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Otago Daily Times, Issue 22204, 6 March 1934, Page 11

Many taxi drivers drove their cabs to the funeral of Mr James Howe, London's Number 1 taxi driver, recently. Mr Howe, who began his career with a horse cab 43 years ago, always claimed that he hud been the first to drive a motor taxi in London, and his fellows in the trade mainly admit it. Throughout London he was known to the brotherhood of the rank as “Up-Hendon Howe.” “We called Mr Howe ‘Up-Hendon”' one of his friends at Hammersmith, Broadway, said lately, “because if you asked him where he was off to, he’d answer, ‘Just going up Hendon way.’ He was the first man who went over to a motor taxi from driving a horse, find he thought, because he was the pioneer, that Scotland Yard ought to give him No. I as his taximan’s number. But they refused. They said there was no Number 1. So be asked Lord I’renchard personally one day when ho happened to be driving him. and ever since there’s been no trouble, and be has been officially No. 1.”