When Shillibeer started his ill-fated Greenwich omnibuses the pirates followed in his wake, and soon made their presence known by their impudent cheating and bullying of passengers. One night, in April, 1836, some people returning to London saw what they believed to be one of Shillibeer’s omnibuses ready to start. They entered it and sat down to wait until it was full. Within a quarter of an hour all the seats were occupied. But even then the omnibus did not start, for the conductor, in the bullying manner of his class, demanded the fares before the journey began. The passengers, anxious to get home, produced their money and tendered the usual fare--a shilling each. With a volley of oaths the conductor declared that the fare that night was eighteenpence. The passengers refused to pay the extra sixpence and threatened to report the conductor to Shillibeer for extortion and foul language, if he did not start the omnibus at once. “Right away, Charlie,” the conductor shouted; but there was something in the way he uttered those three words which gave the coachman the tip what to do, for he drove off immediately, not towards London, but down a back street to a deserted part of Greenwich, where he pulled up. Again the conductor demanded eighteenpence from each person, and some were disposed to pay it; but the people who were the first to enter the omnibus declined most emphatically to submit to the extortion, and prevailed upon their fellow-passengers to be equally firm. Soon some of them wished that they had not been so firm, for when the conductor found that he could not obtain more than the proper fare he bawled out, “It’s no good, Charlie. Let ’em walk to London.” The coachman got down from his box, took out his horses and went off with them at a trot, the conductor following with the omnibus lamp in his hand. In great indignation the passengers quitted the dark omnibus and wended their way back to the main street, vowing to let Shillibeer have a full account of everything that had occurred. But when on the following day they called on Shillibeer in a body, and complained of the men’s behaviour, they were met with the inquiry, “What was the number of the omnibus?” “588,” was the answer in chorus.