In the late 1800s the world’s largest cities were anxious about the threat from pollution associated with their transport systems. Just like today, pollution from personal transport and that resulting from businesses transporting goods from out-of-town railway terminals to the city centre, was making predictions of catastrophic environmental impact a hot topic in the daily press. In 1894, the Times of London predicted that in 50 years the streets of London would be buried under nine feet of horse manure! In 1898, at the world’s first international urban planning conference in New York, no solution could be found. It seemed urban civilisation was doomed.

Then, along came the motor car; steam, electric and internal combustion powered, and the predictions of an environmental apocalypse disappeared from the headlines for most of the following century.

From these opening two paragraphs, there are many routes that this blog post could follow. As readers will probably know however, the museum regularly plays host to school visits and one topic that has been discussed during recent visits is “… When did the car replace the horse?”.

Like many simple questions, there is not an easy answer to that question.

Personally, I remember as a four-year-old, seeing our milk being delivered by a horse-drawn Express Dairy milk cart and even today, some breweries continue to deliver their products on a horse-drawn wagon. These examples, however, represent the tail end (no pun intended) of the horse-drawn era.

Back to the question. According to the London Transport Museum, in 1900 there were more than 300,000 horses on the streets of London: at that time the largest city in the world. Not only were there over 11,000 Hansom Cabs, but there were also private carriages, trams and delivery vehicles (drays) and over 30,000 horses providing power for the London buses.

All major capital cities were faced with the same problem. New York, for example, had over 100,000 horses. But change was afoot!

In 1895 in Great Britain, there were 14-15 cars, all either imported from mainland Europe or from the USA. Even by 1900 the number was still in the region of 700-800. The horse was still clearly ahead in the race for numbers.

In comparison with France, Germany and the USA, the emergence of the motor industry in Britain was relatively slow. Prior to 1900, there were small-scale manufacturing initiatives, including the Santler brothers and Herbert Austin.

The 1894 Santler Dog Cart, known as the Malvernia and shown above (acknowledgements to Bonhams Auction website), was powered by a 3½ horsepower internal combustion engine and has a good claim to be Britain’s first petrol driven car. From 1901 to 1905 a series of successful company flotations – Austin, Humber, Riley, Rover, Singer, Sunbeam, Wolseley – started the ball rolling with larger-scale production. By 1909 there were around 53,000 cars on the roads of Great Britain and by 1913 annual production was about 16,000.

In 1908 in the USA, Henry Ford introduced the Model-T Ford, a car that by the end of its production run in 1927, had world-wide sales of over 15 million. In 1911, production of the Model-T started in Great Britain. Ford produced 7,310 cars in 1913 and became the leading British producer.

By October 1911, the largest London bus operator, the London General Omnibus Company, had replaced all horse-drawn buses with motor buses. For the city of London, the period between 1911 and the start of World War One was the period at which horse numbers fell behind cars. Horses continued to be used for most deliveries but horse buses and horse trams had disappeared and, by 1910, motor taxis heavily outnumbered horse-drawn cabs.

The switch from horses to cars in the world’s largest cities happened very quickly, with the US leading the way. In New York City the tipping point was 1908. In that year the number of cars passed the number of horses for the first time. Across the wider US, there is reliable data to show that the transition from horse-power to vehicle-power was between 1925 and 1930.

Falling car prices and improved reliability in the years following World War One, led to a similar transition period in Great Britain. In 1920 there were 187,000 cars registered in the country but by 1930 this number exceeded one million. So, a simple question, but one that has an answer dependent on where in the world you look and, even then, that answer will vary from city to rural area.

With today’s concern over environmental pollution, especially in our traffic-dense cities, it seems likely that the internal combustion engine powered car may be joining the horse as a rarity in our cities within the next two decades.

Finally, if you are visiting the museum, you may like to look out for our horse. Clearly, he is outnumbered by the cars but he doesn’t seem to mind!