The Victorian Era

When Were London's First Omnibuses

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

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London’s first omnibuses were introduced on 4 July 1829, when George Shillibeer, a coach builder from the City of London, started the first omnibus service in the city, running from Paddington to the Bank of England via the New Road and the City Road. The omnibus was a new form of public transport, a long, horse-drawn vehicle with seats arranged along the two sides of the body, a driver at the front, a conductor at the rear, and a roof over the top, with a staircase at the rear, doors at the rear, and windows on the sides. The omnibus was a major innovation of the period, and the omnibus was the principal form of public urban transport in the Victorian Cities, Transport, and Entertainment of the period.

The Shillibeer Omnibus

The Shillibeer omnibus was the first London omnibus, and the first regular omnibus service in England. Shillibeer, a Yorkshire-born coach builder, had seen the omnibus in Paris, where Stanislas Baudry had been running a service between the centre of the city and the new suburb of La Villette since 1828, and he obtained the licence to run a similar service in London. The Patent Safety Omnibus, as Shillibeer called it, was a long, horse-drawn vehicle with seats for 22 passengers, drawn by three horses harnessed in line, and operated by a driver and a conductor. The service ran from Paddington to the Bank of England via the New Road (later the Marylebone, Euston, and Pentonville Roads) and the City Road, with a fare of one shilling inside and sixpence outside. The service was an immediate success and was soon extended.

The omnibus was operated by Shillibeer and his partners until 1834, when the business was taken over by a succession of operators; from 1855 the principal operator was the newly formed London General Omnibus Company, which for the rest of the century was the largest omnibus company in the world. By 1900 the London General Omnibus Company was operating a fleet of over 3,000 horse-drawn omnibuses on more than 100 routes, carrying some 400 million passengers a year.

The Form of the Omnibus

The typical London omnibus of the 1880s and 1890s was a long, four-wheeled vehicle with an enclosed body seating 14 passengers inside on longitudinal bench seats and 14 more on the open top, reached by a curved iron staircase at the rear. The driver sat on a small box at the front, and the conductor stood on a small platform at the rear, calling out the destinations to passing passengers. The vehicles were built to order by specialist coachbuilders, and the typical colours were dark red or dark green with the operator’s name picked out in gilt. Fares varied with distance but were typically twopence or threepence for a journey across the centre of the city.

The Omnibuses of the Provincial Cities

The omnibus spread quickly to the other British cities. The first Manchester omnibus ran in 1832, the first Liverpool and Birmingham services in 1834, the first Glasgow service in 1835, and the first Edinburgh service in 1847. Each city developed its own distinctive service, and the larger provincial cities — Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, Leeds, Bristol, and the rest — had their own omnibus companies in the 1850s and 1860s, gradually taken over by the great combines of the late Victorian period. The omnibus was the dominant form of public transport in the British cities until it was in turn supplanted by the electric tram and the motor bus of the Edwardian years.