Consternation comes in many forms. A hundred and thirty years before those Household Cavalry horses caused mayhem through the streets of London in April, the capital had an equestrian crisis of a very different kind. Welcome to the Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894. Back then, there were not the 300 or so police, ceremonial and military horses that you now see on the streets. There were nearer 300,000 to serve the six million Londoners. Everything was shifted by horse. There were 11,000 hansom cabs and four-wheelers and 5,000 six-horse omnibuses – not to mention all the phaetons and landaus in those back-of- the-block Belgravia stables that are today’s coveted mews flats. A horse excretes around 21⁄2 gallons of urine and up to 40lb of manure a day. Do the maths. The first British four-wheeled petrol- engine motor car would not get on the public road until December 1894 when...
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