Background
Shillibeer was born in Street Marylebone, London the son of Abraham and Elizabeth Shillibeer.
Shillibeer was born in Street Marylebone, London the son of Abraham and Elizabeth Shillibeer.
Christened in Street 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". The aim was to design a coach capable of transporting a whole group of people, perhaps two dozen, at a time.
Shillibeer"s design worked, and was very stable.
lieutenant was introduced into the streets of Paris in 1827. Shortly afterwards, Shillibeer was commissioned to build another by the Newington Academy for Girls, a Quaker school in Stoke Newington near London.
This had a total of twenty-five seats, and entered history as the first school business In 1827 Joseph Pease, a railway pioneer and later the first Quaker Member of Parliament, wrote in verse about the school bus: The straight path of Truth the dear Girls keep their feet in, And ah! it would do your heart good Cousin Anne, To see them arriving at Gracechurch Street Meeting, All snugly packed up, 25 in a van.
A less successful innovation was his "Funeral Omnibus", which combined a passenger vehicle with a hearse.
George Shillibeer died at Brighton, East Sussex on 21 August 1866 (some sources say 22 August), and is buried in the church graveyard at Chigwell in Essex. In 1979, the 150th anniversary of the commencement of the first omnibus service in London, several London buses (twelve Atomic Energy Commission Routemasters and one Leyland Fleetline) were operated in a green and yellow livery similar to Shilibeer"s Omnibus. These specially painted vehicles were displayed for their launch into service at the Guildhall in central London on Friday 2 March 1979.
Betjamin was one of the guests at the ceremony.
Also, a memorial service was held at the Chigwell Church attended by Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother. Shillibeer Walk in Chigwell was named after him, and Shillibeer Place in Marylebone, as is a public/restaurant named The George Shillibeer next to a converted omnibus factory in north London.
British Broadcasting Corporation Coast present Nicholas Crane, is a direct descendant.