The 18th Century Sedan Chair; Image from Georgian Index
After the fire of London, in 1666, the streets were impassable, and so people of quality went on their business or pleasure in sedan chairs.They became in time such a nuisance as to obstruct the highways. – The History of Dress, The New York Times, 1884,
Young Georgian miss transported across town with her headdress feathers intact. Click on image for larger view.
Sedan chairs were a major mode of transportation through London’s narrow streets and along Bath’s steep lanes throughout the 17th and 18th centuries and early part of the 19th century. Strong chair carriers could transport passengers down winding passageways much faster than a carriage, which had to make frequent stops in congested traffic. The chair was named after the town of Sedan in France where it was first used. By 1634, they had been introduced to London as vehicles for hire, and their popularity quickly spread to France and Scotland, as well as the rest of Europe.
These portable covered chairs, used in one form or another in other cultures since ancient times, sported side windows and a hinged door at the front. Sedan carriers inserted long wood poles into metal brackets on either side of the chair. The poles were long and springy and provided a slightly bouncy ride. They were arranged in such a manner that the chair would remain in a horizontal position as the carriers climbed up steps or steep slopes. Passenger entered and exited between the poles if they remained in place.
Early 18th c. gilt and wood Sedan chair; painted panels attributed to Charles Antoine Coypel
Sedan chair in entrance hall of Althorpe House, made for the Countess of Spencer in 1760.
Chairs for the wealthy were richly carved and decorated, and stood inside the entrance hall to be used at the owner’s convenience. Footmen would summon hired carriers, who would take patrons to their destination. For the more ornate Sedan chairs, painters would create beautiful scenes on panels mounted on the sides, and many were extravagantly upholstered in silk on the inside. The less affluent hired plainer, leather covered chairs. (See 1700 image.)
Plain leather covered sedan chair, 1700. Notice the metal brackets.
Sedan chair in the Pump Room
Sedan chair houses were available throughout the city of Bath, as shown in the image lower down in this post, although they were also kept in hallways by those who owned them. A rather plain Sedan chair was on display underneath the stairs in the hall of No. 1 Royal Crescent when I visited Bath. One feature that made the chair so popular in Bath – a city in which invalids were transported for healing sessions to the hot mineral baths – is that the vehicle was narrow enough to be carried up the stairs and taken into the bedchamber. Once an invalid entered the chair, he or she would stay inside, unexposed to outside air. The chairs could be carried inside to the baths or to the Pump Room, as you can see in this illustration by Rowlandson, who shows a man on crutches emerging from a Sedan chair.
Rowlandson, Comforts of Bath, Pump Room
Because these portable chairs could be carried inside buildings, people could be transported around the city without being identified. This made it easier for people who were evading the law to go about their business, or for public personages to carry on trysts. Links-boys would light the road at night, and they waited until they were needed again to light the way back. As the painting below shows, accidents did happen!
Rowlandson, Sedan chair breaking down
“At Bath, Tunbridge Wells, and other fashionable places, chairmen plied in the streets as cabs and hansoms now do. Occasionally they were used by spendthrifts, who were anxious to avoid the tipstaves, as they could enter them in their own houses and be deposited in that of a friend. However, it does not appear that the Sedan chair was always a safe refuge against arrest for debt, as in one of Hogarth’s prints the tipstaves are seen to be laying hold of one they were in search of, just as he was about to descend from his supposed place of security. One of the best caricatures of the day represented an Irishman being carried through the streets in a Sedan chair by two burly men, with his feet touching the ground, some wag having taken out the bottom of the Sedan, and the chairmen, aware of the practical joke, selecting the dirtiest part of the road.” NY Times, 1875, Old Coaches and Sedan Chairs
A Rake’s Progress, Hogarth, Sedan Chair
As previously stated, Sedan chairs for hire were common in London. Chairmen wore a uniform, were licensed to carry passengers, and had to display a number, like today’s taxi drivers. Three hundred chair permits were issued in London and Westminster in the early 1700’s. A similar system was later used in Scotland, where a fare system was established in 1738. A trip within a city cost six pence and a day’s rental was four shillings. It cost £1 1 shilling to hire a sedan chair for a week. The chairs were available around the clock, but after midnight the chairmen would be paid double the fare.
Sedan chair house in Bath, Queen’s Parade Place
Sedan chair houses, or stations, were common in cities were they were used. Only two examples of these houses remain today in Bath:
“Continue along Gay Street and turn first left into Queen’s Parade Place. On either side of an opening are the only examples of sedan chair houses in Britain. Here chairmen would rest before carrying passengers to their destinations. They were notoriously rude and unscrupulous often locking their passengers in the chair until they had paid the exorbitant fare! Beau Nash licensed them and set reasonable fares. Their demise came when a local man invented the “Bath chair,” a 3 wheeled vehicle.” From eu-journal, 011
1840, Wheeled Bath chairs outside of the Pump Room
The Sedan chair fell gradually into disuse. Horace Walpole bemoaned their waning popularity as early as 1774, and by the mid-19th century three-wheeled Bath chairs had taken their place.
“The chairmen were fine, robust men; they had little regard for foot passengers, and considered the pavement their own exclusive property. It was rather an amusing sight to witness how the men trotted off, when a chair was required, racing to be first for hire. After a time Sedan chairs got out of fashion, except at Bath, Cheltenham, and Leamington, where they wer in favor for many years after they ceased to exist in the metropolis. – Old Coaches and Sedan Chairs, NY Times, october 17, 1875”
Chairmen huffing and puffing in Cranford
While the Sedan chair had gone out of fashion by the mid-19th Century, it played a crucial part in the recent mini-series, Cranford. One of the funniest and most memorable scenes in the movie showed two chairmen trying to keep apace with Miss Pole, a spinster, and Mrs. Forrester, whose cat had ingested lace, as they ran into the village seeking help. The men huffed and puffed as they carried their heavy load with Mrs. Jamieson inside, and staggered into Cranford.
More information on Sedan chairs:
UPDATE: Marie Antoinette’s Gossip Guide has published a sedan chair post that links to mine!
- Sedan Chair, Jane Austen Centre Magazine – very colorful description, full of anecdotes.
Robert Adam Neoclassical Design for a Sedan Chair for Queen Charlotte, 1775. Click on image for a larger view.
Jane Austen's World 
Thank you for this informative post. I’ve seen images of sedan chairs but never knew they had such a long history.
Thank you, becca. When I visited China I saw ceremonial Sedan chairs, so I knew they had a long and exotic history. Until I researched the topic I did not realize how prevalent they are in so many cultures, even to this day.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litter_(vehicle)
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Thanks for the nice article. When I was a child (in the 1960s) there was a sedan chair that sat on a neighbors side porch. It was quite a curiosity and the owner claimed that it belonged to Lord Baltimore. This was outside of the Philadelphia area about 40 miles north of Baltimore. I suppose there was no real documentation to prove their claim. It still had the original upholstery and glass. No poles.
Very informative and an interesting method of transport.
A few years ago at Vienna they offered sedan-chairs for use just like in former times.
I was about to have a try but it was too expensive. (50 Euros for 1/2 hour!)
I wonder how much ladies had to pay for a ride in a sedan-chair in former times and who could afford such a ride.
Janine, A sedan chair ride was quite expensive and out of reach for most people: A trip within a city cost six pence and a day’s rental was four shillings. It cost £1 1 shilling to hire a sedan chair for a week.
An average weekly wage for a working class person was a shilling a week.
This is for me a very interesting topic and in regard to your answer to Janine I am really surprised that a sedan-ride was that expensive.
But on the other side I think the porters must have made a lot of money when they got 4 times more per day as an average working person of the working class in a whole week.
I would like to know if there were really many sedan-chairs in former times if only a few people had the money for this kind of service.
In regard to your answer a sedan-chair ride mut have been pure luxury which was only possible to the upper classes.
Karin,
What excellent observations. This quote from History Magazine should help to illuminate the situation:
I take this description to mean that sedan chairs (like hackneys, which were more expensive) were similar to taxis or buses. Like taxi or bus drivers today, the sedan chair carriers didn’t necessarily pocket the entire amount of the fare, but had to share the receipts with the actual owner/s of the concern. In addition, there weren’t all that many licensed sedan chairs in London – about 300 – enough to transport the ton but not the hoi polloi. In another blog post, I discuss the fact that so many working class people of the era were accustomed to (and thought nothing of) walking 6 miles or more to work one way. Only the rich or rising middle classes could afford the extravagance of public transportation.
Jane Austen Centre’s Online Magazine discusses sedan chairs as well. The fare increased at night:
Here’s another fascinating quote I found in Nationmaster Encyclopedia:
The salient point is that sedan chairs, while plentiful for the upper classes (some even owned their own chairs and hired carriers), were out of reach for the lower classes. Most people in the 18th and 19th centuries could not afford such luxuries. 90% of the population lived and worked in the neighborhoods or villages they were born in, seldom traveling far. The industrial revolution created great upheaval, and many rural folks moved to cities to find work. Once they reached their destination, they were constrained by their ability to walk to places. The recent PBS TV adaptation of Tess of the D’Urbervilles, set in Victorian England, shows her walking to all her destinations, unless she hitched a ride. She walked as far as 6 miles, the same distance as many laborers walked to their place of employment.
Thanks a lot for your fine explanations.
I would be quite interested how far people could travel in such a sedan-chair.
In ancient Rome as far as I know sedan-chairs were a real privilege of women because they were not allowed to drive a carriage pulled by horses.
From ancient strories I learned that women even travelled by sedan-chairs but at those times they used slaves for this work.
In Austria and other European countries it was quite usual that ladies used sedan-chairs for getting up to the mountains.
I can’t answer that question with any authority. Bath was a small but hilly city. London, while populous, was still quite contained during the Regency era compared to the sprawling metropolitan area it has become.
Thank you for your answer.
I think a transport by sedan-chairs could still be an efficient mode of transportation for today if I look at that slow and very overcrowded traffic in modern cities.
But I would fear that it would be as expensive as it was in former times and therefore it would be out of reach for most people.
Transport by humans was quite usual all over the world up to 20th century. Sedan-chairs were mostlya privilege of women and girls.
As far as I know, in central Europe, especially in the mountains it was quite usual that women could hire a sedan-chair to bring them up to the top of the mountains amd this was in Switzerland, Germany, Austria and in Southern France quite common up to World War II.
People in those regions were quite poor and so they made money by carrying ladies up to the mountains.
By the way it was the upper class of British ladies who spent their holidays in the mountains and who attached great importance to this kind of transportation.
Even Emperess Sissy from Austria was using sedan-chairs as often as she could and I think it was also a matter of female fashion because with their wide and long clothes they could not really walk for a long time.
Poor young men who carried those ladies oer hours up to the mountains were quite happy because they made some money by this kind of service.
Als well as in GB a sedan-chair was always a privilege of wealthy ladies.
At the German court during the time of William II there was still existing a unit of sedan-bearers up to 1914 who were used by the noble ladies of the court.
Thank you for your fascinating insights, Frederik, which are very much appreciated.
The other day I was reading about an experiment of british students in the City of London.
They were transporting a young lady in a sedan-chair just like in former times and in competition to a taxi.
Knowing the gorgeous traffic in London it was almost clear that the lady in he sedan-chair needed exactly the same time as if she would have used a taxi.
But different to former times, the students were not trained as sedan-chair bearers and so I think they would have been even faster if well trained and used to this work.
This is for me a real good example that we need a new conception against an overwhelming traffic in modern cities. ( Of course sedan-chairs wll not be the solution.)
Anyway here in Germany quite often ladies of all ages are really complaining of the pavements in pedestrian zones which are absolutely mostly reconstructed on a medieval level and which are not made for women with high heels and so quite often ladies here are demanding for sedan-chairs.
Perhapssome day we will have sedan-chairs again in our cities as in medieval times.
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Regards earnings of chairman my g/g/g/grandfather was a chairman in bath early 1800s he was a chairman for a few years but died a pauper.
What an interesting bit of personal family history. Thank you for sharing.
Thank you for such an informative website. The History is amazing.
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On an 18th Century print of the Circus in Bath there are two distinct drawings of Sedan Chairs, one is the conventional type the other is an obviously lighter one with a lower ‘bulbus’ front which took the seated legs of the passenger, the framework I believe was leather covered, this is the type of chair I could only imagine that would be light enough to be taken upstairs especially with a passenger inside. Sedan chairmen would have to be big, but even they would have great difficulty in ascending and descending stairs in Georgian houses.