How many wheels were there on each hansom cab, the horse-drawn taxis that used to operate in London in Victorian times?
19th-century London by 1854 there were 3,000 of them in service, painted in bright reds, greens, and blues, and each carrying an average of 300 passengers per day. The two-wheeled hansom cab, first seen in 1834, was the most common type of cab on London's roads throughout the Victorian era, but there were many types, like the four-wheeled Hackney carriage, in addition to the coaches, private carriages, coal-wagons, and tradesman's vehicles which crowded the roads. There were 3,593 licensed cabs in London in 1852; by the end of the century there were estimated to be some 10,000 in all. London was the
Hansom cab were widely used in the United Kingdom until 1908 when Taximeter Cars (petrol cabs) started to be introduced and were rapidly accepted; by the early 1920s horse-drawn cabs had largely been superseded by motor vehicles. The last licence for a horse-drawn cab in London was relinquished in 1947. A restored hansom cab once owned by Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt is on display at the Remington Carriage Museum in Cardston, Alberta, Canada. There is another surviving example, owned and operated by the Sherlock Holmes Museum in London; in common with other horse-drawn vehicles it is not permitted to enter any of the