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The Horse World of London, by W. J. Gordon, 1893 - Chapter 2 - The Cab Horse CHAPTER II THE CAB HORSE It would at first sight seem to be an easy task to arrive at the number of London cab horses. Every cab has to be licensed, and the number of licences is given annually in the Metropolitan Police Commissioner's Report. A year or so ago, 11,297 were granted in the London district, and as there are two horses to a cab in proper working, we have only to double the 11,297 to obtain the horse power; and further, as a cab horse is worth 30l, we have only to multiply by that amount to get - an exaggerated notion of the facts of the case. The genus 'cab' comprises two species, the 'hansom' and the 'clarence,' the first having two wheels, the other four; but these species are divisible into several varieties, especially the clarence, which varies from the not particularly sumptuous down to the positively disgraceful. As it is with the vehicles, so it is with the horses, and so it is with the men.  It is in the night-time that we find the lowest grade of horse, cab, and man; but as these are seen by the few we may look to the next variety in the scale. This is the Sunday cab, particularly the sort that appears in the morning. Last Sunday we had a typical specimen at the corner of our street. The cab was hired from one man, the harness from another, the horse from another. And there are cabs in London on a Sunday in which even the driver's badge has been hired, although, of course, this is illegal. The horse was a cab horse for the day. On the Monday morning he would be in the shafts of a coal-cart dragging 'prime Wallsend' at a shilling a hundredweight; and in front of the Wallsend he would spend the week till Saturday night, when he would again be hired out and turn his attention from coals to cabs. The cab itself is at night work all the week; of the many animals that draw it there is not one that has not toiled in some other trade during some hours of the day; and so far from its having two horses it never really has one. In fact, we have here a variety of cab horse that is not a cab horse at all.  Cab horses can be conveniently classified in a series of sevenths, according to the number of days of the week they spend in the cab shafts. There are some that go cabbing one day a week, some two, some three, some four, some five, some six. The six-day variety is the genuine article; he does nothing but draw cabs, for no true cab-horses - or, at least, but a very, very few - work seven days a week, he is the commonest horse; next to him coming the four-seventh animal. This horse appears in a cab on Sundays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays only; on Friday he is engaged in taking home the washing, that is his easiest day's work; on Saturday he is very much more engaged in taking home washing; and on Monday he has his hardest day in collecting the washing it takes him two days to deliver. Another variety is the three-sevenths horse, who, as a rule, appears in a cab on Sundays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, and works miscellaneously during the other four days. All these odd fractional horses come out on Sunday, when the regular cab horse is at rest. There are, however, some regular cab horses doing Sunday work, and these have their day's rest generally on Tuesday. Of the 11,297 licensed cabs, 917 were reported during the year as unfit for use, and we may take them from the total; we may also remove a proportion of the night cabs worked under the curious conditions already alluded to, and the really good cabs under repair, and for other considerations make other deductions, until we find that London on any one day had never more than 9,000 workable cabs. Of these, about two out of three have the two horses, the rest averaging hardly a horse apiece. This gives us 15,000 horses at the outside, and averaging these at 30l, we find that they are worth 450,000.  Curiously enough, there were in the year 15,336 licensed cab-drivers, so that there was practically a horse for every man, the surplus of men over cabs being easily accounted for by the fact that the percentage of cabs at work is greater than the percentage of men. Of the 15,000 men about 14 per cent were convicted during the year for offences ranging from cruelty to drunkenness, in addition to those convicted of the minor offences of loitering and obstruction and including most of these there was a large percentage appearing on the masters' books as having proved themselves untrustworthy. Clearing away this regrettable fringe, we should be left with a little more than a cab a man. The London cab trade is at a standstill, or rather it is declining. During the last three years the London trains have increased at the rate of 8˝ per cent., while the omnibuses have increased at the rate of' 17 per cent. Instead of increasing, the cabs have decreased. In 1888 - when the London hackney carriage list stood higher than it has ever done since Captain Bailey, fresh from Raleigh's Guiana expedition, started the first four carriages at London's first cab-stand, the Maypole in the Strand - there were 7,396 hansoms and 4,013 four-wheelers ; there are now 7,376 hansoms and 3,921 four-wheelers. This state of affairs is due in some measure to the cost of cab-riding as compared with that of other means of locomotion; but it is due in a greater degree to the uncertainty that exists regarding the fare that will satisfy the cabman. It is not the sixpence a mile that people object to, or even a shilling a mile, but the 'living margin'; and so long as a cabman has to depend more or less on charity - for that is what the voluntary addition to his fare amounts to - so long will the crowd flock to railway, tramway, omnibus, and railway omnibus, in which they know exactly what they have to pay and can pay it without injuring any delicate susceptibilities. The pressure on the cabman is, however, great; he is rarely his own master; he has to pay the owner so much a day for the hire of the horse and cab, and he has to make what he can out of the public, the owner varying the cost of hire in accordance with the man's opportunities, the idea being that the capitalist should make his profit in the summer and give the worker a share in it. But this plan of trusting to squeezability is not a success. While the cab-list diminishes there is an increase in both wings of the opposition, not only in the omnibuses and cars of the commonalty, but in the livery broughams and private carriages, whose hirers and owners are the cabmen's best friends. And consequently the only horses in London that do not increase are the cab horses. Our cab horses are generally Irish, many of them being shipped from Waterford. They come over unshod, in order that they may do no damage, and to keep them quiet they have their lips tied down; and what with this lip-tying, and the sea passage, and the change of climate,
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