It’s no mystery why departments of antiquities in museums and art galleries world wide hold thousands upon thousands of paintings and sculptures and ceramics celebrating the horse.  The horse was humankind’s main mode of land transportation and of waging war for thousands of years.  And the 19th century—for all its nascent modernity — was as horse-reliant as all previous ages; the 19th century city perhaps even more so.

Horses transported people in carriages, in hackney cabs, and in the ‘new’ mode of public transit, the omnibus.  They supplied mechanical power by turning turbines and treadmills and pulling pulleys. They hauled massive volumes of freight.  Somewhat analogous to the paperless future that would inevitably follow from digitizing data, the railways required horse teams manned by ‘teamsters’ to distribute the huge volume of goods shipped by rail

Dense, bustling 19th century cities had unprecedented per capita horse populations.  In 1880, for example, the horse population for New York and Brooklyn combined was estimated at between 150,000 and 175,000 (which was still not the peak) and their environmental impact — albeit an age-old problem — had reached intolerable levels.  Estimates for the environmental impact in New York City suggest that 2.5 million pounds of manure and 60,000 gallons of urine were left on the streets daily

Horses that died were often left curbside to rot, a rotten carcass being easier to breakdown for disposal purposes.  More often this burden fell on municipal authorities.  In New York City, it was estimated that in the course of twelve months, 15,000 dead horses had to be carted away at the city’s expense. The stench, the filth, the disease and the pestilence created an ongoing public health and sanitation crisis.

Horses also created a safety problem.  The average horse weighs 1,200 lbs (550 km).  It has a brain to body mass measure of 1:600 which compares to the average human brain to body mass measure of 1:40, the average dog 1:125 and the average cat 1:100.  They are sensitive prey animals with a strong fight-or-flight response which makes them startle easily.  In short, as the main mode of transportation, they were ‘powerful engines with minds of their own’, trainable, but also highly unpredictable.

The busy 19th century roads were full of surprises to shock and spook horses.  They stampeded, kicked, bit, and trampled other horses and pedestrians.  The statistics confirm the problem:  In New York in 1900, there were reports of 200 persons killed by horses and horse-drawn vehicles. This contrasts with 344 auto-related fatalities in New York in 2003; given the modern city’s greater population, this means the fatality rate per capita in the horse era was roughly 75 percent higher than today.

Compounding the risks were the hazards inherent in the ‘low tech’ nature of the various vehicles to which they were harnessed — the stiff brakes, the unresponsive steering, the top-heavy design making them prone to overturning—and the reputation of many drivers for recklessness.  Alas, therefore, danger on the roads was hardly a new phenomenon ushered into the world with the advent of the automobile.