We must now retrace our steps and endeavour to trace the progress made in vehicles other than stage and mail coaches. In 1740 the first patent was granted for a two-wheeled carriage; it is briefly described as a “double shaft and pole carriage with two wheels drawn by two horses harnessed abreast.” Another “coach with two wheels” was patented in 1786. Mr. Thrupp states that 27,300 two-wheeled vehicles paid duty in the year 1814, a fact which shows how rapidly they grew in favour. It is therefore somewhat curious that the first two-wheeled hackney cab in London should not have appeared in London until 1823, when Mr. David Davis built twelve of these vehicles. “The body was a little like a hansom cab but smaller; it had a head, of which the hinder half was stiff and solid, and the fore part made to fold. This arrangement was probably an imitation of the gentleman’s cabriolet, the hood of which was rarely put down altogether, as the groom had to hold on by it. Outside the head on one side was a seat for the driver of the cab, and the whole was hung upon stiff shafts. These cabs were, I think, painted yellow, and stood for hire in a yard in Portland Street close to Oxford Circus.” Cabs of this kind stood for hire in the streets, a few years later, if we may accept the authority of Charles Dickens. Readers of the _Pickwick Papers_ which was published (in monthly parts) in 1837 and 1838, will remember how Mr. Pickwick, when he set out upon his travels took a cab from “the coach stand at St. Martins-le-Grand”; and took notes of the driver’s account of his horse as he drove to Charing Cross. On another page we find Mr. and Mrs. Raddle and Mrs. Cluppins “squeezed into a hackney cabriolet, the driver sitting in his own particular little dickey at the side.” This vehicle was perhaps the light two-wheeled cab with a fixed panel top, built to carry only two persons inside, which was introduced about 1830. The driver sat on a little seat over the off-side wheel. This vehicle was succeeded by Mr. Boulnois’ patent cab, of which an illustration is given. It opened at the back, and the driver’s seat was on the roof; the passengers sat facing one another. This cab was light and convenient, but appears to have fallen into disuse because the fore part was within too easy reach of the horse’s heels to make it quite acceptable to nervous passengers, Harvey’s “Quarto Bus” to carry four was the next popular conveyance, but it was superseded about 1836 by the “brougham cab” for two. This cab was rather smaller than the vehicle to which Lord Brougham’s name was given in 1839. From this conveyance was developed the “clarence cab,” which remains with us still as the familiar “four-wheeler.” It should be mentioned that the first four-wheeled cabs appeared in London about 1835; these however, carried only two passengers inside. The modern hansom belongs to a later period. In 1802 there were 1,100 hackney carriages in London, and in 1855 the number was 2,706.