the service of the new Company. On the same day Mr Leonard Willing and his partners—the former the oldest omnibus proprietor in London—transferred to the Company the Stoke Newington, Kingsland and Dalston lines, consisting of twenty-two omnibuses, two hundred horses, and seventy men.
In a few days several other lines passed into the hands of the Company, making it the owner of one hundred and ninety-eight vehicles and nineteen hundred and forty horses, and the employer of six hundred and seventy men. Of the vehicles purchased seven were four-horse mails, five running to Woodford and two to Barnet. The Company had hoped to start work with five hundred omnibuses, but many of the well-established proprietors could not be persuaded to sell their businesses, and consequently the London General Omnibus Company had to be content, for a time, with three hundred.
The proprietors who did dispose of their businesses, and retired altogether from omnibus proprietorship were: Messrs. Bennet, Breach, Chancellor, Clark, Forge, Hartley, Hawtrey, Hinckley. Horne, Hunt, Johnson, Kerrison,
