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Drivers rented their cabs and horses from the cab yards. Drivers who owned their own cabs might also rent parking and stable facilities here.
Source:
The Cab Yard.
Outing magazine, vol. XLV, 1904, p. 154.
Vance Thompson's Cab Drivers / 17
The London Cabby / 4
"If ever they wipes the 'ansom off the streets," he said darkly, "there's no knowing wot won't 'appen to this 'ere country." Wholly I share this gloomy forboding. The roast beef of old England comes frozen from Chicago; port wine is almost an anachronism; and while these bulwarks of the constitution are crumbling away, there is no knowing – if the hansom cab goes too – wot won't 'appen. And we came to the Crown at Clerkenwell Green. In the smoke of the great room I made out two-score cabbies, sitting behind pipes and mugs. We got seats near the head of the table, where Harry Matey, the Chair, sat in state. The silent and foggy man at the foot was Jock Smith at P.H.'s, who had had the misfortune. The "look-in" was a shilling; I gave something else – never mind what; Bill Worth, Not the Other One saw and approved and whispered: "'E deserves the support that circumstances merit." (My friend has a fine command of language; he can make it do almost anything.) There was a rush while the mugs were being refilled. In a little while the conversation picked up. They were talking "shop," which is the only proper thing to talk over a mug, whether it is your "shop" of brood-mares or orchids or Bach fugues, or my "shop" of first editions. The red face of Old Shapes at Stibbard's boomed through the smoke. He said: "I replies to wot Porky at Page's sez an' I sez, 'W'y can't they let us alone?'" "W'y?" repeated a gentleman, who I came to know as Bandy, Q.C.; "w'y? 'Cause they won't." "Wot is it, now?" asked Bill Worth, Not the Other One. "It's 'ats," said Tin Whistle Tommy, who was right hand man to him. It was explained that the authorities were considering the advisability of decorating the drivers with different colored hats, according to the districts they frequented. Far down the table someone exploded in a roar of laughter; it was Old Joe Sowerby. "Fawncy," he gurgled, "fawncy Parafine Jack in a green Trilby and Sonny Boy in a red top 'at and Old Blacking in a blue Baden-Powell – fawncy!"