London and the Victorian Railway

Railways and Victorian London seem inseparable but it is easy to forget that in the nineteenth century the majority of the haulage of people and goods around London’s streets was still performed by horses and most people got around on foot.

The first underground railway opened in 1863, others followed, as did surface railways, but as far as public transport was concerned the horse bus and horse tram were the main forms of transport right into he 1890s. Coal, as well as general merchandise, arriving in London by rail had to be delivered from goods depots to the consumers and this, of course, was almost all done using horses.

So, until the internal combustion engine became a practicality, the number of horses, and people working with them, increased steadily. In the 1870s Gustav Dore produced an impression of traffic congestion in a view looking down Ludgate Hill towards St. Paul’s. There are dozens of horses in this picture of traffic gridlock and the confusion is not helped by someone trying to drive a herd of sheep through the streets!