Continentals - Transportation

TRANSPORTATION.

In times Victorian, if you wanted to get around, you either used Shank's mare - or a real one. Whether you lived in town or country, you would have ridden in a horse-drawn vehicle at some point or other. If you were rich (lucky you!), the must-have for every upper-class carriage house was a big fancy turnout such as the "Vis-a-vis" at the top of the page. This rig was so named because the passengers sit, as the French phrase describes, face-to-face. It was the stretch limo of its time, the perfect vehicle to in which to take a Sunday drive around the park and see and be seen, and is still visible in tourist areas and at special events whenever that touch of classic Victorian elegance is called for.

For those who weren't particularly rich but still had places to go in a timely fashion, there was the Hansom cab, as ubiquitous in its own time as is the yellow taxi in the metropolitan areas of our own era. It would take one or two passengers from point A to point B at a brisk trot, and the cab drivers often took great pride in their appearance, especially if they owned their rigs and had smart, high-stepping Hackneys to pull them. Other drivers without the wherewithall to purchase their own horse and vehicle rented their rigs from a large stable, and were often harder on the equipment and animals since they didn't own them. So cabs and level of service could be variable in quality; "You get what you pay for" definitely applied here.

If you were Everybody Else, and didn't care to walk in the street and play horse-apple bingo or chance getting run over by a brewer's dray, you took the omnibus. This is where "Bus" in the modern sense actually comes from. Electric trams were still a few years away in most places, so what this consisted of was a vehicle with two levels of seating, and the upper seats were generally open to the elements. It was drawn by a strong, sturdy team which was anything but elegant but sufficed for the job. As is the case with today's buses, it was often covered with advertising. The omnibus was definitely the chariot of the working class.

Of course, this was also the age of steam! By the end of the 1880's, railroads had penetrated through most inhabited areas, and became the standard mode of intercity travel, though coaches were still a major presence. On the water, sailing vessels were gradually giving way to steamships in a trend that had begun decades earlier, but was starting to accelerate in the closing decades of the 19th century. Not until the coming of the internal combustion engine and diesel power would its dominance be eclipsed.