HORSE DRAWN OMNIBUSES

Taranaki Daily News, 3 September 1929, Page 14

HORSE DRAWN OMNIBUSES

CENTENARY IN LONDON.

London, July 11.

Many a people attempted, but without success, a ride on the horse-drawn omnibuses which this week have been threading a leisurely way through motor traffic to celebrate the centenary of the first use of the omnibus in London. The replicas of the vehicles of long ago have small seating capacity and every time one of them drops a passenger a dozen others seem ready to fill the vacant place. But it is good to see the oldfasiiioned things once again in service, and amusing to be reminded of the fashions in dress and whiskered faces which drivers and conductors are bravely wearing through hot days in order to make the centenary celebration more noticeable. The one Londoner with the longest and most intimate acquaintance of the horse-drawn omnibus .business is surely Mr. Samuel Birch, a nonagenarian, whose widowed mother became part proprietor of two omnibuses when he was 12 years old, only twenty years after the appearance of the first Shillibeer omnibus. Mr. Birch's memories,, given in this week’s Motor Transpoit, are highly interesting. In 1851 there were no public conveyances running from Westminster, except steamboats. The earlier omnibuses had straw on the floors in winter and coconut mats in summer. There were no lamps for night use until statutory provision was made in 1552 requiring them. The vehicles had no brakes. Downhill they used to skid the wheel with a chain and hook. When there were national rejoicings, the omnibuses were withdrawn from the streets ana “hired to the nobility for private parties.” To prevent cruelty to horses overcrowding was forbidden, and passengers were equally liable with the conductor for any infringemen't of this law. Nowadays passengers themselves suffer the cruelty of overcrowding.