The million-peopled city
Garwood, John
1853
Their Sunday Occupation in the Metropolis of a professedly Christian Country scarcely less than on Week-days, and sometimes greater, while an Extreme Amount of Toil is imposed on them during the Week.
Like the cabman, the omnibus-man has no Sabbath. Regarding the Sabbath only as a day of rest to the body, he is in this respect ordinarily worse off than the horses he drives. If he be even regarded as possessing no soul to whose immortal interests he needs to give heed, and if he be degraded to a level with his cattle, and regarded as only possessed like them of a body, he is even then sunk below them,-for they enjoy a day of rest, but he does not. They are property, and cost money. He is to be had at any time, and a slavish amount of work is to be had out of him beyond what it would be for the interest of omnibus proprietors that their horses should render, and, indeed, beyond what they would be able to render. Much of what is written in the previous chapter concerning the drivers of cabs on the Sunday is equally applicable to the men engaged in omnibuses. Indeed, in some respects, the case of the latter is the worse. For, first of all, the running of omni- buses on the Sunday is more general than the running of cabs, because it is more profitable, and the labour of the omnibus servant on other days is far the more severe, rendering a loss of the rest of the Sunday the greater hardship and oppression. The feelings of the men with reference to the numerous riders in their vehicles with and in their hands, who are set down at church and chapel-doors, is also much the same, as any reader may discover by seating himself on a Monday morning by the side of an omnibus- driver on his box, and inquiring of him respecting his customers on the previous day. Considering that gentle- men do not come to town on Sunday, and that business | |
213 | is suspended on that day at the exchange, the bank, the counting-house, and the warehouse, it seems surprising that there should scarcely be an omnibus less plying the streets on Sunday than on other days, while on some lines of road omnibuses are even more numerous. What must the foreigners who visited us in have thought of our boasted Sunday observance (notwithstanding the closing of the of that year on that day) when they saw our exten- sive Sunday travelling ? "What will they say of us? Never since England has been what she is have so many foreigners visited her as during the year . ... They came from all countries, . . . the Italian, the Spaniard, and the American ... No doubt they will speak highly of the Great Exhibition and of London sights. But what will they say of a London Sabbath, . . . when they find that, to say nothing of carriages and hackney-cabs, two to three thousand omnibuses, requiring at least 20,000 horses, run on a Sunday, as well as on other days, employing 11,000 individuals, 6,000 of whom are drivers and con- ductors, who work more than 16 hours a-day? . . . What, under such circumstances, are these foreigners likely to think, and what will they say of us ?"[1] |
Footnotes: [1] "Illustrated Tracts," published by Partridge and Oakey. No. I. |
