WHAT HAS KING CHARLES I AND OLIVER CROMWELL GOT TO DO WITH THE TAXI TRADE?
London became the capital City of England in the 12th Century, taking the title from Winchester. Apart from being the largest City in the UK, it also has the River Thames which is a major maritime route for shipping and supplies. The River Thames in London was one of the reasons why Winchester lost its position as the capital of England. A convenient way of travelling was to either own your own barge or to take a small rowing boat which was classed as a river taxi.
Captain Bailey can be credited for starting the first hackney coaches in London. These were small vehicles, seating no more than two passengers and drawn by two horses. This form of transport became very popular in London, but congestion started to occur and King Charles I in 1635 decided that restrictions should be placed on the number of coaches that operated within the City.
Another problem that had developed, was the watermen who operated the small
boats on the River Thames and were complaining that the hackney coaches were stealing work from them (Sounds familiar!) The Hack- ney men then submitted a petition in June 1636 asking if a hundred of them might be allowed to form a corporation to ply for hire? The King refused but due to other problems that beset him, three years later in 1639, the requested licence was granted, 'To the Corporation of Coachmen'.
After the English Civil War, in 1654 Oliver Cromwell authorised the establishment of the fellowship of master hackney coach- men, by an Act of Parliament, and taxi driving became a profession, so to speak, accounting for the present day definition of taxis as hackney carriages.
The effective control of the taxi industry did not happen for a couple of centuries until the 1847 Town and Police Clauses Act, which we still work under today! This Act gave taxis the exclusive right to ply for
hire, however, sections of this act only apply to England and Wales and not London.
If you look at Section 37 of the 1847 Act, it stipulates that Commis- sioners may from time to time licence to ply for hire such numbers of hackney coaches or carriages as they think fit. Licensing author- ities were also permitted to make byelaws for regulating the conduct of proprietors and drivers of hackney carriages, the num-
Ian Hall, Chairman Southampton Hackney and Private Hire Association (SHPHA) Southampton hackney and private hire drivers in our city
www.southamptontaxis.org
ber of passengers it can carry and to have a plate on the back dis- playing the approved number of persons.
If we move on from 1847 to 1961, we had in London the introduction of the minicab (private hire vehicle). In 1960 in the House of Com- mons a Mr Rupert Speir a Conservative MP for Hexham, (Northumberland) described the current taxi service, certainly in London, to be inadequate. He wanted a telephone service and a vehicle of a saloon type to be made available to the general public.
Along comes a Mr Michael Gotla, Managing Director of Welbeck Motors Ltd who was a London used car dealer and Ford agent. Whilst reading law at University College London, he started to do private hire chauffeur work in the evenings. His intention was to put two hundred small car vehicles on the road by the end of 1961. Mr Gotla wanted men and women to drive these vehicles wearing a uni- form, a completely new approach to what the public were used to.
These cars were not licensed by Scotland Yard, so they were forbid- den to ply for hire. He gave directions to his drivers to tell prospective passengers to hail the first mini cab that they saw, the driver would then hand them the cabs microphone from the 2-way radio system, where they could order another cab from headquar- ters. This action would then hire the vehicle and the price was to be one shilling per mile with no initial charge or extras. (The current taxi rate at the time was 1 shilling and 9 pennies for three fifths of a mile) The cars were Renault Dauphines or Ford Prefects.
Gotla’s cars were not the only private hire vehicles at the time. There were Carlines of Wimbledon who had Ford Anglias and Sylvester Car Hire also operating in London that used the Fiat Mul- tipla, which could carry four passengers.
The taxi trade and taxi drivers were vilified by the press, saying taxi drivers were rude and arrogant. The drivers fought back protesting that they had to undergo a strict test of knowledge which could take up to three years where their driving ability and character were examined, whereas mini cab drivers do not have any of these conditions, plus the actual taxi has to conform to cer- tain specifications.
To be continued in next month’s issue
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48 OCTOBER 2020
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