'Have Feet, Will Travel' 'By Your Leave, Traveling With Our Ancestors, Litter Style!

As if you did not need further examples of the randomness of the inner workings of my esoteric mind, it has become even further underscored by the very nature of the subject matter of this post!

Quite recently one of my younger sons was watching a favorite cartoon, normally I tend to try and block them out as much as possible, even as a child I had a low threshold when it came to such forms of entertainment.

However, in letting down my guard for a second, I heard one of the characters say; ‘No my prince, you must not walk!  Your station requires a palanquin!’

For a mere instance, I was about to let it pass, then my mind latched onto the word, and it roared back into my head! Palanquin! It was a delicious word to be sure.

Pronounced \'pal-en-'k(w)in\ or \pal·an·keen\; a palanquin, a much more romanticized word over its more pedestrian moniker of litter; is essentially a class of wheel less vehicle, more specifically a type of human-powered transport, for the transport of persons.

Additional examples of litter type vehicles include; the lectica, a popular form of transportation in Ancient Rome, the jiao from China, sedan chairs from England and the Continent, the palki from India and Pakistan, the gama from Korea and the tahtırevan from Turkey.

Similar to our current world with regard to the size of the vehicles we choose today, it was no different for our litter powered ancestors from the past.  Smaller litters; the sub-compacts of their day; took the form of open chairs or beds carried by two or more men, some being enclosed for protection from the elements. Larger litters, of today’s SUV variety, for example those of the Chinese emperors, resembled small rooms upon a platform borne upon the shoulders of a dozen or more men. To more efficiently carry a litter, porters would 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.

The litter in its simplest form, was often called a king carrier, it consisted of a sling attached along its length to poles or stretched inside a frame. Then the poles or frame were carried by porters in front and behind. Such simple litters were common on battlefields and emergency situations, where terrain prohibited wheeled vehicles from carrying away the dead and or wounded.

Litters could also be created by the expedient of the lashing of poles to a chair. Such litters, consisted of a simple cane chair with maybe an umbrella to ward off the elements and two stout bamboo poles, even today they can 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 consisted of a bed or couch, for the passenger or passengers to lie on; often enclosed by curtains to give a semblance of privacy. These were carried by at least two porters in equal numbers in front and behind, using wooden rails that passed through brackets on the sides of the couch. The largest and heaviest types would be carried by draught animals.

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’ was not used in print until 1615. It does not seem to take its name from the city of Sedan. Trevor Fawcett notes 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.

By 1581, the sedan chair was shunned by the public. In fact, in the early 1600's when the Duke of Buckingham attempted to use one, he incurred public censure for making human beings do the work of animals.

Eventually by the time Sir Saunders Duncombe introduced his chairs opinion had changed in England. So great was the change that In 1634, Sir Saunders Duncombe patented his own version of the sedan chair and with an eye towards financial prudency, obtained a monopoly on the rental of ‘hackney chairs’ for fourteen years.

Elaborate costumes and coiffures were now in fashion and the sedan chair offered the surest way of traveling through filthy streets without getting rained on, splattered with mud, or having a coiffure ruined. The sedan chair was cheaper than hackney coaches, and a person could not only travel from door to door in a sedan chair but could travel from indoors to indoors without setting foot outside.

With a bow towards the modern day London tax, the ‘for hire’ sedan chair was painted black outside and upholstered inside. Windows were fitted on three sides, though the front pole man necessarily presented the passenger with a view ahead consisting mainly of his back. The poles were long and springy enough to impart a slight bounce to the ride. The poles threaded through metal brackets on the sides of the body of the chair. They could be quickly removed when the chair was not in use. Passengers entered and departed at the front, between the poles, if they were in place. The sedan's roof hinged at the rear and could be lifted to better accommodate entry and exits. Once within the chair, passengers had to trust to the chairmen's competence, surefootedness, and skill in synchronizing their pace and maneuvers. Cesar de Saussure, a foreign visitor to London in 1725, wrote: ‘the bearers going so fast that you have some difficulty in keeping up with them on foot. I do not believe that in all Europe better or more dexterous bearers are to be found; all foreigners are surprised at their strength and skill.’ Chairmen moved at a good clip. In Bath they had 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. Although pedestrians were expected to give way when a chair bore down on them, there was always a possibility of a collision at street corners. The men shouted warnings of ‘Have care!’ or ‘By your leave, sir!’ to alert other pedestrians of their presence. There were often disastrous accidents, upset chairs, and broken glass-paned windows.

Each sedan chair was assigned a number and the chairmen licensed because the operation was a monopoly. 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.

Many of the wealthy owned their own sedan chairs but hired chairmen to carry them as the need arose. The sedan chairs belonging to the gentry were often quite elaborate, with rich upholstery and painted bodies or wooden crests on the roof. These private sedan chairs were often beautifully painted by the most renowned painters of the day. They were often purchased from furniture makers and appear in furniture catalogs of the day. John Walter a furniture maker who provided furniture for the new Assembly Rooms at Bath in around 1770 also built sedan chairs. The diary of the Earl of Bristol notes that he paid £14 l0s for a private sedan chair in 1735.

The public chairs waited on stands in the street just as hackney coaches did. London and Westminster issued 300 sedan chair permits in the early 1700's. The chairmen were licensed and had to display a number. It cost £1 1 shilling to hire a sedan chair for a week. Chairmen wore a distinctive uniform, varying slightly over the decades and between winter and summer. It consisted of a blue kersey coat or greatcoat, black knee-breeches, white stockings or gaiters, buckled shoes, and large cocked hat.

Chairs were available at any hour of the day or night. There was a long-established custom of paying the chairmen double fare for transport after midnight. At night a link-boy's torch lighted the way for the chairmen. Lady Mary Wortley Montague gossiped about a lady and gentleman neighbor who escaped from a house fire in only their nightclothes and had to take cramped refuge in a passing sedan chair, which were always made to be single-seat. When Horace Walpole's house was broken into in the small hours of the morning, a couple of chairmen responded to the alarm and helped to capture the burglar.

Some chairmen were less helpful, there were enough problems that fines were levied for bad behavior. Swearing, the commonest misdemeanor, incurred fines ranging from one to ten shillings, but more serious offences brought suspension or discharge.

Seventh century visitors taking the waters at Bath would be conveyed in a chair enclosed in baize curtains, especially if they had 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. 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 BuckinghamPalace.

A Rococo sedan chair arrives at a garden party, depicted in a 19th-century oil painting by G. Borgelli.

In England, the two-man chair survived well into the 1800's because it was actually quicker to walk than to ride in London's narrow, uneven streets; at the same time, it often was too dirty and or unsafe to walk in many areas.

Sedan chairs, while popular, 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.

In Great Britain, in the early 19th century, the public sedan chair began to go out of use, perhaps because streets were better paved or perhaps because of the rise of the more comfortable, companionable and affordable hackney carriage. In Glasgow, the decline of the sedan chair is illustrated by licensing records which show twenty-seven sedan chairs 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.

Eventually the sedan chair was superseded by the cab. Charles Dickens includes an episode about a sedan chair in Pickwick Papers. Jane Austen mentions them in her Gothic pastiche Northanger Abbey.

Even today, several houses in Bath, Somerset, England still have the link extinguishers on the exteriors, shaped like outsized candle snuffers. In the 1970s, entrepreneur and Bathwick resident, John Cuningham, revived the sedan chair service business for a brief amount of time.

Harkening back to Pharaonic Egypt and many oriental realms such as China, the ruler and divinities, in the form of an idol were often transported thus in public, frequently in procession, as during state ceremonial or religious festivals.

In Ancient Rome, a litter called the lectica or ‘sella’ often carried members of the Imperial family, but also other dignitaries and other members of the rich elite, when not mounted on horseback.

The habit must have proven quite persistent, for the Third Council of Braga in 675 AD saw the need to order that bishops, when carrying the relics of martyrs in procession, must walk to the church, and not be carried in a chair, or litter, by deacons clothed in white.

In the Catholic Church, Popes up until the pontificate of Pope John Paul I were carried the same way in ‘Sedia Gestatoria’, which was replaced later by the Popemobile.

DurIng the glory days of Han China the elite travelled in light bamboo seats supported on a carrier's back like a backpack. In the Northern Wei Dynasty and the Northern and Southern Song Dynasties, wooden carriages on poles appear in painted landscape scrolls.

A commoner used a wooden or bamboo civil litter, while the Mandarin class used an official litter enclosed in silk curtains.

The chair with perhaps the greatest importance was the bridal chair. A traditional bride is carried to her wedding ceremony by a ‘shoulder carriage’ or  ‘pinyin’, usually hired. These were lacquered in an auspicious shade of red, richly ornamented and gilded, and were equipped with red silk curtains to screen the bride from onlookers.

Sedan chairs were once the only public conveyance in Hong Kong, filling the role of cabs. Chair stands were found at all hotels, wharves, and major crossroads. Public chairs were licensed, and charged according to tariffs which would be displayed inside. 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. Before Hong Kong's Peak Tram went into service in 1888, wealthy residents of The Peak were carried on sedan chairs by coolies up the steep paths to their residence including Sir Richard MacDonnell's (former Governor of Hong Kong) summer home, where they could take advantage of the cooler climate. Since 1975 an annual sedan chair race has been held to benefit the Matilda International Hospital and commemorate the practice of earlier days.

In India, a palanquin, also known as palkhi, was a covered sedan chair, or litter carried on four poles. It derives from the Sanskrit word for a bed or couch, pa:lanka.

Palanquins are mentioned in literature as early as the Ramayana (c. 250BC) although they began to fall out of use after rickshaws, on wheels, more practical were introduced in the 1930s.

The doli, also transliterated from Hindi as dhooly or dhoolie was a cot or frame, suspended by the four corners from a bamboo pole. Two or four men would carry it. In the time of the British in India, dhooly-bearers were used to carry the wounded from the battlefield and transport them.

Today in numerous areas of India including at the Hindu pilgrimage site of Amarnath Temple in Kashmir, palanquins can be hired to carry the customer up steep hills.

In traditional Javanese society- the generic palanquin or joli- was a wicker chair with a canopy, attached to two poles, borne on men's shoulders available for hire to any paying customer.  As a status marker, gilded throne-like palanquins, or jempana were originally solely reserved for the royalty and later co-opted by the Dutch. As a status marker: the more elaborate the palanquin- the higher the status of the owner. The joli was transported by either hired help, nobles' peasants or slaves.

Historically, the Javanese king's (raja), prince (pangeran), lord (raden mas) or other noble (bangsawan)'s palanquin (jempana or if more like a throne: pangkem) was always part of a large military procession, with a yellow square-shaped canopy: the Javanese colour for royalty; with the ceremonial parasol (payung) held above it, carried by a bearer behind and flanked by the most loyal bodyguards, usually about 12 men, with pikes, sabres, lances, muskets, keris and all manner of disguised blades. The canopy of the Sumatran palanquin was oval-shaped and draped in white cloth- reflective of greater cultural permeation of Islamic cultures. Occasionally, a weapon or heirloom, such as an important keris or tombak, was given its own palanquin. In Hindu culture in Bali today, the tradition of palanquins for auspicious statues, weapons or heirlooms continues for funerals especially, and for more elaborate rituals palanquin for the dead, subsequently cremated along with the departed.

Kago in Ukiyo-e by Keisai Eisen,print of Kumagai-shuku, part of the The Sixty-nine Stations of the Kiso Kaidō series

As the population of Japan increased, less and less land was available as grazing for the upkeep of horses. With the availability of horses restricted to martial uses, human powered transport became more important and prevalent.

Kago were often used in Japan to transport the warrior class and nobility, most famously during the Tokugawa period when regional samurai were required to spend a part of the year in Edo (Tokyo) with their families, resulting in yearly migrations of the rich and powerful to and from the capital along the central backbone road of Japan.

Somewhat similar in appearance to kago are the portable shrines that are used to carry the ‘god-body’ (goshintai), the central totemic core normally found in the most sacred area of Shinto Shrines, on a tour to and from a shrine during some religious festivals.

Re-enactment of the trail of Korean gama.

In Korea, royalty and aristocrats were carried in elaborately decorated litters called gama. Gamas were primarily used by royalty and government officials. There were six types of gama, each assigned to different government official rankings. In traditional weddings, the bride and groom are carried to the ceremony in separate gamas. Because of the difficulties posed by the mountainous terrain of the Korean peninsula and the lack of paved roads, gamas were preferred over wheeled vehicles.

A sedan chair designed by Robert Adam for Queen Charlotte, 1775.

Portuguese and Spanish navigators and colonistics encountered litters of various sorts in India, Mexico, and Peru. They were imported into Spain and spread into France and then England. All the names for these devices derived from the root "sed-" from the Latin "sella" - the traditional name for a carried chair.

The contraption did meet instant success in Europe, whose city streets were often a literal mess of mud and refuse, where cities and towns did not enjoy the presence of sewage systems left over from Imperial Roman days it was common use to empty chamber pots from windows down in the street as well as throwing kitchen refuses in the same fashion; affluent and well-to-do citizens oft found hazardous and impractical to negotiate those avenues and sedan chairs allowed them to remain prim and spotless while the carrying valets had to contend with the mud and the filth.

Sedan chairs were also used by the wealthy in the cities of colonial America. Benjamin Franklin used a sedan chair until late in the 18th century.

In various colonies, litters of various types were 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, e.g. for lack of decent roads and/or as a status symbol. During the 17-18th centuries, palanquins 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.

A similar but simpler palanquin 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 an attached tumpline. 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 style of palanquin was probably due to the steep terrain and rough or narrow roads unsuitable to European-style sedan chairs. Travellers by silla usually employed a number of porters, who would alternate carrying the occupant.

A chair borne on the back of a porter, almost identical to the silla, was 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 still used is the Huangshan Mountains of Anhui province in Eastern China.

"Man Powered' Luxury

Palanquin

Boutcha

Chowpaul

J'Hallender

Long Palanquin

Mejanah

NR

© 2011 The Esoteric Curiosa. All Rights Reserved