The motorised taxicab (electrically-powered, notably), made its first appearance in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in 1897. Later, petrol-driven cabs of French origin, reflecting Gallic infatuation with the novel mechanical invention, rapidly eclipsed the horse-drawn carriages known as Growlers. In 1912 Mayfair magazine called last orders for the horse, reporting that ’the forlorn animal will betake itself to the Zoological Gardens.’ The Field informed its readers that ‘the roadster of the future will not be fed with oats.’

By the1920s the motor car was no longer exclusively a rich man’s plaything and the rise and rise of the owner-driver added to so-called ‘chronic’ traffic congestion in Exhibition Road - a foretaste of the present delays caused by the development of the one-way traffic system around South Kensington tube (see Strictly Local article elsewhere on these pages). The age of the traffic jam had arrived.

During the Second World War, taxis were requisitioned and drivers redeployed as ambulance crew and their unique ‘Knowledge’ of South Kensington’s maze of blacked-out streets – both Exhibition Road and Fulham Road received direct hits - could prove, put simply, a matter of life and death. As the meters starting ticking again post-war, taxis – if you could find one - were as battle-scarred as the war-torn, bomb-defaced Royal Borough (over 33,000 houses were destroyed).

Today, fares may be fewer following mayhem in the markets (quoting one driver without a trace of doubt on the Harrington Road rank, ‘Business? Absolutely diabolical!’). Yet, what is London without the hackneyed (geddit?) phrase forever associated with cabbies all over town, ’I tell you no word of a lie, guess who I had in the back of my cab today?’

(A newcomer to the trade is known as a Butterboy, a Flyer is a fare to the airport and a return journey known as an In and Out).