Complaints
Hearing

9 November 2000

Mr K.Blain (W56) Rules 6 and 17
Putting his meter on when being offered a non-rejectable job, therefore trying to fool the computer and then immediately booking back into the zone.
1 week suspension

Appeals Hearing

17 November 2000

Mr R.Woodford (P49J) Rules 2, 5, 12 and 25
Failing to make adequate arrangements for the return of a client's lost property.
Original sentence: 2 weeks suspension
Appeals sentence: Severe reprimand

The appeals committee consisted of:
Mr A.Togwell, Mr K.Cain, Mr R.Coy, Mr I.Belkin

Cabs waiting at Westminster Hall in C1654

CALLING A CAB IN THE 18th CENTURY WITH NO DAC!

With grateful thanks to Call Sign's man in Canada, ex-cab driver, now Librarian and expert on taxicab history, Norman Beattie, this article tells how the 18th and 19th centuries version of Dial-a-Cab's account clients managed to call for their cabs...

I know that London's Dial-a-Cab has been going since 1953 when it was founded by one Bonnie Martyn from the back of his London black taxicab, while some five years before that, the first experimental radio cab hit London's still war strewn streets. But in the 18th century, any such trips would have to have been arranged in advance and presumably would be a regular commute.
   The famous London diarist, Samuel Pepys, used to commute daily to his job in the early 1600's at the Admiralty, although it was by water taxi rather than hackney coach. In an emergency, Mr Pepys would likely send his servant trudging across town to make the arrangements.

Post-a-Cab!
Mail was a viable alternative after about 1850. London and other major cities had two postal deliveries a day, so it was possible to send a letter in the morning and get a reply in the afternoon!
In nineteenth century London among the middle and upper classes, it was standard practice to send out a servant to fetch a cab from the nearest taxi rank. Also, since there were so many cabs cruising illegally, an alternative method was simply to step outside your door and hail one if you lived on an even moderately busy street.
   In Jerome K. Jerome's 'Three Men in a Boat' (published in the 1880's), the sailors simply piled their luggage on the doorstep and waited for a cab to come by. Jerome makes a joke of the length of the wait and the amount of unwelcome attention attracted to them, but the tactic itself was apparently quite practical.
   Of course phones weren't available in the 1700's, but when they did appear, they spread as rapidly as personal computers did in the 1980's. The telephone came to my home city of Winnipeg in around 1880 and was quickly adopted as a means of communication by the local livery stables. The first phones were on direct lines to hotels, police stations and other popular venues, but once an exchange was established in 1881, private phones proliferated. And this was in a dinky little frontier town on the Canadian prairie!
   By 1883, one company had already installed a direct line from the cab rank to their livery stable, so that cabs could be sent from either location when a customer called. And so it all started...
   But now back in the 21st century, from all of us in Winnipeg to all of you at London's premier radio taxi organisation, a very merry Christmas and a very happy new year...

Norman Beattie
Winnipeg, Canada