A dogcart (also dog-cart or dog cart) is a two-wheeled horse-drawn vehicle pulled by a single horse in shafts, or driven tandem.
There is a hinged tailboard which lowers slightly and, supported by chains, acts as a footrest for the rear-facing passengers.
Some dogcarts had a mechanism to slide the entire body forward or rearward along the shafts to help balance the weight for the horse.
Though the word cart generally means a two-wheeled vehicle, the name dogcart stuck when the body style was mounted on four-wheeled phaeton undercarriages.
[1] Frequent references to dog-carts are made by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in his writings about fictional detective Sherlock Holmes,[3] and by many other Victorian writers, as they were a common sight in that era.