R.D.Blumenfeld on Omnibus Racing

December 17th, 1901

The police are very active now in suppressing omnibus racing, which is becoming dangerous. I was on a Road Car omnibus to-day in Whitehall. A London General Company omnibus pulled up alongside. Next came a pirate. They all started at once, and the drivers lashed the horses into a gallop, the while the vehicles rocked like boats. The passengers got excited, and one man's top hat blew off. When we got to Trafalgar Square the Road Car was leading by a length, and the pirate, with his starved horses, was one hundred yards behind. The new rate of a penny from Charing Cross to the Bank seems to act as a magnet to the former point, and the rivals take great risks in getting there first.

R.D.Blumenfeld on Omnibus Seats

October 13th, 1900
On the box seat of a Hampstead-bound Atlas omnibus to-day the old driver was lamenting the fact that so many good horses have been taken away for the war, and that there is no joy in driving the indifferent cattle which now draw the omnibuses. He says his regular box seat customers, who pay a tip of a shilling a week for a reserved seat beside him, are falling away. The young men prefer bicycles nowadays, or hansoms, and the old men do not like climbing up and down now that the omnibuses are so much larger.

Horse Traction

Just came across an article which the hard-core equine economists amongst you might enjoy ...

Horse Traction in Victorian London by Ralph Turvey

For a similar contemporaneous account, see The Horse World of London.