3-077-981 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Sketches of London Cabs and Cabmen: one of the old school, 1890. 'The subjects of our Artist's Sketches are familiar types of common objects in the street-world of London...It must, indeed, be doubted whether "One of the Old School," the venerable Jarvey portrayed [here], remembers any of his comrades, at the beginning of the Queen's reign, spouting "Childe Harold" or "Marmion" from the elevated seat in front of the cab. To go further back, some of us can, perhaps, remember the heavy two-horsed hackney coaches of an earlier period, and the "flys" which lingered in provincial towns, differing materially from the modern Clarence model. "The Old School" of drivers is not yet extinct. There are in London, as we learn on official authority, a hundred septuagenarian cabmen, and three over eighty years of age. May their last days be in comfort and peace!' From "Illustrated London News", 1890.