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A cab belonging to Arinbjorn S. Bardal parked in front of his funeral home about 1900. It is identified as a "hansom" cab but in fact hansoms were two-wheeled cabs named after their English inventor Joseph Hansom (1803-1882). Once automobiles made true hansom cabs extinct the name tended to be applied to any fancy (or handsome) four wheeled carriage, notably the open carriages that carry tourists through New York's Central Park.
Source:
Hansom Cab. Archives Manitoba, A.S. Bardal Collection 15.
Winnipeg Cab History / 18
The Horse Cab (1)
The carriage in the photo is a landaulet, one of the vehicles most often used as cabs. The leather hood over the rear seat that could be raised and lowered depending on the weather. The owner was Arinbjorn S. Bardal (1866-1951), an Icelander who came to Winnipeg in the 1880's and established a successful undertaking business. He operated cabs as one of his sidelines.
The connection between the funeral and livery businesses was well established. In the absence of undertaking businesses, small town livery stables often filled the void by hiring out hearses along with their other vehicles.
Funeral businesses found that livery cabs offered additional employment for their carriages, and when the carriages got too shabby for livery or funeral use they could be used as street cabs.
This cab is one of Bardal's older vehicles and is equipped with steel tires. His later cabs rolled along on solid rubber tires (see the next page).
The Bardal company is still in the funeral business in Winnipeg in 2012 and still uses a horse cab as its logo.