Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 3.djvu/168

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NOTES AND QUERIES. [io< h s. in. FEB. is, 1905.

needful, conducing to pleasure and safety, and at the same time affording room for motor or sailing yacht traffic ; and if that is not sufficient, then there would be room for the whole of the British navy to lie in peace in a deep-water harbour, with never a fear for a return of the tide. The idea bristles with promise for London, but the misfortune of it is that the Thames Conservancy, having now completed, so far as is humanly possible, the pioneer idea of Teddington Lock, has fallen into an almost moribund condition. It is an old saying that the song of the dying swan is most melodious, but that does not hold good of the valedictory remarks of Sir Frederick Dixon Hartland, the retiring Chairman, when he said to a Daily Graphic interviewer :

"When you take into account the fogs that you

get on the river, and the immense turns in the

river, I don't see how steamboats can compete with

omnibuses and the railways. In Paris you have

boats each holding from forty to fifty, and running

every two minutes. A system properly worked

in summer as pleasure traffic might do, but I don't

see how they are to be carried on all the year, and

I fancy they will have to be stopped eventually. If

they will allow the sale of drinks on board they

might pay expenses. The profit on the drink would

not do it ; but people would come who otherwise

would stay away. This has been proved before."

_ That is scarcely a hopeful picture of the

tides of London's future ; and in such a case

a return to the primitive ways of old London

might not be entirely out of the question, or

even undesirable. The Civil and Mechanica"

Engineers' Society, in discussing this lock

at Gravesend, suggested that the Thame>

lightermen, who for years past had conductec

dumb barges up the river with the flood anc

down again with the ebb tide, would have

their motive power, and with it their living

taken from them. Such, indeed, was the

motive power of the historic Gravesend til

boats, the common passenger boats to London

from the time of Queen Elizabeth to Kinj

George III., when steamboats were inventec

to disturb the peaceful, happy scene.

such again is to be the scene of the Thames

the greatest river of the world, then wit!

a lock at Gravesend Denham's well-knowr

lines may be literally fulfilled. That woul<

be charming for a poetical London ; but

fear that the doom of the Thames is traffi

to the utmost in bigger and yet bigger steam

ships, and the Thames Conservancy's dredg

ing for deeper and yet deeper channels wi

scarcely accord with the dumb barge traffic

Even now the Suez Canal is becomin

obsolete through its insufficiency of depth

and ships of the future will be passing rpun

the Cape again for the want of a bigge

anal. May such ships of the future ever gain enter the Port of London 1 If with a reat bar with locks at Gravesend, yes, and o London's hearts' content ; but without it, hen good-bye to London as a seaport of the vorld, and good-bye to Gravesend as the ea-gate key. CHARLES COBIIAM.

Gravesend.

POLICE UNIFORMS : OMNIBUSES (10 th S. iii. 29, 73). The Illustrated London News of

May, 1847 (p. 288), gives the approximate iate of the introduction of the "knife-board" mnibus. There is on the page indicated an engraving of such a vehicle plying for hire, and also a sectional back view of this "im- proved omnibus. " From the letterpress I copy the following paragraphs :

"This new omnibus involves two points of mportance to the public improved construction ind consequent reduction of fare.

" Several of the new carriages are now building for ,he Economic Conveyance Company, by Messrs. Adams &Co., at their works, Fairfield, Bow ; who "iave patented this vehicle. Its prominent differ- ences from the omnibuses in general use, are its easiness of access, that [? the] roof of the carriage without stooping, of a tall person ; whilst a safe mode of holding on is afforded till the passenger is seated.
 * >eing raised, so as to admit the free entrance,

" The interior of the roof of the carriage is to be appropriated to advertisements, whilst its exterior will form a seat for the outside passengers. Thir- teen passengers may be carried within, and about fourteen without. For the interior conveyance twopence per passenger, and for the outside one penny, for an average distance of a mile will be charged. It is not, however, intended to convey passengers strictly by the mile, but from one part of the metropolis to another, averaging the distance of a mile ; and other omnibuses will be in attend- ance to convey the traveller to, or towards his destination."

JOHN T. PAGE. West Haddon, Northamptonshire.

To the London Road-Car Company belongs the credit of having introduced ''garden- seat " omnibuses into England. Its first vehicle, an illustration of which is given in my book ' Omnibuses and Cabs : their Origin and History,' published three years ago. had the staircase at the front ; but this arrange- ment proving dangerous to the public, altera- tions were made which produced the present type of omnibus. This was in 1881. The same company introduced the ticket system rolls of tickets and the L.G.O.C. adopted it in 1891. Neither company found it a reliable check, and it was relinquished for the "bell punch" system now in vogue. But several years before the London Road-Car Company came into existence, tickets were issued in the omnibuses of the Metropolitan