Travel

In Victorian times, you could travel one of three ways: by train, by horse, or by foot.

Horse & Carriage

The most common means of transportation was by far the horse, for it was used by rich and poor alike. The rich owned fancy coaches that had every accessory one could ever need for living on the road, and the poor would go about town on the cheap omnibuses that carried twenty people at a time.

The earliest carriage in the Victorian period was the hackney coach. The hackney acquired a truly shameful reputation in the early years of the 19th century, as they were used extensively by groups of drunk young men. One popular form of enjoyment of theirs was to "fan the daylights" as it was called. They would lash out at storefront windows as they drove by, leaving a trail of shattered glass behind them.

A few decrepit old hackneys survived through the period, some painted a dingy yellow color, broken-down and rickety with horses that looked more like a fitting meal for the hounds than anything fit to pull a carriage.

The next cab was the Clarence, better known as the growler, so called because it made a deafening noise when it went over stone or macadam roads. The growler has the distinction that it was one of two types of cabs which survived throughout both Victorian and Edwardian times.

The growler was the cab-of-all-work. It was popular with parties of sailors and soldiers home on leave looking for a cheap ride, servants moving furniture, newlyweds of working class weddings, and patients going to the hospital. Unfortunately, towards the end of their reign of the carriage world, they became rickety and unreliable, much like their predecessors, the hackney coaches.

Stagecoaches had their beginnings in the 1830s. Wealthy lords and ladies traveled to London in post-chaises or traveling chariots, the early aristocratic equivalent of the stagecoach. These were by far the greatest advancements in coachmaking yet. They were equipped with everything that a lord or lady might need while traveling in foreign parts.

There were sword cases, folding sunshades, Venetian blinds, interior lamps, hat boxes, pantries, chairs, and beds. The one problem was that they had to stop every 10 to 20 miles at a posting inn to engage fresh horses and new postboys.

Stagecoaches were driven from two areas. One was from the driver on the coachman's box, the other was from the postboys on the horses. These postboys were tough little men, similar in build to today's flatrace jockey. They drove not from the coachman's box, but mounted on a horses or horses as postilions. There was an iron guard strapped to the inside leg to keep it from being crushed between the horse they were riding and the pole.

The reason these were mainly used by the aristocracy was the high cost. The usual charge for a pair of horses was 1 shilling and sixpence a mile and threepence to sixpence a mile for postboys. This added up quite fast.

The stagecoach had it's ends in the 1850's. By this time the old stage and mail coaches were being sold off for scrap or were allowed to rot, unused in some barn or coach house in a country stables. Luckily for people today, a handful of coach-loving aristocrats preserved them as large keepsakes for us today.

Stagecoaches were followed by the two-wheeled Hansom. This was the other cab which had the distinction of being used throughout both Victorian and Edwardian periods.

The first hansom cab was made by a coachbuilder of that name in 1834. This first hansom looked more like a packing case suspended between two wheels than a cab. It had a slightly sloping roof and two huge wheels that were seven feet, 6 inches in diameter.

The well known hansom cab that we see driving through the gaslit foggy streets of the Sherlock Holmes stories was a very different looking vehicle. This hansom, the model which lasted the whole period, was designed by John Chapman. The driver sat at the back of the cab, controlling the faraway horse by means of reins being draped over the roof. Some of the disadvantages of this design were that the only part of the horse that the cabbie could see were the horse's ears, and because it had no front, it let in rain and snow and whatever might decide to drop from the sky.

The only thing that made it at all possible for the driver to see was the seat, which was often seven or eight feet off the ground. Inside, the passengers communicated with the cabbie by means of a small trap-door in the roof while reclining on a padded leather or cloth seat that had just enough room for two.

The last great horse-drawn carriage to become popular was the Brougham. The brougham is usually what one pictures in one's mind when one things of a carriage. This was the most admired middle class carriage, and the first and greets single innovation of the new modern carriage age, providing a cheap substitute for the coach. They were cheaper to buy too, starting at around 120 guineas. They were even less expensive to run as they only required one horse. It was equally suitable for town or country, single person or a whole family.

This particular carriage was extremely popular with doctors because it attracted patients who wanted doctors with money. Although they were the most desirable and one of the least expensive middle class carriages, few could afford to keep one; a simple brougham and one horse cost about 200 pounds per year to keep.

London cabbies were a special breed of men. They were independent, proud, quick-witted, and disputatious. Most were London-born with an inherited gift of Cockney wit and repartee. They had a wide range of general knowledge acquired through hours of newspaper reading and discussion while waiting for a fare. A small number of cabbies were owner-drivers, and usually had the smartest turnouts.

The majority however, hired their horses and cabs by the day or night. Cabbies who did this had to pay up to twenty-five shillings a day in the season and up to fifteen shillings other times. With a minimum fare a shilling for two miles, many cabbies had trouble making enough money to pay the fee.

Railways

The railways revolutionised travel in the Victorian Era. In 1833 only 3.5 million people traveled from one city to another every year. By 1863, however, the number of railway travelers had reached an annual total of 204 million; an increase, allowing for population growth, of forty times.

By this time there had also been a great increase in freight traffic as England entered the era of the steam locomotive. However, the modern technology stopped at the rail terminal. These vast memorials of the Victorian age, engineered in iron and glass, served as a place where passengers had to and still have to step back into the age of horse and carriage.