Thomas TillingHot and sweaty commuters jostling for space in a crammed carriage, controlling their tempers and holding their noses – just another day on London public transport.
Small comfort perhaps, but it was just as dreadful, if not worse, for our ancestors in the 19th century when the very first horse drawn omnibuses rolled into town.
One of the biggest and most successful operators was a pioneering young man called Thomas Tilling who ran his empire out of headquarters at Winchester House in Peckham High Street from 1851.
Tilling operated the original Number 12 route from Peckham to Oxford Street, which is still used by thousands of people every day. He is also credited with running the first service which required people to wait at specified stops rather than just hailing a bus from the street. This helped his omnibuses run on time and earned them the nickname of "times buses".
By 1870 Tilling had nearly 400 horses and 15 years later he’d expanded to nearly 1,500 with routes all over London and the South East.
Reliable public transport transformed the lives of Londoners in the late 1800s when places like Peckham were little more than country villages. But sharing space in such confined quarters could be rough. The buses were often crowded with dirty straw on the floor and journeys could be excrutiatingly slow.
With the advent of motorised vehicles Tilling successfully modernised his business which continued to expand and diversify until 1969 when the National Bus Company was formed ending a transport empire that had spanned 122 years. |