Gosport Street Tramways

History
The Gosport Street Tramways Company operated horse trams for barely 13 months (from 1882) before its parent company — Provincial Tramways Co Ltd — amalgamated it, along with its other Portsmouth-area subsidiaries into a single company, the Portsmouth Street Tramways Company. The latter continued to run horse trams in Gosport and Fareham until their final displacement by electric services in 1905/6.

Uniforms
Photographs of the Gosport horse trams are extremely scarce, but those that have survived strongly suggest that staff wore informal but smart attire, consisting of a greatcoat or coachman's coat, jacket, shirt, tie and the fashionable headgear of the day, either the bowler hat, or in later years, the flat cap. No insignia of any kind appears to have been worn, including municipal licences.

Photographs of inspectors have not survived, and it is entirely possible that the Gosport Street Tramways Company never employed them.

Further reading
For a detailed history of the area's tramways, see 'Tramways of Portsmouth' by S E Harrison, Light Railway Transport League (1955).

Images

Horse tram drivers and conductors
Gosport Street Tramways horse tram
A double-deck GSTCo horsecar with crew — photo undated, but thought to have been taken around the turn of the century. Photo courtesy of the Tramways and Light Railway Society, with thanks to David Voice.


Gosport Street Tramways
A blow-up of the above photo showing the conductor, in greatcoat with cash bag, and the driver (William Hibdige) also in a long greatcoat or coachman's coat, and wearing a flat cap.


Gosport Street Tramways
Driver George Felmingham and Conductor Arnold pose for the cameraman near the Wheatsheaf pub in Brockhurst in 1897. Both men are wearing smart, but informal attire. Photo courtesy of the Tramways and Light Railway Society, with thanks to David Voice.