He was also troubled about the hackney-coachmen’s extortion, and suggested this method of checking it. “Is there any valid reason why a hackney-coach should not have a pedometer visible to the unfortunate freight? to be noted on entering, to be noted on exiting, as effectual against fraudulent space as a watch is against fraudulent time, with shillings on the dial plate where there are hours; and where there are minutes, sixpences. It would not cost £2, it would save endless altercations, it would save typographying a table of hackney-coach fares, it would save a man’s money and temper, and go far towards saving the souls of hackney-coachmen born, or to be born--and the trouble of the commissioners. Our invention is the best of all possible inventions, and therefore it will not be adopted.” “Jehu” did not make a mistake--his suggestion was not adopted, and hackney-coachmen, soured by the rivalry of the newly introduced omnibuses and cabs, became more extortionate and abusive than ever they had been. A few proprietors, believing that the new vehicles were doomed to failure, kept their hackney-coaches in good repair and made it a rule to have respectable men for drivers, but these clean coaches were not numerous enough to prevent hackney-coaches as a body from being termed dirty and disreputable. In “Sketches by Boz,” Dickens gives the following description of a hackney-coach of the early thirties:-- “There is a hackney-coach stand under the very window at which we are writing; there is only one coach on it now, but it is a fair specimen of the class of vehicles to which we have alluded--a great, lumbering, square concern of a dingy yellow colour (like a bilious brunette), with very small glasses, but very large frames; the panels are ornamented with a faded coat of arms, in shape something like a dissected bat, the axle-tree is red, and the majority of the wheels are green. The box is partially covered by an old great-coat, with a multiplicity of capes, and some extraordinary-looking clothes; and the straw, with which the canvas cushion is stuffed, is sticking up in several places, as if in rivalry with the hay which is peering through the chinks in the boot. The horses, with drooping heads, and each with a mane and tail as scanty and straggling as those of a worn-out rocking-horse, are standing patiently on some damp straw, occasionally wincing and rattling the harness; and, now and then, one of them lifts his mouth to the ear of his companion, as if he were saying, in a whisper, that he should like to assassinate the coachman. The coachman himself is in the watering-house; and the waterman, with his hands forced into his pockets as far as they can possibly go, is dancing the ‘double shuffle’ in front of the pump, to keep his feet warm.” A writer in the _Monthly Magazine_ gives a less graphic but more denunciatory account of the hackney-coaches of that period.