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A watering station.

From the 1600s to the mid-1800s "watermen" brought buckets of water to the cab stand in exchange for tips from drivers. By the 1850s the waterman was a quasi-police official, enforcing cabstand regulations and charging a fee from each cab coming onto the stand and for each fare taken off the stand. Later, watermen were abolished and the stands became self-regulated. Cab drivers were now encouraged to water their horses at free troughs set up around London by the Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough Association.

In this picture, the name "Old Lion" on the water buckets suggests that this watering station may have been sponsored by a nearby pub. Pubs were one business that benefited from cab traffic.

Source:
Outing magazine, vol. XLV, 1904, p. 152.

Vance Thompson's Cab Drivers / 15

The London Cabby / 2

"The London Cabby by Vance Thompson
Outing, vol. XLV, 1904, pp. 151-160).

My friend the cabman – "Bill Worth, Not the Other One," to give him his full name – and I were sitting over the calm comfort of two half-pints of bitter in the bar parlor of "The Grapes." He was in an amiable mood, though when first I picked him up he was as desolate-minded a man as ever you saw. It was the fault of the fellow who took him in Park Lane.

"'E was a gentleman, 'e was," said Bill Worth, Not the Other One, with lofty scorn. "I'll tell you guvnor, 'e was a mucker. Larst of all 'e had me take 'im to the 'Ouse of Lords. I waited an hour before I found out 'e 'ad greened me for 'arf a sov. An' me twenty years in the dickey*."

He was a good deal of a philosopher, as well he might be after twenty years of driving a cab through the streets of London. His knowledge of men and horses was extensive. Taking them by and large the horses averaged a bit better than the men, he thought. It was his theory that if you trust a horse – and the horse knows you are trusting him – he'll do his best; but if you get into the habit of trusting men, you might as well turn in your badge and hang up your whip.

We had some more bitter – with a dash of Burton in it.

"If that isn't good," he remarked, wiping his mustache on the back of his hand, "slates aren't made of treacle."

The phrase was worth more than I paid the pretty barmaid of "The Grapes" altogether. Indeed Bill Worth, Not the Other One, is a man you would like, a friendly man, a man of out-going ways with folk, a long, stout man, his face red with wind and weather. What the Other One is I know not. I gathered that he is not distinguished for virtue and our Bill Worth has had a hard time trying to dodge the shadow of the Other One's ill-repute. What did he do, Bill Worth, the Other One? I have conned all the crimes in the calendar from breaking a mare's knees to breaking the ten commandments – riotously, all at once, like Moses – but none seems to account for his being cast out of the social world of cabmen. One is apt to overlook the fact that the cabman has his own society – his own outlook on the world – his own social code and ambitions. In the great, confused world of London his life is as distinct and self-centered as that of those who go to Court in smalls. Among the innumerable cities that go to the making of London there is the cabman's city, with a population of very nearly 50,000; it is scattered here and there; it has its notable people, obscurely celebrated in the cabman's newspapers – its "Knock Softly" and "Crimea Sailor Jack," "Coachey First Past the Post," "Silver King, Not the Blackleg," "Doughey," "Charley Will Work," and "Sweet Apple Joe," and many another; it has its clubs and churches; it has all the kindliness and jealousy, the good and ill, that ferment in any other city of that size. Doubtless I have underestimated the population of the cabman's world of London. There are 15,500 drivers, for instance; most of them are married and most of them have gained something in the way of children; then there are the kin of the craft – the "Mush," the retired cabmen and shelter attendants, the cab washers and stablemen; I daresay the estimate should be increased by a third. Little by little I got to know something about this faction of London life, thanks to the guidance of Bill Worth, Not the Other One.