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April 2008 • VOLUME 32 • © HORSES For LIFE™ Magazine
The Horse World of London, by W. J. Gordon, 1893 - Chapter 3 - The Carrier's Horse [-49-] CHAPTER III THE CARRIER'S HORSE THE carrying trade of these days is in the hands of the railway companies, and the carrier's horse is for all practical purposes the railway horse. Of the 8l,000,000 tons of general merchandise hauled along the railroads of this island in 1890, the bulk was collected and distributed in railway vans. A railway company is obliged to keep several varieties of horse in its stables. It must have horses that walk for the heavy traffic, and horses that trot for the light; or, to put it differently, waggon horses, goods horses, parcels horses, horses for shunting, and horses for omnibuses in the cases in which its omnibuses are not horsed by contract. And, taking all these varieties together, we find that the companies collecting and delivering goods in the metropolis have amongst them a stud of 6,000. These we shall not be over-valuing at 60l. apiece all round, which means that railway share- holders have some 360,000l. invested in horseflesh in London alone, to say nothing of the vans and drays, which would be worth quite as much. The typical railway horse is the van horse, of which ten-thirteenths of the stud consist. He is not specially [-50-] bred for his calling; he is but a dray horse whom the association of certain merits has peculiarly fitted for railway work. There is no mistaking this horse; he is a Britisher to the backbone, but he is not so easy to get as he used to be, owing to the foreigners collecting so many specimens of him. He is as good a horse as we have, being power personified, with nothing about him in wasteful excess. Well-moulded in every muscle, standing not an inch too high on his well-shaped legs - 'give me legs and feet,' said the Midland superintendent to us, 'and I will look after the rest,' - broad and strong, with nothing of tubbiness in the barrel or scragginess about the neck and head, he is admirably adapted for the work for which he is chosen; and that work he does well. In these days, when a corn-chandler will forage your horse at threepence an inch of height a week - so many hands so many shillings - it is the inches of bulk that give a van horse his value,
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