STORY OF A LONDON HACKNEY COACHMAN.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume VII, Issue 1937, 12 March 1885, Page 3

STORY OF A LONDON HACKNEY COACHMAN.

When I was seventeen 1 had a hackney coach and horses of my own, provided by my father, and so I was started in the world. The first time I.plied witli my own coacli was when Sir Francis Burdett was sent to the tower, Sir Francis was all the go then. Ah, the old times was the racketty times! I've often laughed and said that 1 could say what porhaps nobody, or almost nobody in England, can say now, that I'd been driven by a king. He grew to'be a king afterwards —George IV. One night, you see, sir, I was called off the stand, and toldt at the British Coffee-house in Cockspur street, I was a lad then, and when I pulled up the waiter ran out and said-: '' You jump down and get inside; the Prince is a-going to drive himself," I didn't-much like tho notion of it, and just as I was getting down, and had my, foot on the wheel, out came the Prince of Wales, and four or five rattle-brained fellows like himself. Iliad hardly time' to see them, f,or the Prince gripped me by ihe ankle and waist-band of by mine; me right into the coacnTand it was open, as happened luckily. I was little then, and ho must •havebeen a strong man. The Prince was not a bad driver. Indeed he drove very well for a Prince; but lie didn't take the corners, or crossings careful enough for a regular jarvey. Well, sir,- the Prince drove that night to a house in King-street, St. James's; There was another gentleman on the box with him. It was'a gaming-house he went to. A wet opera-night was the night for us, when, Madame Catalani was performing. Many a time I've heard it sung out, "A guinea to Portman Square!" and I've had it myself. At the time I'm speaking of, hackney coachmen took 30s a day all the year round. Why I myself have taken £'it! and £lB a week through May, June, and .1 uly. But then you see, sir, we bad a monopoly. Our' number was limited to 1,200. We drove i always noblemen's or gentlemen's old carriages—" family coaches" they were sometimes called. There was mostly arms and ooronets on them. We got them of the cpaclwnakers in Long Acre, who took the noblemen's old carriages when they ■ made new. The Duke of —complained once that his old carriage, with his arms painted beautiful on the panels, was plying in the streets at Is a mile. His arms ought not to be degraded that way, he said; so the coach-maker had the coach new painted, When the cabs first came in we didn't think much about it. We thought— at least the most of us did—that things was to go on in the old way fpr ever'; but it was found out in time—that .it was. When the clarences—the cabs that cany foiir—came in, they cooked the I h,acki]ey coaches in no time,