George Shillibeer

Christened in St Marys Church, Marylebone on 22 October 1797, Shillibeer worked for the coach company Hatchetts in Long Acre, the coach-building district of the capital.

In the 1820s he was offered work in Paris, France, where he was commissioned to build some unusually large horse-drawn coaches of "novel design".

In 1827 Joseph Pease, a railway pioneer and later the first Quaker MP, wrote in verse about the school bus: Whilst in Paris, Shillibeer concluded that operating similar vehicles in London, but for the fare-paying public with multiple stops, would be a paying enterprise, so he returned to his native city.

An account of the new service was given in the Morning Post of 7 July 1829: Saturday the new vehicle, called the Omnibus, commenced running from Paddington to the City, and excited considerable notice, both from the novel form of the carriage, and the elegance with which it is fitted out.

It is capable of accommodating 16 or 18 persons, all inside, and we apprehend it would be almost impossible to make it overturn, owing to the great width of the carriage.