One Horse or Two?
In our February Members’ Newsletter, we have an article by Hannah Renier on Victorian animal rights campaigner Lewis Gompertz. It features an 1865 photo of a horse-drawn ominbus, reproduced below. I captioned it as a single horse vehicle, although one of our members wrote in, convinced there are two horses. There is what appears to be the back of a horse’s neck, but no sign of a second horse’s legs, harness, tracery etc. Hannah things a second horse is possible, explaining that long exposure times required in early photography, sometimes rendered things that were moving almost invisible.
What do you think? By observation or specialist knowledge, please comment.
I’m not a photographic expert, but having increased the size of the photo and looking carefully I’m fairly certain that I can clearly see the neck of a second horse to the right of the first horse’s neck. It’s either that or we’re looking at a very strangely shaped single horse pulling this omnibus.
I’m the pedant who wrote to Mike questioning the one-horse carriage. The missing legs are the conundrum but, as Mike says, the camera-shy horse could be moving some of them, and hiding the others behind the wheels. I reckon one fetlock can be spotted. 11 people, at least, plus the carriage is rather a lot for one lonesome nag!
This looks like a “knifeboard bus ” , which would have been pulled by 2 horses ; there is an example in the London Transport Museum in Covent Garden .
I agree. I could see a hoof, the neck and some of the harness on the side of the second horse. I’m also quite sure that this bus could not have been drawn by a single horse of that size.
There would have to be two horses in harness for this to possibly be hauled, the horse seen is too far on the left not to have another beside him to balance the pull. If it were a one horse drawn carriage the horse would be positioned more to the middle. Based on this I believe this to be a two horse drawn carriage.
A single horse pulls the vehicle in a shaft. There is no shaft only traces. So there is a longbeam and there are two horses. Perhaps one horse is just going to the toilet.