page_title: Hansom cab
section_title: In popular culture
hierarchical_section_title: Hansom cab / In popular culture
caption_attribution_description: English: York, Castle Museum.
context_page_description: The hansom cab is a kind of horse-drawn carriage designed and patented in 1834 by Joseph Hansom, an architect from York. The vehicle was developed and tested by Hansom in Hinckley, Leicestershire, England. Originally called the Hansom safety cab, it was designed to combine speed with safety, with a low centre of gravity for safe cornering. Hansom's original design was modified by John Chapman and several others to improve its practicability, but retained Hansom's name.
  Cab is a shortening of cabriolet, reflecting the design of the carriage. It replaced the hackney carriage as a vehicle for hire; with the introduction of clockwork mechanical taximeters to measure fares, the name became taxicab.
  Hansom cabs enjoyed immense popularity as they were fast, light enough to be pulled by a single horse and were agile enough to steer around horse-drawn vehicles in the notorious traffic jams of nineteenth-century London. There were up to 7500 hansom cabs in use at the height of their popularity and they quickly spread to other cities in the United Kingdom and Ireland, as well as continental European cities, particularly Paris, Berlin, and St Petersburg.
context_section_description: Black Beauty by Anna Sewell - the central section has an evocative account of life as a Hansom cab driver in Victorian London, even though it is written from the point of view of the horse.
  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories make frequent mention of hansom cabs.
  In G. K. Chesterton's 1908 novel The Man Who Was Thursday, the climactic chase sequence sees the protagonist and his companions pursue the mysterious president of the Central Anarchist Council through the streets of London, all in hansom cabs.
  "The Adventure of the Hansom Cab" is the third and final story in Robert Louis Stevenson's The Suicide Club cycle (1878). Retired British soldier Lieutenant Brackenbury Rich is beckoned into the back of an elegantly appointed hansom by a mysterious cabman who whisks him off to a party. Also, hansoms are often mentioned in his best horror work: "The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde".
  In 1886, Fergus Hume published his novel The Mystery of a Hansom Cab, set in post-Gold Rush era Melbourne, Australia. The story was filmed in Australia in 1911, under the same title. A movie was made for TV in 2012.
  The 1889 film Leisurely Pedestrians, Open Topped Buses and Hansom Cabs with Trotting Horses, photographed by William Friese-Greene, shows Londoners walking along Apsley Gate, Hyde Park, with horse-drawn conveyances passing by.
  The 1955 book "The Magician's Nephew" written by C.S. Lewis features a Hansom cab being used by Jadis while in England.
  In the 1956 movie Around the World in 80 Days, Phileas Fogg (David Niven) and Passepartout hired a Hansom cab to reach the Reform Club as fast as possible before the finishing deadline.
  The book Farewell Victoria (1933) by T. H. White has the protagonist ending his days as a hansom cab operator in its fading years, which is part of the sustained metaphor brought out in the title.
  In the comic series Scarlet Traces Britain has developed advanced mechanical hansoms based on reverse-engineered Martian technology.
  A Hansom cab is used in the 1969 episode 'Fog' of The Avengers, a British TV series 1961–1969.
  "New York and Turkey" is the second episode of the second season of Laff-A-Lympics, the eighteenth episode overall. The contestants have a Hansom cab race and a "crown the Statue of Liberty" contest in New York; then a unicycle race and a swimming relay race in Turkey.
  In the book, The Picture of Dorian Gray, the main mode of transport for the characters is by the use of Hansom cabs.
  In the book, Tales of Three Hemispheres, by Lord Dunsany, first published in 1919, in the story "East and West", a hansom cab with a glass door is followed by three others, in North China.
  In an episode of Seinfield, Kramer works driving a Hansom cab while its owner is on vacation.  Kramer feeds the horse, Rusty, "Beef-a-Reeno" prior to giving a romantic ride to George's future in-laws, causing the entire party to be assaulted by the horse's flatulence.
  In the book, "The Alienist", by Caleb Carr a frequently used mode of transportation for the characters are hansom cabs.
  The game Assassin's Creed: Syndicate, set in Victorian London, features Hansoms as a type of drivable carriage.
caption: A hansom cab in York Castle Museum
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