Published in 1886 and an immediate best seller, The Mystery of a Hansom Cab was one of the earliest detective stories written in English, predating Arthur Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet by a year, and is considered one of the best examples of the genre. As a mystery I must admit it is a bit slight and the identity of the killer is given away very early in the piece, but for this reader its main charm lies in its depiction of my own home town, Melbourne, Australia, where the novel was written and set.
The novel takes us to the moneyed salons of The Melbourne Club, the elegance of The Block, the slums of Little Bourke Street, the sweet sea air of St Kilda and the sweltering heat of a Victorian rural station, all of which are evoked with the authenticity that can only be attained by an eye-witness. Whatever its achievement as a mystery, I’m sure this characteristic made a large contribution to the novel’s success, especially in Melbourne.
Its author, Fergus Hume, was born in England and migrated to New Zealand as a child with his family. After qualifying as a lawyer, he left New Zealand for the most dynamic city of the colonies at the time, Marvellous Melbourne. There, however, rather than settling for a career in the law, Hume was determined to make a name for himself as a writer. After failing to interest any of the theatres in his plays, Hume decided to write a novel, but not just any novel, a best-seller. Enquiring of a bookseller what kind of novel was the most popular, he was told it was the detective mysteries of Emile Gaboriau. After having read all of Gaboriau’s novels, Hume produced his own, The Mystery of a Hansom Cab.
A dashing young man about town is found drunk in a city street. A man who appears to know him hails a hansom cab and offers to accompany the drunk to his home, but half way there the Good Samaritan seems to argue with his friend and gets out of the cab, sending the driver on. When the driver tries to rouse his remaining passenger he finds him dead. Thus begins a mystery that incorporates all the elements one expects from a nineteenth century melodrama – a beautiful and innocent young heiress, a terrible secret, and an honourable young man who would rather face death than reveal it. But apart from these clichés, Hume gives his mystery an air of authenticity with newspaper articles, court transcripts and police procedures. It is much livened by some rather eccentric characters including an alcoholic slum matriarch, a pair of garrulous landladies, and two rival detectives each pursuing opposing lines of investigation. But the investigation is actually a small part of this novel which focuses, rather, on the people whose lives have been affected by the murder – the young woman the dead man had once courted, her fiancé who is accused of his murder, and her father, a millionaire with a mysterious past.
Having written his novel, Hume approached several publishers and came up against an attitude that still lingers today, that nothing good could possibly come out of Australia. So Hume did what many authors are still forced to do. He scraped the money together to self-publish his book. Despite the publishers’ prejudices, the first print run of 5,000 copies sold out in three weeks and a second print run was produced. However, Hume lacked the capital to take his novel to the British and American markets, so sold those rights for £50. Hume did not see another penny for sales of 750,000, or the stage adaptation which ran in London for 500 nights. Hume followed his creation to London where he continued his career as a writer, but without ever again seeing the success of his first novel.
The Mystery of a Hansom Cab is an entertaining mystery in its own right, a remarkable example of the origins of the detective novel, and a delightful evocation of its time and place. It is well worth reading.
New editions of the novel are available from Text Publishing and Axiom Press in their Australian Experience series (however, I must point out that the standards of this edition are very poor, the text having obviously been electronically scanned, but not proofread.) It is also available as an eBook from Adelaide University.
©Pauline Montagna 2006