London's Taxis Are Changing

Traditional London Black Cabs are being decorated like works of art.

May 7, 2007

Many of London's Taxi cabs have had a face life over the years. From being clad in sober black many have covered themselves in colourful, often amusing, advertisments.

London Taxis - How they have changed

For decades visitors to London have been greeted at airports and train stations by lines of chunky black cabs. However in recent years, like a sober widow throwing her weeds to the wind, taxis have emerged clad in newsprint, covered in psychedelic spots, sporting ads for lager, radio stations, chocolate bars, airlines - you name it and you’ll probably find it decorating a London cab.

Somehow, clambering into a shocking pink capsule just doesn’t seem the same, as one woman made clear when a taxi coated with an edition of the Evening Standard, a London daily newspaper, pulled up in front of her. “Thank you”, she huffed, “but I don’t want to be wrapped in newspaper like an order of fish and chips.” - and walked to next cab in line, a discrete black number.

The history of the London taxi is as colourful as some of today’s cabs. The proper name for the traditional black cab is ‘hackney carriage’, as stated on the driver’s official licence. During the 1700’s a private-hire carriage, pulled by a single horse,was known as a cabriolet - the French word for this type of vehicle. When it was fitted with a taximeter, a German invention to measure distance, it became a taxi-cabriolet or taxi cab for short. The French also gave us the word “hackney”, derived from haquenee - a hired horse.

Three hundred years ago Hackney Carriage drivers were regularly beaten up by the burly sedan-chair carriers who saw them as unwelcome competition. They also scrapped amongst themselves, competing for any business going. The in-fighting became so bad that in 1694 Parliament took over the control of the capital’s cabs and has kept it ever since.

Many visitors have a Merchant-Ivory view of English life; the nostalgia business is booming and in an era of uncertainty and changing values some of us look to the past as representing a golden age. Harrods has an original 1880 horse-drawn Brougham, complete with liveried driver, which it uses for deliveries to posh addresses; antique vans carry the goods of brewers and department stores across the capital, and brides are driven to the church in replica carriages.

There is also a hankering from many taxi drivers and passengers for the good old days when the Hackney Carriage had a certain grandeur about it and today London's Asquith taxis conjure up a time when you could cross London for a few pence. These new "old style" cabs are in the style of the 'sit-up-and-beg' Austin Low-Loader of the 1930's and are a hit with cabbies and customers alike. One Asquith driver says "They bring back a bit of tradition and that's what's fading from London. I mean, even some of the buses aren't red any more, are they?"

And what about the taxi drivers themselves? They too have changed a lot from the hurly-burly of the old days when they were literally fighting each other for business. It takes a lot of determination and hard work to become a London cabbie and today their 300-year-old trade is acknowledged to be the world’s best and safest - as well as the most friendly.

Cabbies are as a rule a gregarious lot. The sliding glass window that separates you from them is usually kept open and, both parties being willing, the chat will range from politics to who they had in the back of the cab that morning. You’ll hear some good yarns, as well as some tall stories!

The copyright of the article London's Taxis Are Changing in Historical Travel is owned by Cathy Smith. Permission to republish London's Taxis Are Changing in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.