Another great change in locomotion in London came with the trams, which are more recent than ’buses; but the horse-drawn tram has already disappeared and given place to electricity, while the tubes are accustoming us to take our short journeys underground.
Nothing is so typical of the London streets as the light, swift-moving hansom cab. Its extraordinary abundance everywhere is one of the first things that impresses the intelligent foreigner within this capital of ours. Joseph Hansom took out his patent so long ago as 1834. His was not, it is true, the present-day vehicle, which has been evolved out of all recognition from its original conception, though it still immortalises his name. The cab itself was the outcome of the gig.
Cabriolets, or gigs with hoods, were introduced into London in 1762, but it was not until 1805 that they were established as public vehicles. Then eight received licences. They were two-wheeled, something like a modern hansom. The fare sat by the side of the driver; but under the hood. Only twelve were at first allowed to ply for hire, and these stood in Portland Street. They attained great popularity, and displaced the hackney coach, which by this time had grown into a heavy two-horsed vehicle.
That advent of the hansom is being repeated to-day in the placing of taximeter motor cabs on the streets. No one is so conservative as the London cabby, and the “new-fangled” vehicles, which were at the outset the object of so much chaff—not too good-humoured—had to live down opposition, but from the first little group placed at Hyde Park Corner at Easter, 1906, they grew so rapidly in popularity that in a short time thousands were plying our streets for hire. The smart-liveried young chauffeur of the “taxi” is a strong contrast to the picturesque but decidedly gruff and untidy old driver, who for so long has figured conspicuously among the motley types of London.
A larger cab than the hansom, built like a brougham, came into use in 1836, and from that the familiar four-wheeled “growler” has developed,* *—backwards to a more remote ancestor, as some curious student of evolution might surmise.
Bicycles rapidly evolved from the old “bone-shaker,” with wooden wheels and iron rims, through the high-wheeled “ordinary,” with solid rubber tyres, to the present “safety” type. The “bone-shaker” was itself an offspring of the earlier “hobby-horse” on wheels, awkwardly propelled by the rider’s feet touching the ground. This was almost a peculiarity of Hyde Park, where the young beaux of the middle-nineteenth century disported themselves on the bone-racking contrivance, for few ventured out into the streets or to the open country upon it.
Only the invention of the low-bent frame made cycling for women possible about 1892. I remember gazing one day out of an hotel window in Copenhagen, when to my surprise I saw a woman riding on a bicycle. It must be remembered that pneumatic tyres had only a short time before that been invented.
“Look!” I called to my husband. “Surely that is a woman cycling!”
“Why, so it is, and how nice she looks,” he replied, and as he spoke another woman similarly engaged came into view. We soon put on our hats, and wandered off to watch the ladies of Copenhagen indulging in such a novel pastime. I quickly decided that as soon as I returned to London I would try, too. I did, in the dusk round the Regent’s Park, stared at and jeered at by the little boys, who found great fun in a woman’s first futile endeavours to mount.