Hansom Cab - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

  • Black Beauty by Anna Sewell - the central section has an evocative account of life as a Hansom cab driver in Victorian London, even though it is written from the point of view of the horse.
  • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories make frequent mention of hansom cabs.
  • "The Adventure of the Hansom Cab" is the third and final story in Robert Louis Stevenson's The Suicide Club cycle (1878). Retired British soldier Lieutenant Brackenbury Rich is beckoned into the back of an elegantly appointed hansom by a mysterious cabman who whisks him off to a party. Also, hansoms are often mentioned in his best horror work: "The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde".
  • In 1886, Fergus Hume published his novel The Mystery of a Hansom Cab, set in post-Gold Rush era Melbourne, Australia. The story was filmed in Australia in 1911, under the same title.
  • The 1889 film Leisurely Pedestrians, Open Topped Buses and Hansom Cabs with Trotting Horses, photographed by William Friese-Greene, shows Londoners walking along Apsley Gate, Hyde Park, with horse-drawn conveyances passing by.
  • In the comic series Scarlet Traces Britain has developed advanced mechanical hansoms based on reverse-engineered Martian technology.
  • In the book, A Picture Of Dorian Gray, the main mode of transport for the characters is by the use of Hansom cabs.
  • In the episode "The Rye" of the NBC sitcom Seinfeld. Kramer has taken over a friend's horse-drawn tourist carriage for a week and agrees to take Susan's parents on a hansom cab ride in the Central Park area as a distraction for George.

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