London Labour and the London Poor, Vol. 3

by Henry Mayhew

Among the matters I heard complained of, that of privileged cabs was much dwelt upon. These are the cabs which are privileged to stand within a railway terminus, waiting to be hired on the arrival of the trains. For this privilege 2s. a-week is paid by the cabmen to some of the railway companies, and as much as 5s. a-week to others. The cabmen complain of this as a monopoly established to their disadvantage, and with no benefit to the public, but merely to the railway companies; for there are cab-stands adjacent to all the railway stations, at which the public would be supplied with conveyances in the ordinary way. The horses in the cabs at the railway stations are, I am informed, amongst the hardest-worked of any in London; the following case being put to me:—“Suppose a man takes a fare of four persons and heavy luggage from the Great Western Terminus to Mile End, which is near upon seven miles, he must then hurry back again all the way, because he plies only at the railway. Now, if he didn’t, he would go to the nighest cab-stand, and his horse would be far sooner relieved. Then, perhaps, he gets another fare to Finsbury, and must hurry back again; and then another below Brompton; and he may live at Whitechapel, and have to go home after all; so that his poor horse gets ‘bashed’ to bits.”

Another cab proprietor furnished me with the following statement in writing of his personal experience and observation concerning the working of the 23d clause in the Hackney Carriage Act, or that concerning the signing before alluded to. “A master is in want of drivers. A, B, and C apply. The only questions asked are, ‘Are you a driver? Where is your license? Well! here, sign this paper; my money is so much.’ In very few large establishments is more caution used as to real character of the driver than this; the effect of which is, that a man with a really good character has no better claim to employment than one of the worst. Then, as to the feeling of a man who has placed himself under such a contract. ‘I must get my money,’ he says, ‘I will do anything to obtain it; and as a gaol hangs over my head, what matters about my breaking the law?’ and so every unfair trick is resorted to: and the means used are ‘gagging,’ that is to say, driving about and loitering in the thoroughfares for jobs. It is known that some men very seldom put on the ranks at all. Some masters have told their drivers not to go on the stand, as they well know that the money is not to be obtained by what is termed ‘ranking it.’ Now, the effect of this is, that the thoroughfares are troubled with empty cabs. It has also this effect: it causes great cruelty and overdriving to the horses; and drivers under such circumstances frequently agree to go for very much less than the fare, and then, as they term it, take it out by insulting and bullying their customers. It may be said that the law in force is sufficient to counteract this; but it may not be known that a great many protection-clubs exist, by contributions from cabmen, and which clubs are, in fact, premiums for breaking the law; for by them a man is borne harmless of the consequences of being fined. Now, these clubs exist sometimes at public-houses, but in many cases in the proprietors’ yards, the proprietors themselves being treasurers, and so becoming agents to induce their servants to infringe the law, for the purpose of obtaining for themselves a large return. The moral consequence of all this is, that men being dealt with and made to suffer as criminals, that is to say, being sent to gaol to experience the same treatment, save indignity, as convicted felons, and all this for what they after all believe to be a debt, a simple contract between man and man; the consequence, I repeat, is, that the driver having served his time, as it is called, in prison, returns to the trade a degraded character and a far worse man. Be it observed, also, that the fact of a driver having been imprisoned is no barrier to his being employed again if he will but sign—that’s the test.”

Account of Crime amongst Cabmen.

I have now but to add a comparative statement of the criminality of the London coach and cabmen in relation to that of other callings.

The metropolitan criminal returns show us that crime among this class has been on the decline since 1840. In that year the number taken into custody by the London police was 1319; from which time until 1843 there was a gradual decrease, when the number of coach and cabmen taken into custody was 820. After this the numbers fluctuated slightly; till, in 1848, there were 972 individuals arrested for various infractions of the law.

For the chief offences given in the police returns, I find, upon taking the average for the last ten years, that the criminality of the London coach and cabmen stands as follows: For murder there has been annually 1 individual in every 29,710 of this body taken into custody; for manslaughter, 1 in every 2829; for rape, 1 in 8488; for common assaults, 1 in 40; for simple larceny, 1 in 92; for wilful damage, 1 in 285; for uttering counterfeit coin, 1 in 612; for drunkenness, 1 in 46; for vagrancy, 1 in 278; for the whole of the offences mentioned in the returns, 1 in every 5 of their number. On comparing these results with the criminality of other classes, we arrive at the following conclusions:—The tendency of the metropolitan coach and cabmen for murder is less than that of the weavers (who appear to have the greatest propensity of all classes to commit this crime), as well as sailors (who are the next criminal in this respect), and labourers, sawyers, and carpenters. On the other hand, however, the coach and cabmen would seem to be more inclined to this species of atrocity than the turners, coachmakers, shoemakers, and tailors; the latter, according to the metropolitan police returns for the last ten years, being the least murderous of all classes. For manslaughter, the coach and cabmen have a stronger predisposition than any other class that I have yet estimated. The average crime in this respect for ten years is 1 in 20,000 individuals of the entire population of London; whereas the average for the same period among the London coach and cabmen has been as high as 1 in every 2800 of their trade. In rape they rank less criminal than the labourers, carpenters, and weavers, but still much higher than the general average, and considerably above the tailors, sawyers, turners, shoemakers, or coachmakers. In the matter of common assaults they stand the highest of all; even the labourers being less pugnacious than they. Their honesty seems, nevertheless, to be greater than common report gives them credit for; they being, according to the same returns, less disposed to commit simple larceny than either labourers, sailors, or weavers, though far more dishonest than the generality of the London population. Nor are they so intemperate as, from the nature of their calling, we should be led to imagine. The sailors (who seem to form the most drunken of all trades, there being 1 in every 13 of that body arrested for this offence), and the labourers (who come next), are both much more addicted to intoxication than the coach and cabmen; although the latter class appear to be nearly twice as intemperate as the rest of the people, the general average being 1 drunkard in every 81 of the entire residents of the metropolis, and 1 in every 46 of the London coach and cabmen. Hence it may be said, that the great vices of the class at present under consideration are a tendency to manslaughter and assault.

The cause of this predisposition to violence against the person on the part of the London coach and cabmen I leave others to explain.

CARMEN AND PORTERS.

Having dealt with the social condition of the conductors and drivers of the London omnibuses and cabs, I now, in due order, proceed to treat of the number, state, and income of the men connected with the job and glass-coaches, as well as the flies for the conveyance of persons, and the waggons, carts, vans, drays, &c., for the conveyance of goods from one part of the metropolis to another; also of the porters engaged in conveyance by hand.

The metropolitan carriages engaged in the conveyance of passengers are of two classes,—ticketed and unticketed; that is to say, those who ply for passengers in the public streets, carry a plate inscribed with a certain number, by which the drivers and owners of them may be readily known. Whereas those who do not ply in public, but are let out at certain yards or stables, have no badge affixed to them, and are, in many cases, scarcely distinguishable from private vehicles. The ticketed carriages include the stage and hackney-coaches, or, in modern parlance, the ’busses and cabs of London. The unticketed carriages, on the other hand, comprise the glass-coaches and flies that, for a small premium, may be converted into one’s own carriage for the time being. But besides these there is another large class of hired conveyances, such as the job-carriages, which differ from the glass-coaches principally in the length of time for which they are engaged. The term of lease for the glass-coach rarely exceeds a day; while the fly is often taken by the hour; the job-carriage, however, is more commonly engaged by the month, and not unfrequently by the year. Hence the latter class of conveyances may be said to partake of the attributes of both public and private carriages. They are public, in so far as they are let to hire for a certain term; and private, inasmuch as they are often used by the same party, and by them only, for several years.