The Hidden Lives of Taxi Drivers

By Ruth Finnegan

What do you know about taxi drivers? Want to know more about these knights of the street? You've come to the right place.

Discover what The Ten Commandments of St Fiacre and the 10 Commandments of Road Safety are all about. Look into the lives of taxi drivers: hidden in plain sight, here, there, and everywhere - sometimes, invisible! Learn the history that created taxis, Hackney carriages and all. Consider their urban setting with case studies and interviews from Milton Keynes. And, taxi drivers: who are they, where are they from, how did they get here? Trials, traumas and triumphs. What is 'The job' , what is 'The Knowledge'. What's new? All this ... and  more.

Discover the 'real me' behind the taxi driver. This accurate, meticulous, account of the down-to-earth subject of the taxi drivers in our streets  unexpectedly leads into the deeper fathoms of the human soul.

The organisation, origins, folklore , literature and history of taxis and the "parallel universes" of their drivers'  lives and dreams.

Your view of that familiar but  "unseen" figure behind the wheel will be transformed!

"Perceptive"  (Kirkus review)

***** "Fascinating …" (Readers Favorite)*****

*****GOLD AWARD "Enthralling  …" (Literary Titan)*****

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Callender Press
• Release date: May 4, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223177050

Book preview

The Hidden Lives of Taxi Drivers

A Question of Knowledge

Ruth Finnegan pasted-image.png

2022

Callender Press, Old Bletchley, Milton Keynes 

To the taxi drivers, and all those other immigrants, who have enriched our knowledge and our culture and day by day continue to do so

thank you

pasted-image.jpeg

My job is my job.  My life is my career

A Question of Knowledge 

Preface 

HERE 

Chapter 1 Hidden in plain sight 

Here, there, and everywhere 

And - invisible 

AROUND 

Chapter 2  The history that created taxis 

Feet and hooves for hire 

Boats for hire 

Wheels, wheels,  wheels 

Hackney carriages and all 

Motor taxi cabs 

And on ... 

Chapter 3 The urban setting and its taxi drivers 

How they do it 

In Milton Keynes, a city 

Chapter 4  Who are they? 

I come from Bangladesh ... 

How did I get here? 

Trials, traumas and triumphs 

Chapter 5 The job 

Getting into it 

Them 

They may not be  fully aware of them all, but many external forces impact on drivers’  lives. 

The local taxi companies 

Earnings 

Chapter 6  Ignorant riff raff ...  

Ignorant? 

And ill-disciplined rogues? 

And the  passengers? 

Ruffians or carers? 

Chapter 7 Knowing the ways and ways of knowing 

What is the  knowledge  and how drivers get it? 

And more knowledge 

Getting to the right place 

Memory strategies and how to know 

Chapter 8 The sharing shared knowledge of taxi drivers 

You learn ...  

The wisdoms of drivers 

The taxi - the world 

THEY 

Chapter 9  The real me 

Who am I in the universe? 

Parallel lives 

I am ...  

THERE 

Chapter 10 Just a taxi driver 

Appendix 1 Sources and methods 

Appendix 2 Some further taxi drivers’ quotes and sayings 

Appendix 3 Travelling from, travelling on ... 

Acknowledgements 

Select References 

Preface

Like many of my generation, I grew up thinking that using taxis was self-indulgent and unnecessary and certainly not for me. 

I’ve changed my mind. When I stopped driving  in my  70s I couldn’t really expect my husband to drive me all over the place. So I saw that I would have to engage taxis to go to the shopping centre or the doctor or the dentist or wherever.

So I started, at first reluctantly, to take taxis. Being a chatty person my habit was to sit in the front beside the driver. We found we were exchangIng our life stories, as far as that was possible, that is, in the  typically 20-30 minute rides. And theirs were fascinating, varied, surprising.

As a result, I kind of fell into taking note by accident and then was hooked! So this study, like so many (and, come to think of it, some of my previous ones too), came about by chance.

But chance is a fine thing! for it turned out to link in remarkably with my earlier research interests. Like many anthropologists, I have always, I suppose, been intrigued by things that were somehow just there, but that I, and perhaps others too, actually knew little about in any depth.

In this case it was something literally going on all around me, here on the streets, right before my eyes.

And then I saw that the here-and-now familiarity but at the same time seeming invisibility of taxi drivers - hidden in plain sight - chimed in with my continuing interest in the extraordinary and notable in the apparent ordinary and unnoticed. For me this had in the past extended to trying to delve into the not-then-fully-studied topics of oral literature, extra-university researchers, amateur musicians, non-sensory communication, or the significance of personal names (as in Finnegan 1970/2007, 2011, 2017a,b, 2020). Taxi drivers’ lives were just another instance.

So I started to pay more attention to the fact that, at first without deliberately planning it, I was in practice  amassing a substantial amount of information  about taxi drivers. When I got a taxi whether by phoning from my own home or picking one up from the station  rank or elsewhere, I would, as I say, automatically and without thinking fall into conversation with the driver. Looking back I can see this was actually a kind of informal interviewing supplementing my general  offhand observing[1].

This new - to me - topic had many surprises in store.  I hadn’t realised how much there was that I didn’t know. It also, luckily for me, turned out, as I say, to follow on well from my interest in life stories,  explored among other places in my Tales of the City, and in the local informal economy and culture as in The Hidden Musicians.

I had also been fascinated from away back by memory and modes of thinking. Taxi drivers’ acquisition and retention of knowledge - both remembering all the local roads, and learning of and from their passengers - proved to fit exactly with that interest. But this time it was not about something far away or long ago as many of the previous studies had been, but from people that I was meeting here and now.

And then, beyond that, I started to see taxis and taxi driving in longer perspective. There was for example the long development of hired transport which goes a fair way to explain the design and practices of modern taxis. Taxi driving in its various forms - hired transport - has, it seems, long played a crucial if largely unexplored role in the local economy of British towns (elsewhere too), interacting, for example, with transport networks, work practices, life stories, immigration, and social mobility - a pivot, in fact, in much of the social, cultural and economic history of urban space. Here were yet further dimensions to explore.

All of these aspects, and more, also built into my long interests in, among other things, African studies, classical and mediaeval history, personal knowledge, and the mind.

Besides I love working on an in-depth ethnography, especially one in which detail can be explored both in its own right and in wider perspective. In this case the ethnographic setting was my home city of Milton Keynes in south central England. I had the advantage that as a long established local resident I already had substantial local knowledge to build on. In addition I had already engaged in some investigation of certain aspects of Milton Keynes’ lives (Finnegan 1989/2007, 1998/2021). So it greatly pleases me to find that, unexpected by me, the present study will now be the third volume of an ethnographic trilogy about this beautiful green city of Milton Keynes, focusing down, as anthropologists sometimes do, on where I already am.

The book that has resulted, to give a brief overview (also previewed in the preliminary treatment in Finnegan 2021), gives an account of  taxi driving and its organisation in Milton Keynes with special reference to taxi drivers’ lives and stories and the cultural, economic and personal contexts in which they work. I have also included a modicum of parallel evidence from other UK cities such as Belfast, Birmingham, and Cambridge, and, to introduce an international dimension, the results of a few short forays abroad including several weeks' research in Auckland, New Zealand.

It also looks at some rather seldom considered aspects of taxi drivers’ experience. In particular I have tried to explore their interaction with passengers in the, as it were, quasi-magical intimate  space during their short, shared, journeys. And then there is the surprisingly rich symbolic lore associated with taxis, taxi journeys, and their drivers; their immigrant status; their names; their dreams; and finally of who - unique individuals within what we often see as just a general category of taxi drivers - they, ultimately, are: as one put it, their real  selves.

All in all when I got into it I found myself wondering why I hadn’t before considered - why no one seemed to have considered - taking a detailed look at the intriguing subject of taxi drivers’ lives: often regarded as in a way the common man, yet each fully unique, individual. I embarked on it without question. Well, as I say, I just found I was in it. I had no idea, though, what a long and demanding and at the same time enjoyable pursuit it would turn out to be.

I hope that you too may find it of some interest and that the remarkable taxi drivers who participated will find it a worthy attempt to chart some of their many and diverse experiences and the settings in which they operate.gg

RF, Bletchley, August 2022

HERE

Chapter 1 Hidden in plain sight

This walking business is overrated: I mastered the art of doing it when I was quite small, and in any case, what are taxis for?

(Christopher Hitchens)

When, like others, I need a taxi I assume there will be one out there somewhere, available  through the phone, the Internet, outside the station, on the streets - somewhere. No problem, no need to know the background -  one will just be there waiting for me.

Oh, and, I suppose, its driver too. No need to think about that. Just  part of  the necessary equipment. Just a taxi driver.

And then, when, as I’ve described, I got interested, I started noticing how often I saw taxis driving round, part of a line of moving vehicles, or in traffic jams. They seemed to crop up all over the place (except of course, as with buses, just when you wanted one). Since  there are around a thousand licensed taxis in my home town, their visible presence Is scarcely surprising. But they were there not just in Milton Keynes - there are thousands of them in London for example. It was pretty much the same in every town I’ve visited, overseas as well as in England.

Here, there, and everywhere

Yes, taxis are everywhere, a necessary and expected adjunct, it seems,  of urban life.

In London above all thousands of black cabs throng the streets ( 24,000 if them it is said, and  40,000 minicab drivers) and have featured in just about every fictional account set there - how could you describe London without the famous black cabs and their incredibly knowledgeable drivers? Or get around without a taxi in Cambridge or Brighton where there’s just about nowhere  you can  park your  car? In Glasgow or Birmingham or Belfast, whether at airport or train station  or street corner - get a taxi and rely on the driver to know the way to your destination. The same abroad - Auckland, Austin, Milan, Moscow, New York, wherever.

The acquired street knowledge of taxi drivers is famous. So when I or others don’t know how to get to  our destination  and need to be sure of getting there, and  in time - it’s a taxi, what else?

So -  they are everywhere.

And - invisible

Everywhere - but somehow not there, not noticed. Both the vehicles themselves and, even more, the drivers seated quasi-invisible within them, are seen only when needed. They can be for granted as a kind of automatic part of the service - certainly not  individuals with their interests, their joys and sorrows, their lives in the past and present.

This relative invisibility of these near ubiquitous taxis and their drivers is at first  sight deeply puzzling. How can we be so un-noticing and uncurious about the experiences and characteristics of fellow human beings?

In fact this is exactly the kind of invisibility that  happens when something is too familiar and, as it were, natural for us to pay attention to it, far less think it calls for academic study. 

For many years this was the case with other obvious subjects: with notoriously invisible housework; with amateur artists and craftspeople; with the non-taxed informal grey economy. Despite some laudatory attempts, it is still  largely so with the artistry of ordinary speech, non-sensory communication, or the everyday arts of room decoration - indeed with the many aspects of ordinary living that we just take for granted. It is only relatively recently, for example, that everyday life or street culture have become accepted objects of research.

These hidden arts are, it is true, sometimes captured and studied - often wonderfully - by the discipline of folklore, especially in North America and Scandinavia. But, in Britain at least, they  less often gain recognition as subjects for serious scholarly research. 

This is certainly so of taxi drivers, for all their ubiquity. Everywhere - and yet when, as a typical academic, I looked  for  the literature on taxis and taxi drivers - serious research-based  writing that is -  I could find next to nothing. I have been on the look-out for years. Even the massive Sage Handbook on Transport has, amazingly, nothing in its index for taxis, cabs,