The accepted full occupancy was twelve.
Since passengers could enter at the open rear door as the horses moved
slowly up Broadway, it could get congested. In 1864 the artist Daumier gave us, in a satiric crayon and watercolor picture entitled "The Omnibus," a view of
the crowded interior of such a conveyance. At the left in
Daumier's
picture,
note the new arrival seeking room for
himself. Click on the Daumier drawing for an enlarged image. In 1831 John Stephenson (1809-1893), 22 years old, after only
three years' apprenticeship to a carriage maker, started The John
Stephenson Car Company, and began to build vehicles for Brower's
Broadway service. Until the financial panic of
1837, both his and Brower's businesses grew rapidly. By 1833 Stephenson had a patent for a design that lowered the floor of the omnibus to make access easier. He would obtain numerous other patents for improvements to his vehicles.
Although 1837 led
to temporary bankruptcy, by 1845 he was back in
business, and despite recurrent economic ups and downs became a leading producer of omnibuses--both road and rail--and later of railroad cars.
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Our omnibus is clearly similar to the one on page 460 of Ezra Stratton's The World on Wheels (1878). The term "omnibus" was first applied in 1828 in France to a long narrow coach labeled voiture omnibus. The word was immediately accepted in both England and the United States. By the 1860's the term "bus" was coming into use, but was considered slangy. Today when we refer to a bus we are probably unaware of where we got the word.
