The Victorian Era

Urban Transport in the Victorian Era

Article · Cities & Entertainment · The Victorian Era, 1837–1901

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Urban transport in the Victorian era was the system of conveyances that moved millions of workers, shoppers, and visitors through the great cities of the period, carrying them between home and workplace, to the shops and markets, and out to the pleasures of the What were Victorian music halls?, the What was a Victorian pub like?, and the How did the seaside become popular?. The principal forms of urban transport in the period were the horse-drawn omnibus and tram, the hansom cab and the private carriage, the suburban railway, the river steamboat, and, from 1863, the What was the London Underground like in Victorian times?. The wider setting is described in Victorian Cities, Transport, and Entertainment.

The Omnibus

The omnibus was the principal form of public urban transport in the Victorian period. The When were London’s first omnibuses? was a major innovation of the period. The omnibus was a long, horse-drawn vehicle with seats arranged along the two sides of the body, a driver at the front, and a conductor standing at the rear door; from the 1850s an outside seat on the roof, reached by a small staircase or ladder at the back, doubled its capacity. The omnibus was pioneered in Nantes and Paris in the 1820s, and the first London omnibus service was started by George Shillibeer on 4 July 1829, running between Paddington and the Bank of England with a vehicle carrying 22 passengers drawn by three horses. Fares that at first lay beyond the reach of labourers fell steadily as competing operators multiplied routes and services, and by the end of the reign the omnibus carried passengers of every class to and from work, the shops, and the railway termini. The London General Omnibus Company, founded in 1855, was the principal operator of the period.

The Hansom Cab

The How did hansom cabs work? was the principal form of private urban transport in the Victorian period. The hansom cab was a light, two-wheeled, horse-drawn carriage in which the passengers sat in a low, covered compartment entered through folding front doors, while the driver sat on a raised seat behind the body, communicating with his fares through a trapdoor in the roof. Designed by Joseph Hansom and patented in 1834, the cab was relatively cheap, quick, and comfortable, and it carried its passengers to and from work, the shops, the theatre, and the railway station faster than any other vehicle in the traffic.

The London Underground

The What was the London Underground like in Victorian times? was the first underground railway in the world. The first section, the Metropolitan Railway between Paddington and Farringdon, was opened on 10 January 1863, engineered by John Fowler. The network was extended in the 1860s and 1870s by the Hammersmith and City Railway (1864), the District Railway (from South Kensington to Westminster, opened 24 December 1868), the East London Railway (1869, using the Thames Tunnel of 1843), and the Inner Circle service, completed in 1884. The first deep-level tube, the City and South London Railway, opened in 1890, and the Central London Railway, the Twopenny Tube, opened in 1900. The underground became the principal means by which the new suburban middle class travelled to and from work, and the workmen’s trains run at reduced fares opened the suburbs to working families as well.

The Trams and the Light Railways

The horse-drawn tram was the second most important form of public urban transport in the Victorian period, and it became the principal conveyance of the working class. Because a horse could pull a far heavier load on smooth rails than on the cobbled street, tram fares undercut those of the omnibus. The first street tramway in Britain was opened at Birkenhead in 1860 by the American promoter George Francis Train; London received its first permanent tramways in 1870; and systems soon followed in What was Victorian Manchester like?, in How did Birmingham grow in the Victorian era?, in What was Victorian Edinburgh known for?, in Glasgow, Liverpool, Dublin, and most of the larger towns of the kingdom during the 1870s and 1880s.

The electric tram arrived at the very end of the Victorian period. Blackpool opened the first electric street tramway in Britain on 16 September 1885 — its lines along the Promenade were the first to be electrified for public service in the world — and electric traction spread to cities such as Leeds, Bristol, Glasgow, and London during the 1890s. The electric tram offered cheaper and faster travel than the horse tram it replaced, and it became the characteristic vehicle of the working-class suburb in the Edwardian years.

The Suburban Railway and the Penny Farer

The Victorian period saw the development of the suburban railway, with cheap workmen’s trains and season tickets for the regular commuter. The South Eastern Railway’s service from Bricklayers Arms and London Bridge to the south London suburbs, the London and North Western Railway’s services from Euston and Broad Street to the north-west suburbs, and the Great Eastern’s service from Liverpool Street to Walthamstow and Enfield were the principal early examples. The development was made possible by the 1883 Cheap Trains Act, which obliged the railway companies to provide workmen’s trains at fares of a penny or thereabouts, and by the rise of the season ticket.

The penny-farthing bicycle, the safety bicycle, and the tricycle were the personal transport of the more adventurous middle-class Victorian, and cycling became a mass sport with the founding of the National Cyclists’ Union in 1878, the introduction of the safety bicycle in the 1880s (notably John Kemp Starley’s Rover of 1885), and the long-distance cycle touring of the 1890s. The motor vehicle appeared in the 1890s — the Lanchester of 1895 and the Benz Patent-Motorwagen imported in the same year are among the first in Britain — but the motor car was to be an Edwardian rather than a Victorian phenomenon.