For these reasons, men preferred to sit on the knifeboard of the omnibus, located on the roof. There were small ledges on which to step to reach the ‘knifeboard’, a raised partition along the middle with seats on each side. It was rare for women to venture up there as it was so difficult to get on and off wearing a cumbersome skirt or crinoline. If you’re interested in Victorian social history, the memoirs of Molly Hughes (M V Hughes) are well worth seeking out (see Books and Resources). In A London Child of the 1870s (1934), she describes a secret adventure with her brothers in which she went on the mysterious roof of an omnibus for the first time: ‘If I had been asked to a royal ball I couldn’t have been more excited… Dym went up first, then hung down and pointed out the tiny ledges on which I had to put my feet, stretching out his hands to pull me up, while Barnholt fetched up the rear in case I slipped. On the top was what they called the knifeboard…How people stuck on to them I couldn’t imagine. But the boys had other designs: they scrambled down on to the seat in front, by the driver, and got me there too… I was safely tucked in between him and Dym, with Barnholt on his other side. How powerful the horse looked from this point of view, how jolly to hear the chucklings and whoas, and to see the whip flourished about, but only gently touching the horse. “I never whips old Rosy,” the driver told me. “She’s been with me six years and knows what I want. I use the whip like chatting to her.” …Barnholt, as look-out man, kept calling my attention to things in the shops, and to people doing mysterious jobs in first-floor windows. One room was a nursery, where a boy was riding on a rocking-horse, and in one garden we passed there was a swing with a boy going very high. We feared to go the whole length of our twopenny ride in case we should be late for tea, so we asked the driver to pull up for us. In my haste to show him how well I could get off by jumping down to Dym in front, I fell right into the muddy street. But no harm was done, and the boys picked me up, and we ran home as fast as we could and slipped in at the back door.’