LONDON CAB OF 1823, WITH CURTAIN DRAWN.
In a short time cabriolets became very popular, and a topical song of the period contains the following verse:—
“In days of old when folks got tired,
A hackney coach or a chariot was hired;
But now along the streets they roll ye
In a shay with a cover called a cabrioly.”
The French name of the vehicle was soon abbreviated to “cab,” and, although the word was at first considered deplorably vulgar, convenience triumphed quickly over the objections of purists.
To be able to travel cheaply and quickly was a pleasing novelty to Londoners, but many of them lived to regret having trusted themselves in a cab, for the drivers, proud of being able to pass hackney and private coaches, were fond of showing their superior speed, and while doing so frequently ran against street posts or collided with other vehicles; and when either of these things happened, or the horse fell, the “fare” was usually pitched forward into the road. This danger, coupled with the difficulty of climbing into a cab, prevented old men and women from patronising the new vehicle. They remained satisfied with hackney-coaches, but young and middle-aged men—“dandies” and shopmen striving to imitate them—gloried in cabs, and many of them boasted of the number of times they had been thrown out of them.
Dickens on several occasions mentioned the cabs of this period. Describing, in “Sketches by Boz,” morning in the streets of London, he wrote—
“Cabs, with trunks and band-boxes between the drivers’ legs and outside the apron, rattle briskly up and down the streets on their way to the coach-offices or steam-packet wharfs; and the cab-drivers and hackney coachmen who are on the stand polish up the ornamental part of their dingy vehicles—the former wondering how people can prefer ‘them wild beast cariwans of homnibuses to a riglar cab with a fast trotter,’ and the latter admiring how people can trust their necks into one of ‘them crazy cabs, when they can have a ’spectable ’ackney cotche with a pair of ’orses as von’t run away with no vun;’ a consolation unquestionably founded on fact, seeing that a hackney-coach horse never was known to run at all, ‘except,’ as the smart cabman in front of the rank observes, ‘except one, and he run back’ards.”