LONDON TAXIS IN WARTIME

Evening Post, Volume CXXXII, Issue 3, 3 July 1941, Page 11

LONDON TAXIS IN WARTIME

It is not surprising to hear that some London taxi-drivers are discussing whether they should petition for a fare of one shilling for the first mile, instead of the ninepence charged at present; stated the "Manchester Guardian's" correspondent recently.

One driver told him that they were the only vehicle-drivers in London who had not put up their charges since the beginning of the war, a fact which, he said, the.public did not realise. Some of his fares certainly tipped generously, but others gave the same old tip. "My expenses are so heavy," he said, "that I depend on those tips to maintain my wife and children." This man plied through the heaviest raids. He told how during the fire of London he drove two people he had picked up in Fleet Street all the way to Hackney with so many incendiary bombs falling around him that it was like going through a fireworks display. Another driver, with the same experience of tips, said he had been lucky during the raids. He had missed a bomb that fell in front of him by one minute and by a minute a bomb "that fell behind him.