3-077-984 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Sketches of London Cabs and Cabmen: a Growler, 1890. 'The subjects of our Artist's Sketches are familiar types...in the street-world of London...Cabs are not only indispensable accessories to a railway journey of such length as to demand luggage, but are continually in requisition, for business errands in the morning, to save time, and, in the evening, to reach opportunities of social intercourse, or places of entertainment, and to get home at night. One must be conveyed to the door in a special hackney carriage, unless one has a private carriage, or if one does not care to use it on every trivial occasion, or when one happens, as every active man often does happen, to be where his private equipage is not within reach. The great majority of respectable middle-class families are entirely dependent on cabs for this kind of accommodation. A hundred thousand "fares," by a moderate computation, are daily taken wherever they please in London: indeed, we should not be surprised by the calculation that £10,000 a day is spent for this convenience...The number of cab-drivers [is] 15,514, some of them probably doing night duty with cabs driven by other men in the daytime. It is usual, in such cases, to put in fresh horses in the afternoon'. From "Illustrated London News", 1890.