Litter (vehicle) Totally Explained

Everything about Sedan Chair totally explained

The litter is a class of wheelless vehicles, a type of human-powered transport, for the transport of persons. Examples of litter vehicles include sedan chairs (England), palanquin (also known as palkhi) (India), and gama (Korea). Smaller litters may take the form of open chairs or beds carried by two or more men, some being enclosed for protection from the elements. Larger litters, for example those of the Chinese emperors, may resemble small rooms upon a platform borne upon the shoulders of a dozen or more men. To most efficiently carry a litter, porters will attempt to transfer the load to their shoulders, either by placing the carrying poles upon their shoulders, or the use of a yoke to transfer the load from the carrying poles to the shoulder. Also the rickshaw is a close descendent of this.

Definitions

A simple litter, often called a stretcher, consists of a sling attached along its length to poles or stretched inside a frame. The poles or frame are carried by porters in front and behind. Such simple litters are common on battlefields and emergency situations, where terrain prohibits wheeled vehicles from carrying away the dead and wounded.
   Litters can also be created by the expedient of the lashing of poles to a chair. Such litters, consisting of a simple cane chair with maybe an umbrella to ward of the elements and two stout bamboo poles, may still be found in Chinese mountain resorts such as the Huangshan Mountains to carry tourists along scenic paths and to viewing positions inaccessible by other means of transport.
   A more luxurious version consists of a bed or couch, sometimes enclosed by curtains, for the passenger or passengers to lie on. These are carried by at least two porters in equal numbers in front and behind, using wooden rails that pass through brackets on the sides of the couch. The largest and heaviest types would be carried by draught animals.
   Another form, commonly called a sedan chair, consists of a chair or windowed cabin suitable for a single occupant, also carried by at least two porters in front and behind, using wooden rails that pass through brackets on the sides of the chair. These porters were known in London as "chairmen". These have been very rare since the 19th century, but such enclosed portable litters have been used as an elite form of transport for centuries, especially in cultures where women are kept secluded.
   Sedan chairs, in use until the 19th century, were accompanied at night by link-boys who carried torches. Where possible, the link boys escorted the fares to the chairmen, the passengers then being delivered to the door of their lodgings.. Private chairs were an important marker of a person's status. Civil officers' status was denoted by the number of bearers attached to his chair
   In Europe, Henry VIII of England was carried around in a sedan chair — it took four strong chairmen to carry him towards the end of his life — but the expression "sedan chair" wasn't used in print until 1615. It doesn't seem to take its name from the city of Sedan. Trevor Fawcett notes (see link) that English travellers Fynes Moryson (in 1594) and John Evelyn (in 1644-5) remarked on the seggioli of Naples and Genoa, which were chairs for public hire slung from poles and carried on the shoulders of two porters.
   From the mid-17th century, visitors taking the waters at Bath would be conveyed in a chair enclosed in baize curtains, especially if they'd taken a heated bath and were going straight to bed to sweat. The curtains kept off a possibly fatal draft. These were not the proper sedan chairs "to carry the better sort of people in visits, or if sick or infirmed" (Celia Fiennes). In the 17th and 18th centuries, the chairs stood in the main hall of a well-appointed city residence, where a lady could enter and be carried to her destination without setting foot in a filthy street. The tasteful neoclassical sedan chair made for Queen Charlotte remains at Buckingham Palace.
   By the mid-17th century, sedans for hire were a common mode of transportation. In London, "chairs" were available for hire in 1634, each assigned a number and the chairmen licensed because the operation was a monopoly of a courtier of Charles I. Sedan chairs could pass in streets too narrow for a carriage and were meant to alleviate the crush of coaches in London streets, an early instance of traffic congestion. A similar system was later used in Scotland. In 1738, a fare system was established for Scottish sedans, and the regulations covering chairmen in Bath are reminiscent of the modern Taxi Commission's rules. A trip within a city cost six pence and a day’s rental was four shillings. A sedan was even used as an ambulance in Scotland's Royal Infirmary.
   Chairmen moved at a good clip. In Bath they'd the right-of-way and pedestrians hearing "By your leave" behind them knew to flatten themselves against walls or railings as the chairmen hustled through. There were often disastrous accidents, upset chairs, and broken glass-paned windows.
   Sedan chairs were also used by the wealthy in the cities of colonial America. Benjamin Franklin used a sedan chair until late in the 1700s.

Colonial practice

In various colonies, litters of various types were not only maintained under native traditions, but often adopted by the white colonials as a new ruling and/or socio-economic elite, either for practical reasons (often comfortable modern transport was unavailable, for example for lack of decent roads) and/or as a status symbol.

During the 17-18th centuries, palanquins (see above) were very popular among European traders in Bengal, so much so that in 1758 an order was issued prohibiting their purchase by certain lower-ranking employees.

The end of a tradition

In the early 19th century, the public sedan chair began to go out of use, perhaps because streets were better paved, perhaps because of the rise of the more companionable hackney carriage. In Glasgow the licensing records show twenty-seven sedans in 1800, eighteen in 1817, and ten in 1828. During that same period the number of registered hackney carriages in Glasgow rose to one hundred and fifty.

The traveling "silla" of Latin America

A similar but simpler device was used by the elite in parts of 18th- and 19th-century Latin America. Often simply called a silla (Spanish for seat or chair), it consisted of a simple wooden chair with tump-line attached. The occupant sat in the chair, which was then affixed to the back of a single porter, with the tumpline supported by his head. The occupant thus faced backwards during travel. This was probably devised because the area had many rough roads unsuitable to European-style sedan chairs. Travellers by silla usually employed a number of porters, who would trade off carrying the occupant.
A chair borne on the back of a porter, almost identical to the silla, is used in the mountains of China for ferrying older tourists and visitors up and down the mountain paths. One of these mountains where the silla is used is the Huangshan Mountains of Anhui province in Eastern China.

Further Information

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