In those days, they were horsedrawn and generally arranged by the individual local inns and hotels. Later there were two handsome cabs operating independently out of a particular hotel but servicing all of them, as well as to private homes in the mid 1880s.

Our photo this week from the Bathurst District Historical Society archives features five handsome cabs with their drivers in the early 1900s, lined up in Russell Street at the side of Bathurst’s Town Hall which faced William Street.

Notice the mass of aerial phone wires overhead, all terminating back at the Telegraph Office in the western wing of the Bathurst Court House. 

The Australian Mutual Provident Society building can be seen in the background in William Street with their well-known allegorical figures on the top. Where has it gone I wonder? The Australian Mutual Provident Society was formed in 1849 and later opened a branch in Bathurst.

The statues feature the “Amicus” group with the central figure being the goddess of Peace and Plenty, holding a palm branch which signifies peace and a cornucopia signifying plenty.

The male figure of Labour sits to her left and helps by holding the cornucopia, while the figures of the wife and the child sit on the goddess’s right, under the palm branch. Under the statue was Australian Mutual Provident Society’s Latin motto “Amicus certus in re incerta” meaning “A certain friend in uncertain times”.

By the time this photo was taken public hire cabs were being made by Bathurst coachbuilders when required. The name ‘cab, was a shortened French word ‘cabriolet’ which was an eighteenth-century design of a lighter weight carriage fitted with a folding hood.

An Englishman named Joseph Aloysius Hansom, a York architect, constructed his own cab design based the French pattern. It featured a folding hood to cover the two occupants on wet days and a rear platform for the driver to stand on, with the groom normally unprotected.

The man stood or sat at the rear of the vehicle with the reins passing through a brass support over the front of the roof. Later the passengers’ area was totally enclosed. 

Hansom’s design was patented in 1834 and first used in the town of Hinckley in Leicestershire. Pervious English designs used a heavier hackney carriage and when Hanson died on 29th June, 1882, few of the old heavier styles were operating.  Sydney saw their first cabs appear in the 1860s. 

As time went on Bathurst cabbies, as you can see, were uniformed in a three-piece suit and wore a bowler hat.

All would have carried a gold watch-chain complete with an accurate pocket watch. As there was often time to fill most cabmen smoked a pipe. Any cabs that were used at night were fitted with carriage lamps that would be checked and filled if necessary each day.  

Handsome cabs were generally a two-wheeled vehicle carrying two adult passengers however others had four wheels and were classed as a six-passenger cab. 

The latter could be pulled by one or usually two horses. The two-wheeled vehicles were designed to be balanced by the distribution of the loaded weight of the driver, passengers and luggage over the axle.

The level was then maintained by the horse which was attached between the two shafts. Usually they used wheels with metal rims and wooden spokes however two of the local Donnelly Brothers’ hansom cabs were fitted with rubber-tyred wheels and had patterned leather upholstery and carpet. 

Later cab models were fitted with front-opening doors that were able to be controlled from the driver’s position at the back of the cab. These doors were fitted as it stopped passengers alighting before they had paid for their fare. The Hanson cab was the forerunner of the motorised taxi we have today which began in Bathurst in 1915.