Of the personal expenditure of hackney-coachmen when “out for the day” I had the following statement from one of them:—“We spent regular 7s. a-day when we was out. It was before coffee-shops and new-fangled ways came in as the regular thing that I’m speaking of; breakfast 1s., good tea and good bread-and-butter, as much as you liked always, with a glass of rum in the last cup for the ‘lacing’ of it—always rum, gin weren’t so much run after then. Dinner was 1s. 6d., a cut off some good joint; beer was included at some places and not at others. Any extras to follow was extras to pay. Two glasses of rum-and-water after dinner 1s., pipes found, and most of us carried our own ’baccy-boxes. Tea the same as breakfast, and ‘laced’ ditto. Supper the same as dinner, or 6d. less; and the rest to make up the 7s. went for odd glasses of ale, or stout, or ‘short’—but ‘short’ (neat spirits) was far less drunk then than now—when we was waiting, or to treat a friend, or such-like. We did some good in those days, sir. Take day and night, and 1200 of us was out, and perhaps every man spent his 7s., and that’s 1200 times 7s.” Following out this calculation we have 420l. per day (and night), 2940l. a-week, and 152,880l. a-year for hackney-coachmen’s personal expenses, merely as regards their board.
The old hackney-coachmen seem to have been a self-indulgent, improvident, rather than a vicious class; neither do they seem to have been a drunken class. They acted as ignorant men would naturally act who found themselves in the enjoyment of a good income, with the protection of a legal monopoly. They had the sole right of conveyance within the bills of mortality, and as that important district comprised all the places of public resort, and contained the great mass of the population, they may be said to have had a monopoly of the metropolis. Even when the cabs were first established these men exhibited no fear of their earnings being affected. “But,” said an intelligent man, who had been a hackney-coachman in his younger days, and who managed to avoid the general ruin of his brethren, “but when the cabs got to the 100 then they found it out. The cabs was all in gentlemen’s hands at first. I know that. Some of them was government-clerks too: they had their foremen, to be sure, but they was the real proprietors, the gentlemen was; they got the licenses. Well, it’s easy to understand how 100 cabs was earning money fast, and people couldn’t get them fast enough, and how some hundreds of hackney-coachmen was waiting and starving till the trade was thrown open, and then the hackney-coachmen was clean beat down. They fell off by degrees. I’m sure I hardly know what became of most of them, but I do know that a many of them died in the workhouses. They hadn’t nothing aforehand. They dropped away gradual. You see they weren’t allowed to transfer their plates and licenses to a cab, or they’d have done it—plenty would. They were a far better set of men than there’s on the cabs now. There was none of your fancy-men, that’s in with women of the town, among the old hackney-coachmen. If you remember what they was, sir, you’ll say they hadn’t the cut of it.”
The hackney-coachmen drove very deliberately, rarely exceeding five, and still more rarely achieving six miles an hour, unless incited by the hope or the promise of an extra fare. These men resided very commonly in mews, and many of them I am assured had comfortable homes, and were hospitable fellows in their way, smoking their pipes with one another when “off the stones,” treating their poorer neighbours to a glass, and talking over the price of oats, hay, and horses, as well as the product of the past season, or the promise of the next. The majority of them could neither read nor write, or very imperfectly, and, as is not uncommon with uninformed men who had thriven tolerably well without education, they cared little about providing education for their children. Politics they cared nothing about, but they prided themselves on being “John-Bull Englishmen.” For public amusements they seem to have cared nothing. “Our business,” said one of them, “was with the outside of play-houses. I never saw a play in my life.”
As my informant said, “they dropped away gradual.” Eight or ten years ago a few old men, with old horses and old coaches, might be seen at street stands, but each year saw their numbers reduced, and now there is not one; that is to say, not one in the streets, though there are four hackney-coaches at the railway-stations.
One of the old fraternity of hackney-coachmen, who had, since the decline of his class, prospered by devoting his exertions to another department of business, gave me the following account:—
“My father,” said he, “was an hackney-coachman before me, and gave me what was then reckoned a good education. I could write middling and could read the newspaper. I’ve driven my father’s coach for him when I was fourteen. When I was old enough, seventeen I think I was, I had a hackney-coach and horses of my own, provided for me by my father, and so was started in the world. The first time I plied with my own coach was when Sir Francis Burdett was sent to the Tower from his house in Piccadilly. Sir Francis was all the go then. I heard a hackney-coachman say he would be glad to drive him for nothing. The hackney-coachmen didn’t like Pitt. I’ve heard my father and his mates say many a time ‘D——n Pitt!’ that was for doubling of the duty on hackney-carriages. Ah, the old times was the rackety times! I’ve often laughed and said that I could say what perhaps nobody, or almost nobody in England can say now, that I’d been driven by a king. He grew to be a king afterwards, George IV. One night you see, sir, I was called off the stand, and told to take up at the British Coffee-house in Cockspur Street. I was a lad then, and when I pulled up at the door, the waiter ran out and said, ‘You jump down and get inside, the Prince is a-going to drive hisself.’ I didn’t much like the notion on it, but I didn’t exactly know what to do, and was getting off my seat to see if the waiter had put anything inside, for he let down the glass, and just as I was getting down, and had my foot on the wheel, out came the Prince of Wales, and four or five rattlebrained fellows like himself. I think Major Hanger was one, but I had hardly time to see them, for the Prince gripped me by the ankle and the waistband of my breeches, and lifted me off the wheel and flung me right into the coach, through the window, and it was opened, as it happened luckily. I was little then, but he must have been a strong man. He didn’t seem so very drunk either. The Prince wasn’t such a bad driver. Indeed, he drove very well for a prince, but he didn’t take the corners or the crossings careful enough for a regular jarvey. Well, sir, the Prince drove that night to a house in King Street, Saint James’s. There was another gentleman on the box with him. It was a gaming-house he went to that night, but I have driven him to other sorts of houses in that there neighbourhood. He hadn’t no pride to such as me, hadn’t the Prince of Wales. Then one season I used to drive Lord Barrymore in his rounds to the brothels—twice or thrice a-week sometimes. He used always to take his own wine with him. After waiting till near daylight, or till daylight, I’ve carried my lord, girls and all—fine dressed-up madams—to Billingsgate, and there I’ve left them to breakfast at some queer place, or to slang with the fishwives. What times them was, to be sure! One night I drove Lord Barrymore to Mother Cummins’s in Lisle Street, and when she saw who it was she swore out of the window that she wouldn’t let him in—he and some such rackety fellows had broken so many things the last time they were there, and had disgraced her, as she called it, to the neighbourhood. So my lord said, ‘Knock at the door, tiger; and knock till they open it.’ He knocked and knocked till every drop of water in the house was emptied over us, out of the windows, but my lord didn’t like to be beaten, so he stayed and stayed, but Mother Cummins wouldn’t give way, and at last he went home. A wet opera-night was the chance for us when Madame—I forget her name—Catalini?—yes, I think that was it, was performing. Many a time I’ve heard it sung out—‘A guinea to Portman Square’—and I’ve had it myself. At the time I’m speaking of hackney-coachmen took 30s. a-day, all the year round. Why, I myself have taken 16l. and 18l. a-week through May, June, and July. But then you see, sir, we had a monopoly. It was in the old Tory times. Our number was limited to 1200. And no stage-carriage could then take up or set down on the stones, not within the bills as it was called—that’s the bills of mortality, three miles round the Royal Exchange, if I remember right. It’s a monopoly that shouldn’t have been allowed, I know that, but there was grand earnings under it; no glass-coaches could take people to the play then. Glass coaches is what’s now called flies. They couldn’t set down in the mortality, it was fine and imprisonment to do it. We hadn’t such good horses in our coaches then, as is now in the streets, certainly not. It was war-time, and horses was bought up for the cavalry, and it’s the want of horses for the army, and for the mails and stages arter’ards, that’s the reason of such good horses being in the ’busses and cabs. We drove always noblemen or gentlemen’s old carriages, family coaches they was sometimes called. There was mostly arms and coronets on them. We got them of the coachmakers in Long Acre, who took the noblemen’s old carriages, when they made new. The Duke of —— complained once that his old carriage, with his arms painted beautiful on the panels, was plying in the streets at 1s. a mile; his arms ought not to be degraded that way, he said, so the coachmaker had the coach new painted. When the cabs first came in we didn’t think much about it; we thought, that is, most of us did, that things was to go on in the old way for ever; but it was found out in time that it was not. When the clarences, the cabs that carry four, come in, they cooked the hackney-coachmen in no time.”
Introduction of Cabs.
For the introduction of hackney-cabriolets (a word which it now seems almost pedantic to use) we are indebted—as for the introduction of the omnibuses—to the example of the Parisians. In 1813 there were 1150 cabriolets de place upon the hackney-stands of Paris: in 1823, ten years later, there were twelve upon the hackney-stands of London, but the vested right of the hackney-coachmen was an obstacle. Messrs. Bradshaw and Rotch, however, did manage in 1823 to obtain licenses for twelve cabriolets, starting them at 8d. a mile. The number was subsequently increased to 50, and then to 100, and in less than nine years after the first cab plied in the streets of London all restriction as to their number was abolished.
