"The Mystery of a Hansom Cab The Mystery of a Hansom Cab is a mystery fiction novel by Australian writer Fergus Hume. The book was first published in Australia, in 1886. Set in Melbourne, the story focuses on the investigation of a homicide involving a body discovered in a hansom cab, as well as an exploration into the social class divide in the city. The book was successful in Australia, selling 100,000 copies in the first two print runs. It was then published in Britain and the United States, and went on to sell over 500,000 copies worldwide, outselling the"
"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. There were up to 7500 hansom cabs in use at the height of their popularity and they quickly spread to other cities (such as Dublin) in the United Kingdom, as well as continental European cities, particularly Paris, Berlin, and St Petersburg."
"were widely used in the United Kingdom until 1908 when Taximeter Cars (petrol cabs) started to be introduced and were rapidly accepted; by the early 1920s horse-drawn cabs had largely been superseded by motor vehicles. The last licence for a horse-drawn cab in London was relinquished in 1947. A restored hansom cab once owned by Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt is on display at the Remington Carriage Museum in Cardston, Alberta, Canada. There is another surviving example, owned and operated by the Sherlock Holmes Museum in London; in common with other horse-drawn vehicles it is not permitted to enter any of the"
"two-wheel vehicles were fast, light enough to be pulled by a single horse (making the journey cheaper than travelling in a larger four-wheel coach) were agile enough to steer around horse-drawn vehicles in the notorious traffic jams of nineteenth-century London and had a low centre of gravity for safe cornering. Hansom's original design was modified by John Chapman and several others to improve its practicability, but retained Hansom's name. These soon replaced the hackney carriage as a vehicle for hire. They quickly spread to other cities in the United Kingdom, as well as continental European cities, particularly Paris, Berlin, and"
"Royal Parks. Hansom cab The 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 called the Hansom safety cab, it was designed to combine speed with safety, with a low centre of gravity for safe cornering. Hansom's original design was modified by John Chapman and several others 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"
"Hansom cab The 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 called the Hansom safety cab, it was designed to combine speed with safety, with a low centre of gravity for safe cornering. Hansom's original design was modified by John Chapman and several others 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"
"a 1662 Act of Parliament establishing the Commissioners of Scotland Yard to regulate them. Licences applied literally to horse-drawn carriages, later modernised as hansom cabs (1834), that operated as vehicles for hire. The 1662 act limited the licences to 400; when it expired in 1679, extra licences were created until a 1694 act imposed a limit of 700, which was increased by later acts and abolished in 1832. There was a distinction between a general hackney carriage and a hackney coach, a hireable vehicle with specifically four wheels, two horses and six seats, and driven by a ""Jarvey"" (also spelled"
"on 4 July 1829 and soon became a popular form of transport for the middle classes - the working class would not be able to afford the fare, and upper classes could afford their own vehicle or to hire a hackney carriage. The typical London omnibus was an enclosed and glazed carriage with four wheels, drawn by one or two horses. Passengers could sit on benches to either side inside, entering via a door at the rear, or climb up to exposed seats on the roof. A driver would ride at the front of the carriage, with a conductor assisting"
"operate a device that balanced the cab and reduced strain on the horse. The passengers were protected from the elements by the cab, and by folding wooden doors that 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. The Hansom Cab Company was set up to provide transportation in New York City and Brooklyn, New York, in"
"- the working classes would rarely be able to afford the fare, and upper classes could afford their own vehicle or to hire a hackney carriage. The typical London omnibus was an enclosed and glazed carriage with four wheels, drawn by one or two horses. Passengers could sit on benches to either side inside, entering via a door at the rear, or climb up to exposed seats on the roof. A driver would ride at the front of the carriage, with a conductor taking fares and assisting passengers to climb aboard and depart. The scene is painted as if viewed"
"cab drivers. In 2016 Uber had about 25,000 drivers in London. Greater London, a metropolitan area with a population of about 8 million, has no grid plan laying out streets in vertical and horizontal patterns; thus the streets of London follow complex patterns. Horse-drawn hackney carriages began providing taxicab service in the early 17th century. In 1636 the number of carriages was set at 50, an early example of taxicab regulation. In the same year, the owner of four hackney carriages established the first taxicab stand in The Strand. After 1662 hackneys were regulated by the Commissioners of Scotland Yard."
"and archaeological evidence suggests that they were stout but short, approximately , and capable of drawing a load of per horse. Four-wheeled wagons and two-wheeled carts were more common in towns, such as London and, depending on type of vehicle and weight of the load, were usually pulled by teams of two, three, or four horses harnessed in tandem. Starting in the 12th century, in England the use of oxen to pull carts was gradually superseded by the use of horses, a process that extended through the 13th century. This change came because horse-drawn transport moved goods quicker and over"
"Parliament in 1654 and the first hackney-carriage licences were issued in 1662. A similar service was started by Nicolas Sauvage in Paris in 1637. His vehicles were known as fiacres, as the main vehicle depot apparently was opposite a shrine to Saint Fiacre. (The term ""fiacre"" is still used in French to describe a horse-drawn vehicle for hire, while the German term ""Fiaker"" is used, especially in Austria, to refer to the same thing). The hansom cab was designed and patented in 1834 by Joseph Hansom, an architect from York as a substantial improvement on the old hackney carriages. These"
"available at the end of the 19th century. In London, Walter C. Bersey designed a fleet of such cabs and introduced them to the streets of London in 1897. They were soon nicknamed ""Hummingbirds"" due to the idiosyncratic humming noise they made. In the same year in New York City, the Samuel's Electric Carriage and Wagon Company began running 12 electric hansom cabs. The company ran until 1898 with up to 62 cabs operating until it was reformed by its financiers to form the Electric Vehicle Company. Electric vehicles had a number of advantages over their early-1900s competitors. They did"
"services with unprecedented peace time demands. According to eye witness accounts, the fire officer in charge, knowing the 40 ambulances he requested were unlikely to be available, requested the Taxi Owners Association to transport the injured to the nearby Birmingham Accident Hospital and Birmingham General Hospital. Taxi services are typically provided by automobiles, but in some countries various human-powered vehicles, (such as the rickshaw or pedicab) and animal-powered vehicles (such as the Hansom cab) or even boats (such as water taxies or gondolas) are also used or have been used historically. In Western Europe, Bissau, and to an extent, Australia,"
"at the back. This type of vehicle was a standard type used in England. Hansom cabs were used in Brisbane until 1935, operating from a rank outside the Supreme Court in George Street. Motor taxis were introduced into Australia not long after they were put into service in the United Kingdom and Europe. In 1906 Sydney inaugurated motorised taxis, followed soon after by the other states. The taxis of the period including a variety of types, with tourers and sedans. The latter were mainly French built Renaults, which were designed as taxis, not unlike the hansom cabs. Brisbane had a"
"number of them that plied from the ranks outside Parliament House, Brisbane in Alice Street, and the Supreme Court of Queensland building in George Street. As applied to the hansom cabs, the Renaults catered mainly for gentlemen of standing, including judges, barristers and other notables. The drivers wore uniforms with leggings, the same as those worn by chauffeurs of horse-drawn carriages. Each large taxi company had telephones installed in a steel box type cover at city and suburban ranks, direct to the switch control rooms in the city. Although motor vehicle taxis were being used at the time, a few"
"and the last horse-drawn hackney carriage ceased service in London in 1947. UK regulations define a hackney carriage as a taxicab allowed to ply the streets looking for passengers to pick up, as opposed to private hire vehicles (sometimes called ""minicabs""), which may pick up only passengers who have previously booked or who visit the taxi operator's office. In 1999, the first of a series of fuel cell powered taxis were tried out in London. The ""Millennium Cab"" built by ZeTek gained television coverage and great interest when driven in the Sheraton Hotel ballroom in New York by Judd Hirsch,"
"Charles Francis Hansom Charles Francis Hansom (27 July 1817 – 30 November 1888) was a prominent Roman Catholic Victorian architect who primarily designed in the Gothic Revival style. He was born of a Roman Catholic family in York. He was the brother of Joseph Aloysius Hansom, architect and creator of the Hansom cab, and father of the architect Edward Joseph Hansom. He practised in partnership with his brother, Joseph, in London from 1854. This partnership was dissolved in 1859 when Charles established an independent practice in Bath with his son Edward (born 22 October 1842) as an articled clerk. He"
"In the Spring of 1891 following almost annual strikes by his cab drivers Talbot put his company's 300 horses up for sale, under police protection, in the company's Battersea premises. At that time they operated from a number of yards in different parts of London. The press reported the terms offered to drivers in detail then the prices of the horses and advised that every animal put up for sale had been sold. Strong competition from other rubber tyred cabs seems to have become a serious problem. The business was restarted in October 1891 with cabmen friendly to the company."
"lucky escape. A recurring problem was the inability of the tramcars to avoid obstructions. On 28 July 1883 a hansom cab driver, Mark Thompson, was summoned to court for obstructing the progress of a tramcar. He was sitting in his hansom on Albert Street waiting for a fare when the tramcar approached. He refused to move over to allow the tramcar to pass and a large crowd gathered which completely blocked the street. He was fined 10s. Josiah Dann, a tramcar conductor, was summoned on 2 August 1883 for having carried 28 passengers when the car was only licensed for"
"work. Commuter services into London Waterloo, Victoria and London Bridge found them typically marshalled up to 8-car units. An unusual feature of their operation in the 1950s and 1960s was that there were about 30 more diagrams for these units than sets actually existed, while for the subsequent 2-HAL units (class 402) there were more than 30 spare units, so a significant number of the daily 2-BIL diagrams were operated by the latter units, typically marshalled together as one of the sets in a full 8-car formation. In 1963, a 7-coach trailer set was formed by placing five former 4-SUB"
"horse and the cable and the number of traction lines on rails expanded exponentially. (This was seen as a huge advance in urban transport and considered a wise investment at that time). These became known as Streetcars, Trams, Trolleys and still exist in many cities today, though often having been replaced by the less infrastructure intensive motorbus as driven by an internal combustion engine. From the beginning of the twentieth century the remaining horse buses which had not been converted to rail began to be replaced by petrol-driven motor buses, or autobuses. The last recorded horse omnibus in London was"
"Brougham (carriage) A brougham (pronounced ""broom"" or ""brohm"") was a light, four-wheeled horse-drawn carriage built in the 19th century. It was named after Scottish jurist Lord Brougham, who had this type of carriage built to his specification by London coachbuilder Robinson & Cook in 1838 or 1839. It had an enclosed body with two doors, like the rear section of a coach; it sat two, sometimes with an extra pair of fold-away seats in the front corners, and with a box seat in front for the driver and a footman or passenger. Unlike a coach, the carriage had a glazed"
"on forever in the dictionary. His invention the herdic was a small two wheeled carriage that was towed by a horse. The cab had side seats and rear entrance. Many transportation historians regard the herdic as a predecessor of the taxicab. The first herdic cabs carried up to eight passengers. The earliest herdics were painted bright yellow and quickly acquired the canary nickname. Each cab was small enough to move freely through the city streets of Williamsport and leave its passengers at the curb instead of the middle of the street as other modes of public transportation were forced to"
"In the early 19th century ""cabriolets"" (""cabs"" for short) replaced the heavier and more cumbersome hackney carriages. Battery-operated taxis appeared briefly at the end of the 19th century, but the modern taxicab service took off with the appearance of petrol-powered taxis in 1903. In 1907 meters were first introduced to calculate the fare and were set at 8d (8 pence) for the first mile. Today, taxicab service in London is provided by the famous black cabs (typically the distinctive TX4 depicted in the photo to the right, The Metrocab and the Mercedes Vito). The London taxicab driver is required to"
"164,000 were private hire licenses, 62,000 were taxi licenses and 72,000 were dual licenses. All taxicabs are regulated with various degrees of sophistication. However, London's black cabs, known historically and legally as hackney carriages, are particularly notable for their iconic vehicles and the extensive training course (""The Knowledge"") required for fully licensed drivers. ""Hackney carriages"" ('Black cabs'; but they may be any colour) can be hailed in the street or hired from a taxicab rank. The term ""Hackney carriage"" can also be applied to standard passenger vehicles authorised by other Local Authorities to stop for passengers on a hail in"
"access ramp. There were six windows: four in the grooms' compartment (two of these being droplights in the doors), one in the passageway and a frosted glass window in the toilet. Horse trailer A horse trailer or horse van (also called a horse float in Australia and New Zealand or horsebox in the British Isles) is used to transport horses. There are many different designs, ranging in size from small units capable of holding two or three horses, able to be pulled by a pickup truck or even a SUV; to gooseneck designs that carry six to eight horses, usually"
"the box, of any coach or carriage of three or more horses travelling for hire. Any coach or carriage of less than three horses travelling for hire had the limit set at one on the box and three on the roof, although four on the roof were permitted if the coach did not go more than 25 miles from the Post Office in London. If a coach exceeded these limits, the driver was to pay five shillings per each excess person to the collector of the tolls at each turnpike-gate through which they passed. Letting down or picking up people"
"own horses was cheaper and more efficient than relying on private contractors. The Central Stables at one time accommodated upwards of 50 horses, ranging from ponies to the shires for which the City of Liverpool was famous in the early years of the 20th century. The duties of these horses covered everything from transporting mail and Corporation personnel around the city to moving the heaviest of loads. In 1924 two horses belonging to Liverpool Corporation, 'Vesuvius' and 'Umber', appeared at the British Empire exhibition at Wembley and from a standing start pulled a load estimated at 50 tons. This record"
"Dr. William Seward Webb and his wife Lila Vanderbilt Webb. Today it has come to include 225 horse-drawn vehicles. Since many of these vehicles came straight from their respective owners, many still retain their original upholstery and decoration. Carriages and coaches began to be widely used in Britain during the 17th century. However, real progress in carriage building was not made until the late 18th century, when Royal Mail coach service began. For the first time many carriages were designed for comfort and speed and were made alike, using interchangeable parts. Soon carriage driving became the fashionable way to travel,"
"usually two-wheeled, one-horse hackney vehicle called a ""noddy"" once plied the roads in Ireland and Scotland. The French had a small hackney coach called a ""fiacre"". Electric hackney carriages appeared before the introduction of the internal combustion engine to vehicles for hire in 1901. In fact there was even London Electrical Cab Company: the cabs were informally called Berseys after the manager who designed them, Walter C. Bersey. Another nickname was Hummingbirds from the sound that they made. In August 1897 25 were introduced, and by 1898 there were 50 more. During the 20th century, cars generally replaced horse-drawn models,"
"half-price early and late workmen's services. After a demonstration line was built at the Crystal Palace, the first lines authorised by the Act of Parliament in 1870 ran from: The new tram companies all adopted the same standard gauge, with the intention of being able to link up services at later dates. Horse tram lines soon opened all over London, typically using two horses to pull a 60-person car. They proved popular as they were cheaper, smoother, roomier and safer than the competing Omnibus or Hackney carriages. Replacement by electric vehicles commenced in 1901; the last horse-drawn trams were withdrawn"