History of London Taxi

Hackney coaches and hackney cabs, the word ‘hackney’ came from the french word ‘Hacquenée’, which means a horse for hire. Hackney coaches work for hire in London was in 1588, Captain Baily a veteran of Sir Walter Raleigh’s expeditions put four coaches to work by the maypole in the Strand. By the 1760s, there were over a thousand ‘hackney hell carts’ hording the streets of London, causing significant overcrowding. In 1823 a two-seat, two wheeled coach called a cabriolet was introduced. It was very popular for its speed and comfort and from this vehicle we derive the name ‘cab’. From the middle of the 19th century two types of cab began to dominate, the two-wheeled hansom, a fast and elegant carriage and the heavy four-wheeled ‘growler’ which, with its luggage carrying ability was to be found mostly at railway stations.

Some horse cabs continued to work into the 1930s but most had gone by the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. London’s very last horse cab license was surrendered on the 3rd April 1947.

Motor Cabs

Berseys were London’s first motor cabs which were electrically power-driven but were nicknamed ‘Hummingbirds’ from the sound that they made. 25 were introduced in August 1897 and by 1898 a further fifty of them were at work. Unfortunately, they proved unreliable and there were a number of accidents, including one fatality and they were withdrawn by 1900.

The first petrol powered taxi in London was a French-built Prunel, introduced in 1903. Earlier British makes were Rational, Simplex and Herald but these appeared in small numbers. Some of the oddities that appeared, and disappeared almost as quickly included the Vauxhall hansom cab with its driver hovering behind the body and the front wheel drive ‘Pullcar’. In 1906 there were less than 100 motor taxi’s in London, but the appearance of the General Cab Company’s five hundred Renault cabs revolutionized the trade.

Introduction of rules for motor cab design, Conditions of Fitness, were introduced by the licensing authority, the Public Carriage Office in 1906. One regulation, demanding a 25ft turning circle deterred many would-be manufacturers and resulted in some earlier makes being withdrawn. The most numerous makes of cab post-1906 were the Unic, introduced by dealers Mann and Overton and the Napier and Panhard, both operated by W & G du Cros. Also to be found were Fiat, Sorex, Belsize, Austin, Humber, Wolseley-Siddeley, Argyll and Darracq. The fitting of taximeters was made compulsory in 1907 and cabs thus fitted became known as ‘taxicabs’, shortened to ‘taxis’. Action by cab drivers in 1911 over fares and in 1913 over fuel almost crippled the trade and severely reduced the number of big fleets and the manufacturers associated with them. Unic was the only available taxi to buy at the outbreak of the First World War.

 The First World War devastated the taxi trade. The majority of younger cabmen were called up to fight and those that remained had to drive worn-out cabs. By 1918 these remnant vehicles were sold at highly inflated prices, often beyond the pockets of the returning servicemen, and the trade deteriorated.

WARS

William Beardmore & Co Ltd was Scotland’s largest engineering concern and a division of the company built the first new post-war taxicab in Paisley, Glasgow. The taxi was introduced in 1919 and because of its durability and comfort it became known as the ‘Rolls-Royce of cabs’.

A Citroën cab was introduced in 1921, was an updated version of the pre-war Unic. In 1925, an attempt to introduce a two-seat taxi that would run at a lower tariff, in parallel with the existing four-seat cabs was vehemently opposed, and eventually repulsed by the trade. The Conditions of Fitness were reviewed in 1927 to try and attract more makers and revised rules were introduced in 1928, although a Morris-Commercial appeared before their introduction..

 In 1929, dealers Mann and Overton sponsored a new Austin cab for London, based on the successful 12/4 car. Nicknamed the ‘High Lot’ because of its height it was an immediate success, significantly outselling Beardmore and Morris-Commercial. A new model, the LL ‘Low Loader’ appeared in 1934 and became the most numerous model of the decade, being cheap to buy, reliable and easily obtainable.
 
Post-war, there was an urgent need for new taxis as all the pre-war models had been discontinued. Nuffield, the makers of the Morris-Commercial cab had tested a prototype cab throughout the war. It was introduced in 1947 as the Oxford and sold by Beardmore, who had not developed a new cab of their own. In 1948 a new Austin, the FX3, built by Carbodies of Coventry and financed jointly by Mann and Overton, Carbodies and Austin appeared and soon dominated the market.

However, in 1954 Austin produced its own 2.2 litre diesel engine. Austin also built a four-door limousine version of the FX3, the FL1, fitted with a bench front seat but minus a ‘For Hire’ roof sign. Beardmore introduced a MkVII in 1954, but it sold in very small numbers and presented no threat to Austin. The last Beardmore was produced in 1967.

FX4 was Austin’s next taxi, introduced in 1958. This famous vehicle remained in continuous production with various modifications, including seven different engines, for 39 years. This wasn’t because it was such a fantastic vehicle –it had many shortcomings- but because neither Austin nor Mann and Overton could find the money to replace it. Carbodies Ltd of Coventry made two attempts of their own, the FX5 and the CR6 but in 1982 bought the production rights to the FX4 from Austin and, as London Taxis International Plc built the final version of the FX4, the ‘Fairway’. Production ended in 1997 after more than 75,000 FX4s had been built.
The Winchester taxi, launched in 1963 from Winchester Automobiles (West End) Ltd, had a glass-fibre body and was the first London cab built from this material.

Today

The Asquith, a retro-style cab based on pre-war the Austin LL was introduced in 1994. It was powered by a ford Transit diesel engine. It was very expensive and only about twelve were sold in London. A modern style cab was proposed, but never went into production. Asquith went into liquidation at the end of 1998.

In 1972, Metro-Cammell-Weymann introduced a prototype, called the Metrocab, based on Ford Transit running gear, but it failed to go into production. However, they never gave up the plan to make cabs and in 1987 launched an all-new Metrocab. The cab’s body was made of glassfibre and all but the last version, the TTT, which was Toyota-powered, used a Ford Transit diesel engine. The Metrocab has passed through four owners in twenty years of production, the most successful and longest lasting being the third, Hooper. Its present owner, Kamkorp suspended production in April 2006 but planned to continue developing the cab

 In 1997, London Taxis International replaced the famous FX4/Fairway shape with the TXI, which used the same highly regarded Nissan TD27 engine as the Fairway. An updated version with a Ford engine, the TXII followed but was unreliable and unpopular.

In November 2006 the TXII was replaced with the TX4, using the same body and chassis as the TXII but powered by a VM turbocharged diesel engine. It was named the TX4, rather than TXIII because it complies with the Euro 4 exhaust emission regulations

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The laws governing London’s taxi trade go back nearly four centuries. Originally, regulation was in the hands of the City of London. In 1654, Oliver Cromwell authorized the founding of The Fellowship of Hackney Coachmen, but he disbanded it in 1657 because it became too powerful. Licensing was reformed in 1694 and London’s cabs have been continuously licensed since then, initially through the City of London and later through Parliament. In 1843, the Home Office took control and devolved authority to the Metropolitan Police who, through the Public Carriage Office governed the trade until 2000. Control is now in the hands of Transport for London, a part of the Greater London Authority.

A London cab driver’s licence is issued for a period of three years. In 1843 it became compulsory for cabmen to wear a metal badge showing their licence number, which they still do to this day. London’s taxi is identified by a computer-generated rectangular white plastic license plate, mounted on the boot lid. This plate is issued annually and bears a unique license number as well as the number of passengers the cab is licensed to carry and the vehicle’s index number. The practice of displaying an identification number goes back to the 17th century. Between 1654 and 1714, Hackney Coaches displayed a hackney registration number on the carriage doors. After 1714 a metal plate showing the hackney registration number was displayed on the rear of the hackney coach. When the Metropolitan Police took charge, a mark was stencilled on the rear of a cab each time it passed its annual inspection, showing the year the licence was issued and the initials of the current police commissioner. This practice continued with motor cabs until the 1950s, when the stencil was abandoned and replaced by a plate with numbers indicating to the month of issue. This was replaced this century by the current white plastic plate.

A taximeter is by definition what makes a cab a taxi cab. Fitting of a taximeter was made compulsory in London from July 1907. The modern taximeter was a German invention and its name comes from its inventor, Baron von Thurn und Taxis. Early taximeters were totally mechanical in operation and the clock that recorded waiting time had to be wound by hand. Meters of the 1960s and 1970s had a built-in electric clock but today, taximeters are fully electronic and operate on a time basis at speeds between zero and 10mph.

There has never been a law that says that London’s cabs should be black. A cab may be any color, but when the Oxford and the FX3 were introduced, their makers supplied them in a standard color of black. Few buyers were prepared to pay the extra money for a special color and so for three decades, black became the norm.