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Page:Omnibuses and Cabs.djvu/233

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Boulnois's Cab
213

its contents were literary odds and ends. In the "Answers to Correspondents" column, a cabman's MS. was declined with thanks. Its non-publication is to be regretted.

Some months later a new cab, invented and patented by Mr. William Boulnois, father of Mr. Edmund Boulnois, M.P., was placed on the streets. It was a two-wheeled closed vehicle, constructed to carry two passengers sitting face to face. The driver sat on a small and particularly unsafe seat on the top of it, and the door was at the back. It was, in fact, so much like the front of an omnibus that it was well known as "the omnibus slice." Its popular name was "the back-door cab." Superior people called it a "minibus." This cab was quickly followed by a very similar, although larger, vehicle invented by Mr. Harvey. It was called a "duobus," a name frequently applied to Mr. Boulnois's cab.

A young man of good family, who had squandered a fortune, conceived the idea of earning his living by driving a back-door cab of his own. His friends having supplied him with the necessary capital, he created a sensation by appearing one morning in the Haymarket driving a superbly