The coronation carriage, isn't this a bit excessive?

[criso]

The number of horses in London pre 1900 changed the way road surfaces and road structures were looked at as well, given the many many slipping injuries. There's article in the Pall Mall gazette about it from the 1880s.

It's quoted here

The Perils Of The London Streets For Horses

In February 1889 an article appeared in the Pall Mall Gazette highlighting the dangers faced by London's horses on a daily basis as they went about the streets.

www.jack-the-ripper-tour.com

 

[ycbm]

Timely article by Mark Phillips in this week's magazine. "Riding standards and horsemanship is {sic} in decline".
.

 

[reynold]

I often talk to my old friend now living in France but grew up as the policeman's son just outside Stranraer (sp?).
He'll be 93 next month and when he was just 10 in 1940 he was handling clydesdale plough horses much bigger than him. He used to ride them to/from the forge in a headcollar and take them down to the stream for water twice a day (there were apparently no water buckets). They didn't hose their legs off - they were instead taken to the horse wash - an outlet from the nearby stream.

The farm is still going - about 300 acres - and he's still in touch with the son of the same family who still farm it. There were always between 10 and 12 clydesdales and the associated number of ploughmen and workers. Now the farm is run by 1.5 people and quadbikes as it's not really nowadays viable for arable.

The horses were kept in straight stalls (I'm old enough to have worked stalls which was how riding school horses were still kept in the 60s) and he tells of 1 in particular that always tried to squash people and he had to be quick to duck under it's stomach to get to the other side to avoid being squashed.

He was also at 12 a 'coast watcher' during the war, watching and identifying boats and particularly aircraft coming in off the Isle of Man waters. All this before he was even 14. It was hard times but he is proud of his wartime contribution and even got a medal for his work (good eyesight when he was young) but I digress.

He came from a family with no real horse experience and no training other than the ploughmen telling him 'do this'. Ironically he made his living in the motor trade at a very high level, the industry that put an end to most of the working horses in this country.

 

[tristar]

I'm not claiming that everyone was a magnificent horseman in the past, I'm saying that the majority of people were more aware of horses in general than the modern population, that basic knowledge about horses was endemic and natural. There were millions of people involved with the daily care of horses. I can't lay my hand on the numbers, but I recall an enormous figure for the daily tonnage of horse manure that was removed from London streets in the 1860's. Horses were everywhere.

I would not hand my horse to be held by any random passer-by today; there would not be a Medieval person that wouldn't not have known how to handle a horse, how to tack one up, for instance.

some of the old books we have chart the careers and lifetimes of top TB`S a lot of them despite racing hard many lived to a grand old age near to 30 years, and its a great credit to those who looked after them, the sheer knowledge, and all without the benefit of modern veterinary science.

 

[Fransurrey]

Sources?

Even in the late 19/early 20th c trams were pulled by horses, coal was delivered by wagon, ALL land transportation involved horses in some facility, so even if you didn't ride you were aware of horses and saw them all around you, they were a part of daily life.

Already been said, but they were part of the scenery, not necessarily part of daily life. I'm from a cotton mill town and my own ancestors walked everywhere (their life generally revolved around the mill, there was no transport required, because that required money and time to use it to go somewhere out of town). Even prior to that many people worked locally and walked ("took Shank's pony"). Deliveries were made by horse, sure, but handling for them would have been limited to giving the cart horse a sugar lump.

 

[Errin Paddywack]

I had a great aunt who lived in Bath. I still have a picture of her somewhere with her trap pony, an ugly coloured called Pie. She lived in a terraced house when I knew her which would have been very early 50's as she died aged 90 when I was about 4 or 5. Not sure when she would have had the pony or where she was living at the time. She looked a real dragon, we had to call her Aunt Holbrooke as her Christian name was Sally and she refused to be known as Aunt Sally. I suppose in her day horses would still have been the main form of transport.