in various parts of London, and coachmen were forbidden to wait for hire at any other places. Men were also licensed to water the horses at various stands. These men were known as "watermen," "caddies" or cads," and wore slung round their necks, a brass label bearing a number. Besides watering the horses they looked after them while coachmen drank in the taproom or slept on their boxes, and, also, opened the coach doors and lowered the steps for hirers. Every coachman before driving off a rank paid the waterman one halfpenny.
One clause of this Act appears, nowadays, very snobbish. It made a hackney-coachman liable to a penalty of £5 for "not giving way to persons of quality and gentlemen's coaches."
As time went on, hackney-coaches continued to increase in number, but were never allowed to become sufficiently numerous to make competition very keen. At the end of the eighteenth century they were most luxurious. The majority originally cost some £700 or £800 each, and were purchased from the brokers by hackney-coach proprietors at a trifle above breaking-up prices, varying according to the condition of the vehicles,
