A pleasant way of getting along is that of getting in a Hansom, and bidding the driver drive on. A great improvement, undoubtedly, on the old Hackney coach, or on that first species of cab—consisting of a gig with a very dangerous hood—on one side of which sat the driver, while on the other was suspended yourself. Now as you dash merrily along, with a civil driver, a luxurious equipage, and not a bad sort of horse, little do you think that you may be driving far further than you intended, to a dangerous illness and an early grave.
A terrible danger threatens all who live in London, or who visit it, by means of a custom—which ought not to be tolerated for an instant—of carrying sick persons in cabs to hospitals. No doubt the increase of smallpox in the metropolis may be referred to this source. Put a case of smallpox into a comfortable cab for an hour, then send the vehicle into the streets; first a merchant sits in it for a quarter of an hour, then a traveller from the railway gets his chance of catching the disease, and so on for the next week or two. When it takes, the victims have had no warning of their impending danger, and wonder where they got it. They in their turn become new centres of disease, and for the next few weeks they infect the air they breathe, the houses they inhabit, the clothing sent to the laundress, and everybody and everything which comes within their influence, and it is impossible to say where the infection ceases. The following arrangements would easily, cheaply, and effectually do away with the evil:—1. Make it penal to let or to
hire a public vehicle for the conveyance of any person affected with contagious disease. 2. Every institution for the reception of contagious disease should undertake to fetch the patient on receipt of a medical certificate as to the nature of the case.
Do not be too confidential with cabby, nor ask him what he charges, nor hold out a handful of silver to him and ask him to pay himself, nor give him a sovereign in mistake for a shilling, and delude yourself with the idea that he will return it. Don’t tell him you are in a hurry to catch the train. I once offered the driver of a Hansom a shilling for a ride from the Post Office to the Angel, Islington; he was so disgusted that he plainly informed me that if he’d a known I was only going to give him a shilling, he’d be blessed if he would not have lost the mail for me. The repeal of the newspaper stamp has done wonders for cabby. He now takes in his morning paper the same as any other gentleman. To ride in a cab is the extent of some people’s idea of happiness. I heard of a clerk who had absconded with some money belonging to an employer, he had spent it all in chartering a cab, and in riding about in it all day. M.P.’s are much in the habit of using cabs. On one occasion an M.P. who had been at a party, hurrying down to a division, was changing his evening costume for one more appropriate to business. Unfortunately, in the most interesting part of the transaction, the cab was upset and the M.P. was exhibited in a state which would have made Lord Elcho very angry.
Cab drivers I look upon as misanthropic individuals. I fancy many of them were railway directors in the memorable year of speculation, and have known better days. The driver of a buss is a prince of good fellows compared with a cabman. The former has no pecuniary anxieties to weigh him down, he is full of fun in a quiet way, and in case of a quarrel he has his conductor to take his side—he has his regular employment and his regular pay; the cabby is alone, and has to do battle with all the world, and he has often horses to drive and people to deal with that would tire the patience of a Job. He is constantly being aggravated—there is no doubt about that; the magistrates aggravate him—the police aggravate him—his fares aggravate him—his ’oss aggravates him—the crowded state of the street, and the impossibility of getting along aggravates him—the weather aggravates him—if it is hot he feels it, and has a terrible tendency to get dry—and if it is cold and wet not even his damp wrappers and overcoats can keep out, I suspect, chilblains; and I know he has corns, and he will use bad language in a truly distressing manner. Then his hours of work are such as to ruffle a naturally serene temper, and when he finds it hard work to make both ends meet, and sees how gaily young fellows spend their money—how he drives them from one public to another, and from one place of amusement to another—and in what questionable society,—one can scarce wonder if now and then cabby is a little sour, and if his language be as rough as his thoughts. Strange tales can he tell.
A friend of the writer’s once hired a chaise to take him across the country; their way led them through a turnpike-gate, and, to my friend’s horror, the driver never once pulled up to allow him to pay the toll. My friend expostulated; as the toll had to be paid, he thought the better plan was to pay it at once. “Oh, it’s all right,” said Jehu, smiling, “they know me well enough—I am the man wot drives the prisoners, and prisoners never pay.” Our London cabby is often similarly employed, and, as he rushes by, we may well speculate as to the nature and mission of his fare. Cabby so often drives rogues that we cannot wonder if in time he becomes a bit of a rogue himself.
CHAPTER XIX.
FREE DRINKING FOUNTAINS.
Till lately the London poor had no means of getting water but the pump or the public-house. Of the latter we can have but a poor opinion, nor all the former much better. It appears that “the London pumps can never be otherwise than dangerous sources of supply; the porous sod from which they suck being that into which our cesspools and leaky drains discharge a great part of their fluid—sometimes even a great part of their solid contents, and in which, till very recently, all our interments have taken place. It is a soil which consequently abounds with putrid and putrefiable matter. The water derived from it invariably contains products of organic decomposition, more or less oxidised; and it is a mere chance, beyond the power of water-drinkers to measure or control, whether that oxidation shall at all times be so incomplete as to have left the water still capable of a very dangerous kind of fermentation.” We are further told that, “the shallow well water receives the drainage of Highgate Cemetery, of numerous burial grounds, and of innumerable
cesspools which percolate the soil on the London side of the Cemetery, and flow towards the Metropolis. . . . That the pump-water also becomes contaminated with the residual liquors of manufacturing processes. . . . That a man who habitually makes use of London pump-water, lives in perpetual danger of disease.”
But one of the greatest and most unexpected sources of danger is, that the sense of taste or smell fails to warn us of the danger of using such water, since clearness, coolness, and tastelessness, may exist, without being evidences of wholesomeness. We are also told that “the carbonic acid of the decomposed matter makes them sparkling, and the nitrates they contain give them a pleasant coolness to the taste, so that nothing could be better adapted to lure their victims to destruction than the external qualities of these waters—hence the worst of them are most popular for drinking purposes.”