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For a different view of the treatment of London cab horses, see Les Femmes Cocher, 87. Cab horses were routinely worked to the point of exhaustion, but even they were not expected to to work through a full fourteen hour shift. Daily cab rentals included a change of horses.
Source:
Changing Horses at the Stables.
Outing magazine, vol. XLV, 1904, p. 159.
Vance Thompson's Cab Drivers / 21
The London Cabby / 8
The driver of a four-wheeler pays less cab-rent – six or seven shillings a day – but his earning power is less than that of the aristocrat of the craft, he in the dickey. Usually he is a weedy, old man, who has looked out on life, through red-lidded eyelids, so long and has come to know it so well, that the milk of human kindness in him is more curds and whey. He is essentially a creature of the fog and night. Mankind, as he knows it, is either coming away from a railway station with too much luggage or going home – sodden or riotous with too much drink. Why should he have confidence in his fellow men? He and not Edgar Saltus should have written the Philosophy of the Disenchantment. His melancholy destiny it is to go through life trying to detect pewter half-crowns. My brave cabby of Piccadilly is of another kidney. Sonny Boy advises me that the world is all right. He takes the air of day; a flower is on his coat; ambition is warm in his heart and head. Perhaps at bottom he is not the ideal cabby. He does not think, as every man should, that his trade is the finest in the world. He has a gragh for the "metallic pencil fraternity," as he calls it. Some day or other he will try bookmaking. "When I get a bit o' money," says Sonny Boy, "I'll have a try at it. The turf 'as broke me and it's got to mend me." The vision grows upon him. "There is a gent – a gentleman rider he calls 'imself, though he never rode between the flags in his life, but he is a rare, good 'un to 'ounds – well, this gent and me think of starting in a small way, ready money o' course. Now follow me," says Sonny Boy brightening, "after a while I'll get a few 'orses. Five-and-twenty or thirty 'orses – that's the little game – and have a good thing at a good price and run 'im. Or perhaps a safe un. That's life, that is. Look at Lipton. Sir Thomas, 'e is. 'E's got more money than that 'orse could jump over and wat's 'e do? Sails a bally tub. W'y don't 'e go in for the gallopers? 'E's wrong in 'is 'ead or 'is 'eart, 'e is." And so fond fancy paints the future – joyous future full of gallopers and safe 'uns – for the ambitious cabman. It may not come true, but what then? The best of life is the dream we dangle in front of us. And the donkey dreaming of carrots (or Sonny Boy dreaming of five and twenty 'orses) is quite as reasonable as you and I who dream of getting our names in print or endowing libraries; and a trifle nearer the attainment of his wish. [The End]