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The Cab Policeman with His White Wand. Photo by V. Gribayédoff.

The policeman has stopped the cab and other oncoming vehicles and appears to be directing cross traffic through an intersection. The roll on his left shoulder is probably a rolled-up rain cape.

Source:
Outing magazine, vol. XLIII no. 3, December, 1903, p. 246.

Vance Thompson's Cab Drivers / 4

The Paris Cabman / 3

Officially the college is known as the "école d'apprentissage des cochers de la ville de Paris." The director is Pernette, a capable, horsey man, a famous whip. A half-dozen professors aid him – vets, hostlers, grooms. This afternoon an examination is going on in the big stable yard. You can listen to an oral quiz on the streets of Paris. Thus: Pernette asks, "What streets would you take going from the Gare Saint Lazare to the rue Blomet?" or "How would you go from the rue de l'Échaudé to the rue d'Assas?" The candidates for the whip and the livery answer as best they can. After Paris has been carefully gone over, the restless Pernette examines them on the police regulations, and, in short, upon the Whole Duty of the Cocher. What's to be done with the bourgeois* who refuses to pay, or leaves his pocketbook in the fiacre, or commits suicide there? And what are the rules of the road? And after this comes the practical part of it, the handling of horses – feeding, watering, ailments – the care and repair of harness and cab; lastly an exhibition of driving.

The diploma de chez Pernette is only the beginning. The police are to be reckoned with and the "Three Companies" or some one of the small stables or individual cab-owners. All his life he will have to fight it out between the exigencies of these two powers – the bobby and the boss – rivals in tyranny. From the time he takes it into his head to drive a fiacre the future cocher is so trussed up in rules and knocked about the ears by penalties that unless he be a strong-minded fellow, he is liable to give up the profession and go in for the law, the Church, or the comic opera. The cocher has three masters: police, patron and public. Even after he has received his diploma from Pernette he must stand an examination before a jury made up of representatives of the Prefecture of police and the "Three Companies." When the jury has given him a certificate of aptitude, and his parish priest – or someone else – has vouched for his morality, he may go look for a job. At last, it is to be presumed, he succeeds in entering one of the great companies. There he deposits thirty or forty dollars for a new livery – rain-cape, coat and hat in white or mouse-colored leather for the Urbaine, dark blue for the Compagnie Générale. Lastly he makes the acquaintance of his hostler and the horses, his fiacre and the washer. Ah, les chevaux!*