Hyde Park, as Pepys and other writers show us, was the best place in London to see the coaches of the gentry. In an undated petition, submitted by “a great number of licensed hackney coachmen,” there is reference to the “four hundred licensed coachmen in Hyde Park,” from which it might be inferred that these formed a body of license-holders distinct from the four hundred licensed by Charles II. in 1663.
HACKNEY CABS AS A SOURCE OF REVENUE.
In 1694, when the Parliament was hard pressed for money to carry on the French war, the London cabs or hackney coaches were more heavily taxed under a new system of licenses; the number licensed to ply for hire was raised from 400 to 700, and for each license, which held good for twenty-one years, the sum of £50 was to be paid down, while £4 per annum was to be paid as “rent.” All stage coaches in England and Wales were to pay a tax of £8 a year. This Act confirmed the old tariff of fares for hackney coaches in London (see p. 42), and the prohibition against plying on Sundays, which had been in force since 1662, was partially withdrawn. The new Act allowed 175 cabs to ply for hire on Sundays; the Commissioners were enjoined to arrange matters so that the 700 licensed cabmen should be employed in turn on Sunday.
This Act caused great discontent among the original 400 licensed coachmen, as it made them equally liable with the additional 300 licensees to the £50 impost; their grievances found vent in a petition, wherein they prayed that they, the Original Four Hundred, might be “incorporated” (presumably as a guild or company), and that all stage coaches running between London and places thirty miles therefrom might be suppressed.
The Act of 1693 compelled the hackney coachman to carry a fare ten miles out of London if required, and doubtless the uncertainty of finding a “fare” to bring back was partly owing to the short stages, which ran on every road.
The five Commissioners who were appointed to carry out the provisions of this law discharged their duties with no greater integrity than their predecessors. Yet another Petition from the 700 hackney coachmen refers incidentally to the circumstance that in 1694 three of the five were dismissed for accepting bribes from tradesmen who wanted licenses; the petition also prays for better regulations to control the “many hundred coaches and horses let for hire without license, likewise shaises, hackney chairs and short stages.”
The “shaise” or chaise was evidently a vehicle of a different type from the hackney coach. The post-chaise for hire was introduced into England about this time from France by John, a son of Mr. Jethro Tull, the famous agriculturist who in 1733 published a work, entitled “Horse Hoeing Husbandry,” which attracted great attention and laid the foundation of the use of implements in farming and improvements in methods of cultivation. In 1740 John Tull was granted a patent for a sedan chair fixed on a wheel carriage for horse draught.
MANNERS OF THE CABMAN.
The licensed coachmen had good grounds for complaint, as we learn from an edict issued in 1692 by the Lord Mayor and Aldermen that the law was systematically evaded; in that year only 160 hackney coachmen applied for licenses and the number plying in the streets was about one thousand. The men were a turbulent set; several, we read, were indicted for “standing of their coaches [in the streets] as a common nuisance, for assaulting constables and tradesmen who attempt to remove them from before their shops.” There were no side walks for foot-passengers in those days, and thus the standing coach might be so placed as to block the entrance to a shop.