LONDON CABDRIVERS

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1626, 29 April 1903, Page 67 (Supplement)

LONDON CABDRIVERS

A CHAT WITH ONE OF THEM. “C'eb, sir, ceb !” “Express ’ere, sir,” is the familiar greeting of the unfortunate who happens to travel to or from the city. Everybody knows the Wellington cabby, who sits perched on his vehicle on Lambton quay, or stands in an ever-advancing row at the wharves and railway stations perking a finger and catching an eye. Here, where a timid City Council is afraid to formulate any regulations for his control, the general verdict is that the cabby is a bird of prey. The city man is strong in his wisdom and avoids him. The stranger is not yet so wise. He pays a golden tribute, and avoids the next time. But every municipality has not such a supreme disregard for the welfare of its citizens as that of Wellington. The London cabby is an ordered and organised class, part and parcel of the industrial and economic system of the metropolis. Ho is a guide, philosopher and friend of the first water, and there is no reason why the colonial cabby should not be the same, once he puts off the aspect of an organised blackmailer. This will be just as soon as the City Council has the pluck to do its duty. W hat the London cabby is a “Times” reporter learnt from ail interesting chat with one of themselves, Mr Thomas Ryan, who came to the colony by the Turakina to “have a look round,” and leaves on his return in a week’s time. Mr Ryan is a typical “Cockney” in appearance, speech and, action. Ha has been an organiser and a temperance leader among his fellow’s for years past. He is a friend of John Burns, and has fought numerous political election campaigns for different candidates in the various arenas of London .

Every war and every year of peace has given its quota to the ranks of Lon-

don cabmen. To-day there are 14,000 Jof them. There are men on “the diei key” with university educations, physicians, lawyers, clergymen, men who i have won the Victoria Cross. Mr Ryan I has in his possession a photograph of a ! group of cabbies who won the Cross in the Zulu war. There is a theological stui dent among the cabmen who take their meals at Mr Ryan’s shelter at Waterloo station. He often holds -wordy war with a Scotch follower of Ingersoll. There is a writer of verse known as the “Poet Laureate,” and a man of oourtly manners who passes by the name of Mar- ! quis of Camberwell Green. These are only 1 a few of the motley throng that fifty years | on the cobbles of London streets have brought into close contact with Mr ! Ryan. There are thousands of them coming and going, year in and year out. By clay they throng about the railway stations and stream through, the streets. By night they mass at the banquet halls and theatres, guides to tho stranger, philosophers of the w’eathcr, and friends to the midnight playgoer and the carouscr cf the small hours. It is only from an illiberal pointy of view’, says Mr Ryan, that the Cockney cabman can ho considered a crafty and unscrupulous sprite. In hia own life he is honest, brave, humane, likeable and underpaid. Of course, a foreigner to whom the metropolis and its ways are obviously new sometimes falls a victim to the greed of the man on the dickey, but it is impossible to make a general practice of extortion and over-charging while the splendid discipline of the London cab service exists. In the eyes of the law the cabby is a publio functionary. He is labelled on his coat and his cap with, black letters on a white ground, in order that his identity may stand out prominently for the watchful eyes of the police or of the indignant passenger who fancies he has been overcharged.

The cabmen’s shelters are a feature of London streets. There are sixty of them. They are practically the cabbies’ clubs. Each was built by a philanthropist, and presented to the committee, presided over by the Duke of Portland, which has charge of the shelter fund. Non-intoxicants are soldi and good substantial meals are served at the cost of a few pence. The shelters were originally started as a means of drawing the cabbies away from the publichouses, and Mr Ryan mentions with pride that 90 per cent, of the cabbies now wear collars, as against 10 per cent, who -wore these luxurious articles of attire in the days before shelters w’ere erected. Mr Ryan has the shelter at Waterloo Station, and from this point of vantage he has pushed tho temperance crusade among the cabbies for years past. He has been a Police Court missionary for two years, and in the course of his W’ork has come into close touch with many off the prominent leaders of the movement. The autographed photographs on the walls of his shelter include those of Lords Wolseley, Alverstone and Peel, Princess Christian and the late Prince Christian Victor, Dr* Temple (late Archbishop ~of Canterbury), the Princess of Wales, the Duchess of Teck, the Countess of Warwick, Lady Henry Somerset and numerous others. For some time Mr Ryan w r as a w’Otrker in the parish of Dr Neligan, now Bishop of Auckland.