The Hackney research

A carriage yard off a cobbled street at golden hour, horses and hire carriages ranked along one side. Above the yard office, one gilded word: HIRE. A queue of drivers waits at a counter, each holding his own brass case open while a clerk presses four small company seals into the lid. On the wall behind the clerk hangs a tariff board and a notice of terms, both in small print far too fine to read. Through the office window a locked cabinet is visible with a row of the company's own cases in it, nearly all the shelves empty. The drivers are talking about the weather. A dog sleeps across the office step, in everybody's way.

Research brief, The Morporkian Civil Liberties Union (MCLU)

A carriage-hire company in Ankh-Morpork puts some five thousand drivers on the streets. It does not own their cases. Each driver carries his own brass case, bought with his own money, and the company requires four of its seals to be fitted to it before he may take a fare.

The four seals report where the carriage is, continuously and precisely. They report pictures and sound. They report who the driver is and how he is keeping: whether he is tired, and how long since he last stopped. They do this while he is working, and they do it afterwards, because nothing in the fitting distinguishes between the two.

The company issues cases of its own. It issues them subject to availability and to the budget, and the cabinet in the yard office has been nearly empty for two years. Every driver signed the terms. The signatures are real and the terms describe the seals accurately.

The company is concealing nothing and believes the signatures settle it. The driver who came to the MCLU does not say he was deceived. He says he was asked whether he agreed, on a morning when the alternative was going home, and that he agreed, and that he does not know what else that word is supposed to mean.

  • When the only alternative to agreeing is not working, what has been agreed?

  • The case is his, bought with his money and carried when he is not working. Where does the company’s reach into it stop, and who decided where?

Download the case file

Last updated: 17 September 2026