Omnibus driver

“ As time passed, the behaviour of the conductors grew worse. This was due chiefly to the indifference of the omnibus proprietors. If their conductors paid in a certain amount daily, they were quite satisfied with them, and by no means thankful to passengers who complained of their misbehaviour. The omnibus proprietor of this period was a much lower class of man than George Shillibeer. In most cases he himself had been a driver or conductor, and, on becoming an employer, his chief anxiety was to prevent his men growing rich at his expense. ”

“ Hardly any class of motor-car is so generally useful for country-house work as an omnibus. Wishing for something more speedy than an eight-horse Panhard, I purchased a twelve, and converted my old friend into an omnibus, which has proved eminently satisfactory for station work. Carrying four inside and one beside the driver, with ample room for luggage, it is a great relief to a horse stable in very hot or very wintry weather. It is geared down to twelve miles an hour, and pneumatic tyres have given way to solid. ”

“ Although many of their omnibuses have been superseded by the metropolitan and district railways, and the establishment of tramway cars, they have still 560 omnibuses and 6000 horses to work them. Each omnibus runs about sixty miles a day. The company builds for its own use about thirty ’busses each year; the average weight of an omnibus is 24 cwt. Most of the vehicles are now provided with brake retarders, which are set in action by the foot of the driver, and check the speed down hill, or help to stop the omnibus to take up a passenger without so much strain upon the horses as formerly. ”

“ A ’bus driver never has time to look out for a wife. Every horse in our stables has one day’s rest in every four; but it’s no rest for the driver.”
Omnibus Conductors.
The conductor, who is vulgarly known as the “cad,” stands on a small projection at the end of the omnibus; and it is his office to admit and set down every passenger, and to receive the amount of fare, for which amount he is, of course, responsible to his employers. He is paid 4s. a-day, which he is allowed to stop out of the monies he receives. He fills up a waybill each journey, with the number of passengers. ”

“ Omnibus drivers are, as a body, intellectually inferior to conductors. They an usually brought up among horses, and, unlike the conductors, are totally unfitted for any other calling than the one by which they earn their living. Their wages, which are eight shillings a day, after one year's service, enable them to live in comfort and to put a shilling on a horse in every race of any importance. They have no ambition but to "back a winner," and many men who started driving at the age of twenty-one are not a penny richer after forty years' regular work. ”

“ She victimizes them with nearly two thousand licensed hackmen; she licenses twenty-two hundred car- and omnibus-drivers to carry them over twenty-nine different stage-routes and ten horse-railroads, in six hundred and seventy-one omnibuses and nearly as many cars, connecting intimately with every part of the city, and averaging ten up-and-down trips per day. ”

“ One morning they exercised their power by pulling two omnibus-drivers from their boxes and taking them to the police-station. The following day the drivers were fined forty shillings or a month's imprisonment. For a few days there was no loitering on the Hammersmith Road. ”

“ We have the rest of the evening to ourselves."
But it must be admitted that omnibus drivers have the knack of delivering their remarks in a way that makes a stranger imagine that they are uttering them for the first time. And that is an art.
At Christmas time there is a great demand among 'busmen for Rothschild's racing colours. The drivers attach them to their whips and the conductors adorn their bell-pulls with them, as a slight acknowledgment of the welcome Christmas-box—a brace of pheasants—which they have received for many years from the firm of Rothschild. ”

“ It generally does, but, nevertheless, when they have driven on another mile or two, the conductor comes round for fares, and, in spite of indignant protests, they have to pay. By that time the first omnibus is back at Richmond picking up fares London. In the evening it will make a journey on a different road. Two or three bullies always ride on the long-distance pirate omnibuses, and their fellow-travellers, as a rule, have not the slightest suspicion that they are not ordinary passengers. ”

“ This omnibus carried no outside passengers, an omission which would have doomed it to failure had it entered into competition with other omnibuses.
The proprietors of horse-drawn omnibuses have [Pg 121] been accused of want of enterprise because they have not yet adopted motor vehicles, against which they are said to have a prejudice. But these accusations are absurd. Omnibus proprietors are convinced that when a really reliable electric ’bus has been invented, it will pay them to adopt it. ”

“ On its way from the finishing point the conductor, lamp in hand, has searched the seats and floor of his omnibus, and found, perhaps, a stray penny. If he discovers a parcel, a purse, or anything of any value, he trudges off with it to the nearest police-station, bearing no grudge against the careless passenger who has made his walk necessary, for he knows that he will be rewarded, no matter whether the article is claimed or not. When the article is not claimed, he receives, eventually, a proportion of its value. ”

“ Paddington to the Bank, viâ Oxford Street. They overcharged passengers, and met any protests with a torrent of abuse. Frequently, when females only were in the omnibus, they brought their journey to an end before they reached their advertised destination, compelling the passengers to walk a considerable distance after paying their fares. Shillibeer was inundated with complaints, and at once took steps to make it known that the omnibuses referred to were not his property, although they bore his name and were painted and lettered in imitation of his vehicles. ”

“ When the car has reached its limit it will take up no more passengers. Every passenger has the right to a seat, and, to use a paradoxical phrase, every Englishman stands up for his right to a seat.
OMNIBUSES.
The two thousand omnibuses keep employed eight or nine thousand horses. The number of miles run annually by the omnibuses is five and a half millions, and the number of passengers carried not less than forty-eight millions.
Such a heavy, slow-going, cumbersome vehicle as the London omnibus could not be used on our rough-and-tumble roads. ”

“ The London Road Car Company, Ltd., and Messrs. Balls Bros, work in friendly opposition to the above Associations.
The “times” in these Associations are very valuable, and when any are placed on the market—which rarely happens—they are snapped up immediately. Until he has bought his “times,” no proprietor is recognized in the omnibus business.
In November, 1851, newspapers were placed in the “Favorite” omnibuses for the convenience of passengers. ”

“ I want a man who's had plenty of practice at getting horses up. Mine are always falling down."
About this time, the latter part of the thirties, omnibus conductors began to fall into disrepute. The chief complaints against them, apart from their ordinary rudeness to passengers, were that when they were wanted to stop the omnibus they were always busy talking to the coachman along the roof, and that they banged the doors too violently whenever a person entered or got out. ”

“ The windows are fitted with blinds—a much-needed innovation. I have heard that one of the smaller omnibus companies intends to adopt “the corridor ’bus.”
One of the keenest struggles between rival omnibus companies that has been witnessed for some years began in May last. It originated in the following way:—some twelve years ago the London General Omnibus Company opened a line of omnibuses from Kilburn to the Redcliffe Arms, Fulham Road. ”

“ On another occasion a sane-looking man, sitting on top of an omnibus, suddenly started throwing pennies at the silk hats of passers-by and spitting contemptuously at female pedestrians. Before his fellow-passengers had made up their minds whether to pitch him off the omnibus or give him into custody, he walked quietly down the steps and alighted.
Many passengers leave strange things in omnibuses, but I have heard of only one man who went away without his clothes. A conductor looking round his omnibus at the end of his day's work, kicked against a heap of clothes lying on the roof. ”

“ If omnibuses were compelled to have a list of fares displayed on the nearside panel it would be a great convenience to the public, and would, moreover, do much towards putting an end to "pirates." At present visitors to London do not know until they have entered an omnibus how much they will be charged. If they sit near the doorway they have to trust to the conductor—for they cannot read the fares—and if it be a pirate omnibus they will assuredly be overcharged. ”

“ Private inspectors are by no means a modern addition to the staff of an omnibus company. Shillibeer, as stated in Chapter II., employed them a few weeks after he placed the first English omnibuses on the road, and succeeding omnibus proprietors followed his example. The duties of these early inspectors were not very arduous, for, as there were only shilling and sixpenny fares, known as “longs” and “shorts,” and but two outside seats, it was a simple matter to check the amount received by a conductor during a journey. ”

“ Although inspectors are, naturally enough very strongly disliked by 'busmen, they are a great protection to them. There are always a few cantankerous, cross-grained people riding in omnibuses somewhere in London who abuse conductors with scarcely any reason, and threaten, when they have aggravated them into retort, to report them for impertinence. And sometimes they do report the man, but if a "spot" happens to be in the omnibus he sends to his employers a full account of all that occurred. ”

“ Some of the opposition proprietors, however, were men of sufficient enterprise to object to remaining mere imitators of Shillibeer, and tried their hardest to make their omnibuses more attractive than those of their great rival. One man made all his coachmen wear a wooden ring on each arm with strings attached to them which [Pg 23] ran along each side of the roof of the omnibus and out at the back to the conductor. The passenger would then pull the cord or tell the conductor which side he wished to be put down, and if it were the near side the left string would be pulled ”

“ After the failure of the carrosses a cinq sous, a century and a half elapsed before vehicles of the omnibus class were again tried in Paris, but one or two feeble and unsuccessful attempts to start them in England were made in the year 1800. A vehicle with six wheels and drawn by four horses was the most noticed of these ventures.
In 1819 Monsieur Jacques Laffitte, the banker-politician, who became, later, the Minister of Louis Philippe, introduced the vehicles now called “omnibuses” into Paris. ”

“ Knowing from experience what an omnibus could earn in various seasons and weather, he took every precaution to guard against his men retaining as large a portion of the earnings as he himself had pocketed when a conductor. The men who paid daily the sum he demanded were the conductors he preferred, and these usually were the passenger-swindling, bullying specimens, and thoroughly deserved their name—"cads." ”

“ The dissipated down-at-heel gentleman, of the type which sometimes drives a cab, never becomes an omnibus conductor, for the very good reason that no company or proprietor would employ him. But the unfortunate gentleman often does. An Oxford graduate was the conductor of a West-End omnibus for some considerable time, and a man who was once the secretary of a flourishing literary society, and a church organist, is and has been one for some years. ”

“ They imagine that the Union Jack is a sign that the omnibuses are State-subsidised vehicles, and, to avoid falling into the hands of the dreaded pirates—for the London pirates' notoriety has reached the chief Continental cities—they will ride in no omnibus which does not carry a flag. Sometimes they stand for a long while looking for an omnibus with the Union Jack flying, to discover, eventually, that there are no Road Car omnibuses on that route. ”

“ Ticket-inspectors are known to all Londoners, but few people are aware that the omnibus companies have also private inspectors, whose duty it is to ride about in their omnibuses, as ordinary passengers, for the purpose of noting and reporting anything that affects their interests adversely. These people, who are called "spots" and "wrong'uns" by the 'busmen, are not beloved by conductors and coachmen, for the simple reason that they never know when they have one on their omnibus. ”

“ To the London County Council belongs the credit of having started all-night omnibuses, which were a great boon to many scores of workers in Fleet Street and Covent Garden. It may, however, be taken for granted that the venture was not a profitable one.
A new omnibus, called "the corridor 'bus,' was placed on the Putney and Liverpool Street road in 1900, by William Berg. From the outside the vehicle appears to be similar to the ordinary omnibus, but the inside seats are arranged crossways and some of the passengers sit back to back. The windows are fitted with blinds—a much-needed innovation. ”

“ The man in evening dress who enters the omnibus in the Strand after the theatres have closed may be one; so too, may be the man with a bag of workman's tools who rides up to town by the first omnibus. The daintily dressed young lady who enters at Peter Robinson's or William Whiteley's may, from her seat in the corner, be regarding the conductor with an interest which is not born of admiration, and the palpably retired officer who gets in at Piccadilly may be earning a welcome addition to his income by watching 'busmen's manœuvres. ”