Horse and buggy

A horse and buggy circa 1910
Horse and buggy (Naqsh-i Jahan Square), Isfahan, Iran
Harness racing buggy, about 1910

A horse and buggy (in American English) or horse and carriage (in British English and American English) refers to a light, simple, two-person carriage of the late 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries, drawn usually by one or sometimes by two horses. Also called a roadster, it was made with two wheels in England and the United States, and with four wheels in the United States as well. It had a folding or falling top.

History

A Concorde buggy, first made in Concord, New Hampshire, had a body with low sides and side-spring suspension. A buggy having two seats was a double buggy. A buggy called a stanhope typically had a high seat and closed back.

The bodies of buggies were sometimes suspended on a pair of longitudinal elastic wooden bars called sidebars. A buggy whip had a small, usually tasseled tip called a snapper.

In countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada, it was a primary mode of short-distance personal transportation, especially between 1815 and 1915. At that time, horseback riding in towns and rural areas was less common and required more specific skills than driving a buggy. Horsemanship, tended to be an aristocratic skill of larger American and British landowners, and North American western pioneers, the military and scouts. Buggies required at least crudely graded main roadways, where horses could go almost anywhere. The growing use of buggies for local travel expanded, along with stage lines and railroads for longer trips. In cities, and towns, horse-drawn railed vehicles, gave carriage to poor, workers, and the lower middle class. The upper middle class used buggies, as did farmers, while the rich had the more elegant 4-wheel carriages for local use. In the late 19th century bicycles became another factor in urban personal transport.

Therefore, until mass production of the automobile brought its price within the reach of the working class, horse-drawn conveyances were the most common means of local transport in towns and nearby countryside. Buggies cost as little as $25 to $50, and could easily be hitched and driven by untrained men women or children. In the United States, hundreds of small companies produced buggies, and their wide use helped to encourage the grading and graveling of main rural roads, and actual paving in towns. This provided all-weather passage within and between larger towns.

During the 1930s, unemployment due to the Great Depression and high gasoline prices meant many car owners in the U.S. and Canada could no longer afford to drive. The Bennett buggy (in Canada) or Hoover wagon (in the U.S.) was an automobile converted to be pulled by horses.

By the early 1910s, the number of automobiles had surpassed the number of buggies, but their use continued well into the 1920s in out of the way places. Even in the 21st Century, the buggy is still used by the Amish and other groups within various Anabaptist faith traditions as a religiously compliant, non-motorized form of basic transportation.[1]

Today, the term "horse and buggy" is often used in reference to the era before the advent of the automobile and other socially revolutionizing major inventions. By extension, it has come to mean clinging to outworn attitudes or ideas, and hopelessly outmoded, old-fashioned, non-modern, or obsolete.

Notes

  1. ↑ Picture of the Amish buggy-Amish horse-drawn wagon, black horse buggy, spring, cab or market wagon Amish.net

See also

External links

Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article Buggy.