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Compliments of Butterworths please do not reproduce.

NEW LAW JOURNAL

4 September 1987

COPYRIGHT © 1987 Butterworth & Co. (Publishers) Ltd.

Vol 137 No. 6321 p. 822

TITLE: 100 Years Ago

The swift, elegant two-wheeler hansom cab shaped rather like an elongated seashell, in which two passengers only sat facing forwards, looking out over double half-doors with a narrow platform beyond, and communicating through a tiny trap door with the driver perched on a small seat behind the exiguous roof, was as characteristic of London 100 years ago as the gondola is of Venice. It was never designed to carry luggage and this created a problem discussed in the Law Journal on September 17, 1887: "Someone wrote to inquire whether he is bound to pay for a Gladstone bag, carried partly inside and partly outside the door of a hansom cab as luggage 'carried outside' and the Commissioner of Police is of opinion that he is if the doors cannot be closed over the bag. According to this, if a lady's dress spreads onto the splashboard of the new Victorian cabs it is luggage carried outside.

The truth is that the question is one of fact according to the circumstances of each case. If the luggage is wholly on the footboard it is carried outside. If it is partly on the footboard and partly within the doors the question is whether it is substantially being carried inside or outside the doors. The phrase 'carried outside' was used originally in the Table of Fares of the Hackney Carriages Act of four-wheeled cabs only in the days when there was no charge for luggage unless there were more than two passengers and no one thought of the footboard of hansoms when it was applied generally. It is arguable that the outside of a hansom is the roof only. No encouragement ought to be given to an extra charge for luggage on the footboard, which is not meant for luggage".

One of them was GBC's first cab

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stressed controller!!!

Probably still using it

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"Where to, Guv'?. Na sorry not going my way"