Another very excellent society, the “Hackney Carriage Proprietors’ Provident Fund,” was founded, by the late Mr. Herbert Rymill, in April, 1873. It was started to establish a fund for providing annuities of £26 to aged, decayed, or disabled cab proprietors or their widows, and to afford temporary relief to its members or to the widows and children of deceased members. It was registered under the Friendly Societies Acts in July, 1878, and in January, 1887, its title was changed to the “Hackney Carriage Proprietors’ Provident Institution.” For an annual subscription of £1 1_s._ a member is able to make provision against misfortune. Many a cab proprietor has, through no fault of his own, been reduced from comfortable circumstances to want. One of his horses may have contracted glanders in consequence of the driver foolishly permitting it to drink at a public trough; the disease spreads through his stables and a number of his horses have to be destroyed. To a wealthy cab proprietor this is a serious loss, but to a man who owns only three or four cabs it would mean ruin but for the “Hackney Carriage Proprietors’ Provident Institution’s” assistance in helping him to tide over his difficulties. And it must be remembered that the majority of cab proprietors are small owners; on December 31, 1900, there were 2782 licensed cab proprietors in London, and of these 2207 owned from one to five vehicles. The “Hackney Carriage Proprietors’ Provident Institution” had been in existence barely two years when the “Cabmen’s Shelter Fund” was started. Its object was to provide for cabmen on the ranks a place where they could obtain protection from the weather, and purchase good, wholesome food at moderate prices. On February 6, 1875, the first shelter for London cabmen was opened in Acacia Road, St. John’s Wood, by the Hon. Arthur Kinnaird, M.P., Vice-President of the Society. Among the crowd which had assembled to witness the ceremony were some thirty or forty cabmen who came, as representatives of their class, to do honour to the occasion. By the end of the year the Society had placed thirteen shelters in various parts of the Metropolis, and, at the present time, it possesses forty-three, a dozen of which are open day and night. Many of these were presented to the Society; the one in Palace Yard, Westminster, by members of both Houses of Parliament, and those at Pont Street, Belgrave Square, St. George’s Square, S.W., Clapham Common, Kensington Crescent, Royal Crescent, Uxbridge Road, Piccadilly, Warwick Road, Maida Vale, and the one near the Oratory, Brompton Road, by residents in those neighbourhoods. The shelter at Portland Road Station was presented by the residents of Richmond. The remainder were either erected by the Fund or presented to it by various individuals. The entire cost of the new shelter now being erected in the Haymarket has been defrayed by Sir Squire Bancroft.