In bygone days

Modern vets have much scientific knowledge behind them, but what about their forebears? Kieran O’Brien MRCVS opens up the world of Victorian vets in London

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PICTURE the scene. It is midday in 1880 on a busy London street. It is very noisy. Having been loaded at King's Cross station, a huge cart laden with hay and towed by two heavy horses trundles past on its way to one of the many stables in the capital, its iron-rimmed wheels clattering along the cobbled street.

A double-decker "omnibus" drawn by another two horses passes by. These horses will complete a three-hour shift, then be replaced by another pair. To ensure an unbroken bus service, allowing for injury, lameness and fatigue, each bus required around 11 horses, all housed in central London.

By 1890 there were 2,000 horse buses in London, powered by some 25,000 horses, each with an average working life of only five years.

A hansom "taxi" cab then passes, towed by a single high-stepping horse, driven by a driver sitting high up at the back overlooking the two passengers in the cab below.

There were 11,000 hansom cabs in London in 1900.

As the noisy equine traffic bustles by, the all-pervasive smell of horse manure is everpresent. Littering the streets everywhere, the estimated 1,000 tonnes of dung deposited daily in London was collected by 8,000 sweepers employed by the city authorities, who started work every day at 8pm and finished at 6am the following morning.

The dung attracted huge numbers of flies during the summer, and in 1894 The Times newspaper predicted that, "In 50 years every London street will be buried under nine feet of manure". Fortunately, following the appearance of the first motorised vehicle on English roads in 1895, the rapid proliferation of motor cars solved the dung problem.

Remarkably, Great Western Railways housed 600 horses at Paddington station in a single building on four floors, grouped by their coat colours. They were used for shunting railway vehicles and for delivering, among other things, the 3,000 churns of milk that arrived at the station every day.