Image: Bianconi-car (8 passenger)

Description: 8-passenger Bianconi car - horse-drawn coach, drawn by Michael Angelo Hayes. Hayes, writing in Charles Bianconi: A Biography 1786-1875, notes (p. 107): About 1830 the Massey Dawson cars [named after a popular Tory Squire] were in the zenith of their prosperity. They ran on two wheels, they held five persons on each side, and were drawn by one horse in the shafts, and another horse whose traces were fixed to a swinging bar running alongside. This swinging bar Mr. Bianconi used to call an outrigger. The weight placed on the back of one horse was very great: eleven persons, including the driver, a lot of luggage piled up on the centre or well of the car, and not infrequently a boy on the top of the luggage. They used, nevertheless, to travel at the rate of seven or eight miles an hour. … One of the principal reasons that induced him to give up the long two- wheeled cars with shafts, and substitute for them four-wheeled cars, with a pole and traces, was the difficulty he found in obtaining horses large and powerful enough to stand the weight on the back of the shaft horse. At the conclusion of the [Napoleonic War] in 1815, large strong horses were easily obtained ; they were then bred for the artillery, but at the time I speak of they were procured with considerable difficulty and at a great cost.
Title: Bianconi-car (8 passenger)
Credit: Mary Anne (Mrs. Morgan John) O'Connell (1878) Charles Bianconi: a biography, 1786-1875 - Public Domain - https://archive.org/details/charlesbianconib00oconiala/page/n8/mode/1up
Author: Michael Angelo Hayes, artist
Usage Terms: Public domain
License: Public domain
Attribution Required?: No