The famous courage dray horses were stabled on this site from the early nineteenth century and delivered beer around London, from the brewery on Horselydown Lane near Tower Bridge. In the sixteenth century, this area was known as Horselydown which derives its name from Horse-Lie-Down, a thing that horses did here before crossing the river at London Bridge to enter the City of London.

Equine statutes litter London’s landscape, but one in St. James’s Square illustrates just how dangerous riding horses can be: this statute of King William III was erected in 1806 and there is something strange about it. A small molehill lies at the feet of Sorrel, the King’s horse. What is the molehill for? The answer is that William is said to have died of pneumonia, a complication from a broken collarbone, resulting from a fall off his horse. Because his horse had stumbled into a mole’s burrow. William was the Protestant King brought to England from Holland to replace the last Catholic: King James. James’s supporters and all Jacobites then and now still toast “the little gentleman in the black velvet waistcoat”. The mole that killed a king. The saying “Dutch Courage” also comes from William III’s reign.

For those new to CabbieBlog or readers who are slightly forgetful, on Saturdays I’m republishing posts, many going back over a decade. Some will still be very relevant while others have become dated over time. Just think of this post as your weekend paper supplement.

A dressing down (17.05.11)

The news recently of the untimely death at 56 of Edward Stobbart – who took his father’s small haulage business comprising eight lorries, and turned it into one of the most successful logistics companies in the country – should remind us all in the transport industry what is meant by customer service and brand awareness. Stobbart’s 2,250 trucks make a delivery every 5.5 minutes travelling a total distance every day the equivalent of 21 laps of Earth.

The success of Eddie Stobbart can be attributed to Edward’s ability to create an icon; the drivers are always smart and until recently would face disciplinary action if they did not wear a shirt and tie at the wheel. The truck, is always immaculately clean and each is painted in highly recognisable corporate colours. The trucks are driven competently with care and consideration to other road users – they say an Eddie Stobart truck is passed on England’s roads every 4.5 minutes – note it’s not the other way round, with the truck thundering past the motorist.

Compare and contrast that with London’s cabs. Once an internationally recognised icon; first, the colour was changed from Henry Ford’s “you can have any colour you like as long as it’s black” to a kaleidoscope of colours; next advertising was permitted, and now other manufacturers produce “black cabs”; now with the proliferation of private hire vehicles, it’s hardly is surprising that tourists find identifying a cab confusing. Many of London’s cabs are filthy both inside and out, gone are the days when the driver could be ordered to clean his cab before picking up another fare.

Now with summer approaching drivers will be seen with the most bizarre apparel, looking only fit to be seen on a Spanish beach than providing a professional service driving what was once one of the most iconic vehicles in the world.

Stobbarts even have their own fan club with 25,000 members, about that same number of London Black Cab Drivers ply for hire on London’s streets. If only black cabs could engender enough loyalty for themselves – many have lost the values that Edward Stobart understood so well.

For those new to CabbieBlog or readers who are slightly forgetful, on Saturdays I’m republishing posts, many going back over a decade. Some will still be very relevant while others have become dated over time. Just think of this post as your weekend paper supplement.

The Festival of Empire (12.05.11)

When I was young affixed to the classroom wall of my primary school was a giant map measuring 5 feet wide by 4 feet high. It depicted the world with each country picked out in a colour denoting its governance. Proud to be pink was the order of the day – stretching across the entire map – for pink-denoted countries belonging to the British Empire.

It was said by the English that the sun never set on its Empire, and Indians from the sub-continent were given to remark: That God didn’t trust the English in the dark. Little did we know it then but just after the Second World War it really was the remains of the day for Britain’s Empire and the sun was indeed setting – those little pink shapes would be changing colour one by one.

One hundred years ago on 12th May 1911 King George V opened The Festival of Empire at Crystal Palace, a rather self-congratulatory piece of theatre. “The Festival of Empire, Imperial Exhibition and Pageant of London: Crystal Palace” to give it its formal title was originally due to open in 1910, but his father King Edward VII after only nine years on the Throne managed to eat himself to death.

With a budget of £½ million, the Festival of Empire would stay open until 28th October 1911, giving visitors two main entertainments:

The Great Pageant of London and the Empire gave the Empire’s glorious development from the “Dawn of British History” to a Grand Imperial Finale, in which visitors from the Dominions joined with the English performers to provide a wonderful “living picture” illustrating the vastness of the British Empire. Upwards of 15,000 performers with music accompanying the scenes performed by a band of 50 and a chorus of 500. The Pageant gave visitors various scenes including The Dawn of British History; Roman London; King Alfred and London; the Danish Invasion; The Norman Conquest; Return of Richard I; Edward I; and The Days of Chivalry.

While the All-British Exhibition offered a cut-down version of The Great Exhibition devoted to British Arts and Industries. The following sections were among some of those that were represented: Applied Chemistry; Pianos; Mining; Engineering; Shipping; Transportation and Motive Power; Decoration and Furnishing; Arts and Crafts; Home Industries; Photography; British and Colonial Agriculture; Forestry; Fisheries; Sports; and Imperial Industries.

To reinforce the perception ion of Britain’s power and might the British Empire was constructed in miniature on the Palace grounds, complete with three-quarter-size replicas of the Parliament buildings of all the Commonwealth countries. These replicas, their exteriors architecturally complete to the smallest detail, were built of timber and plaster. They depicted the Parliament Building of the Union of South Africa, the Government Building of Newfoundland at St. Johns, the Parliament Building of New Zealand at Wellington, the Federal Government Building of Australia at Melbourne, and at a cost of over £70,000 the building of the Government of Canada. For tuppence ha’penny, a miniature railway could take the visitor to view a South African diamond mine, an Indian tea plantation, and a Canadian logging camp.

Unfortunately the British were celebrating the last gasps of the Empire, three years later the Great War would see a generation of young men die in the trenches, the Wall Street Crash would help destroy Britain’s wealthy families, and in 1936, the venue, Crystal Palace burnt to the ground.