London’s horse bus era 1829 – 1910

At the start of the nineteenth century, there were no buses or railways in London. Instead only horsepower and hand carts were used to transport goods to and from the docks and markets. Ordinary people walked to work and rarely left their neighbourhoods, while the wealthy had private carriages or used cabs or stage coaches. The city was compact, and its narrow streets crowded, with about one million inhabitants.

London was entering a boom period at this time. As the population grew, the spoils of industrialisation, colonialism and trade allowed the prosperous to move out to villages like Islington and Paddington, and new areas like Brixton. These became the first suburbs, as the city expanded, engulfing them. 

George Shillibeer, a coachbuilder and stable keeper, viewed these developments with interest. There were already hundreds of short stage coaches serving the suburbs and the City by the 1820s, but he had seen something new in Paris. In July 1829, he tried it in London on the most popular commuter route between Paddington and the Bank of England. Shillibeer’s service differed from stage coaches in many ways: they ran to a strict timetable, did not need to be booked, could be hailed from anywhere along the route, and passengers were assisted on and off by a conductor, who took the fares.  

Shillibeer’s Omnibus, meaning ‘for all’ in Latin, took wealthy suburbanites of Paddington to their jobs in the City. At one shilling, the fare was far beyond the means of most people.  

Shillibeer’s idea proved popular but attracted numerous competitors. He did well for the first year, but his heavy 20 seat coach needed three horses, and operators with smaller vehicles drawn by two horses soon drove him to bankruptcy. By 1832 there were 400 horse buses operating in London. As horse bus numbers grew, operators started to cooperate, adopting common colour schemes to identify routes, and controlling the numbers of buses on each.  

The Great Exhibition of 1851 was a great boon to London’s omnibus businesses. Crowds flocked to the Hyde Park site and buses were so full that people started sitting on their roofs, leading to the addition of a crude backless bench seat running down the centre of the vehicle, reached by a ladder. This ‘knifeboard’ arrangement was formalised and became the standard, until the advent of a proper staircase and forward facing ‘garden seats’ in the 1880s. 

In 1856 the London General Omnibus Company (LGOC) entered the London bus market, which they would soon dominate. Within a year they owned 75% of London’s buses, and by 1860 they were carrying 40 million people annually.  

From 1863, the underground railways challenged the LGOC on some routes, but did not have the same flexibility. Horse trams, running on fixed rails in the road from 1870, were cheaper and popular in working class districts, but they were forbidden from entering the City or the West End. The bus remained the most popular and profitable form of public transport.  

The LGOC bought out most of it is competitors in the 1900s, growing ever stronger, but Tilling’s held out until 1933 and the formation of London Transport. This Tilling horse bus in the Museum collection dates from the 1870s.

By the 1890s, London had over 2,000 horse buses and 25,000 horses, with stables and a small army of grooms, blacksmiths and saddlers. But in 1899 the LGOC started its first trials with motorised buses, powered first by steam and later petrol. Change happened slowly, but the process had begun.

The LGOC experimented with most of the available early motor buses in the following years, building up the experience and expertise that would lead to the development of their revolutionary B type bus of 1910. For the LGOC, the horse bus era ended in October 1911. Their old competitors the Tilling company operated the last London horse bus service in London on 4 August 1914, the day Britain declared war on Germany and became embroiled in the First World War.