Omnibus

Omnibus (pronounced om-nuh-buhs)

(1) A now less commonly used term for a bus (a public mass-transit vehicle).

(2) A volume of reprinted works of a single author or of works related in interest or theme, by extension later applied to a television or radio programme consisting of two or more programmes earlier broadcast.

(3) Something pertaining to, including, or dealing with numerous objects or items at once, the best known example being the omnibus bills submitted to a legislature (a number of bills combined as one).

(4) As a pre-nominal, of, dealing with, or providing for many different things or cases. 

(5) In philately, a stamp issue, usually commemorative, that appears simultaneously in several countries as a common issue.

(6) In public transportation, a service which stops at every station, as opposed to a point-to-point express.

(7) In literary use as a humorous device, a jack of all trades (a person with knowledge in multiple fields, usually with some hint of lacking competence in at least some).

(8) In restaurants, both (1) a waiter’s assistant (obsolete, replaced by busboy or (now more commonly) busser or commis waiter) & (2) later the small, wheeled cart used by a waiter's assistant.

1829: A adoption in English to describe a "long-bodied, horse-drawn, four-wheeled public vehicle with seats for passengers", from the French voiture omnibus (carriage for all, common (conveyance)), from the Latin omnibus (for all), dative plural of omnis (all), ablative of omnia, from the primitive Indo-European hep-ni- (working), from hep- (to work; to possess) or hop- (to work; to take).  Bus was thus a convenient shortening to describe the (then horse drawn) forms of public transport and subsequent uses by analogy with transporting (even weightless) stuff is derived from this.  The present participle is omnibusing or omnibussing and the past participle omnibused or omnibussed; the noun plural is either omnibuses or (for the public transportation) omnibusses; the attractive omnibi unfortunately wholly non-standard.

Omnibus entered English to describe a “horse-drawn, long-bodied, four-wheeled public vehicle with seats for passengers” in 1829 as a borrowing from the French where it had been in use for a decade, introduced in Paris in the winter of 1819-1820 by a Monsieur Jacques Lafitte (1761-1833) who used the term voiture omnibus”, combining the French word for "carriage" with the Latin phrase meaning "for all".  An Englishman named George Shillibeer (1797-1866) was the coach-builder to whom Lafitte awarded the contract to build his omnibuses and after returning to London, he built similar models, introducing them in 1929 to immediate success.  In the manner of the Brougham and Hansom cabs, they were known first as Shillibeers (and use of his name to describe the vehicles did persist until late in the nineteenth century) but omnibus was soon preferred and that for more than a century remained the official designation (and indeed still appears in some legislation and ordinances) but predictably, the public preferred the more phonetically economical "bus" and that endures to this day.  Encouraged by his success, Mr Shillibeer remained entrepreneurial, introducing in 1858 the “funeral omnibus” which combined in the one vehicle (in separate compartments), accommodation for both coffin (casket) and mourners.  Thus a combination of bus and hearse, the advertising suggested that for smaller funeral parties it would be cheaper than hiring multiple vehicles (with their attendant staff and horses).  Perhaps for cultural reasons it seems not to have been a success, but hearses with similar configuration are used in some countries and, in the West, some are built with seating for up to four passengers, apparently intended for the undertaker’s staff.

Lindsay Lohan display advertising on Italian omnibus, Milan.

The use of omnibus to describe a junior staff member in a restaurant who was assigned essentially “all the tasks the waiters preferred not to do” dates from 1880 and came soon to be applied to the wheeled carts such helpers used to more around crockery, cutlery, flatware and such.  This simultaneous use may have proved confusing or else three syllables was just too much because by 1913 the carts were being called busses and their operators busboys (although that seems not to have survived our more gender-sensitive age and “commis waiter” seems now preferred (usually as “commis”).  Omnibus was the name of a long-running live TV series (1952-1961) hosted on US television by expatriate English journalist Alistair Cooke (1908-2004).  The use of omnibus to describe a legislative bill which addresses a number of vaguely related (or even wholly dissimilar) matters in the one document technically dates from 1842 although, as an adjective referring to legislation "designed to cover many different cases, embracing numerous distinct objects", it was in use in the US as early as 1835 and is most famously associated with the act (made of five separate bills) passed in 1850 to secure the Compromise of 1850 which (temporarily) defused a political confrontation between slave and free states over the status of territories acquired in the Mexican–American War.

The Man on the Clapham Omnibus

1932 Lancia Autoalveare, a triple-decker omnibus which served the Rome-Tvoli route.  The upper deck was apparently, at least on some occasions, designated as "non-smoking" but history doesn't record whether the bus company enjoyed any more success than the government of Italy in enforcing such edicts.

The phrase “man on the Clapham omnibus” was one adopted (apparently from early in the twentieth century) by judges of English courts to illustrate the “reasonable person”.  The word “reasonable” had been in English since circa 1300 as a borrowing from the Old French raisonable and the Latin rationabilis (from ratio) and in this context was an attempt by example encapsulate “the average man” or “the man in the street”, judges varying in their descriptions of this construct but meaning usually something like “a reasonably intelligent and impartial person unversed in legal esoteric” (Jones v US, DC Court of Appeals).  When the phrase was in 1903 used by Lord Justice Sir Richard Collins MR, the Clapham omnibus would have been horse drawn and he credited the expression to one he’d heard mentioned by a previous Lord of Appeal in Ordinary, Lord Bowen (1835-1894).

The judicial choice of a bus passenger was based on the idea that such a person could be thought to be representative of an upstanding, respectable and thoroughly ordinary member of society, one for whom views of things were not infected by legal technicalities.  The choice of Clapham was significant only that it was an unexceptional London suburb something like many of dozens that might be said to have been “typical” of the city.  The man on the Clapham omnibus was thus in the tradition of legal fictions, a hypothetical person used for illustrative purposes, the first known instance of which in Western legal tradition was the creation by Roman jurists of the figure of bonus pater familias (good family father) a chap said to be not only respectable but unrelentingly and reliably average in every aspect of life.  In the Canadian province of Quebec, the very similar standard of the bon père de famille is derived from the Roman bonus pater familias.  The reasonable man (now of course a reasonable person) is a necessity in many aspects of law because so many standards upon which cases are decided depend on the word reasonable.  Were the consequences of an action reasonably foreseeable?  Would a reasonable person believe a certain thing told to them?  Was a claim by advertisement reasonable?  Was the violence used reasonable given the manner in which the defendant was assaulted.

Crooked Hillary dumping on deplorables, Georgia, 2016.

Omnibuses have long been used by politicians for their campaign tours.  They offer lots of advantages, being offices and communications centres with at least some of their running costs offset by a reduction in staff travel expenses.  Additionally, with five large, flat surfaces, they are a rolling billboard although that can be good or bad.  In 2016, one of crooked Hillary Clinton’s campaign buses was photographed in Lawrenceville, Georgia dumping a tank full of human waste onto the street and into a storm drain.  The local news service reported that when police attended the street was “…was covered in toilet paper and the odor was noxious”.  Hazmat crews were called to clean up the scene and the matter was referred to the environmental protection division of Georgia’s Department of Natural Resources.  The Democratic National Committee (DNC) later issued an apology, claiming the incident was “an honest mistake.”  Using the word “honest” in any statement related to crooked Hillary Clinton is always a bit of a gamble and there was no word on whether the dumping of human excrement had been delayed until the bus was somewhere it was thought many deplorables may be living.  If so, that may have been another “honest mistake” because Gwinett County (in which lies Lawrenceville) voted 51.02% Clinton/Kaine & 45.14% Trump/Pence although the symbolism may not have been lost on much of the rest of Georgia; state wide the Republican ticket prevailed 50.38% to 45.29%.

Crooked Hillary Clinton’s campaign buses also attracted memes referencing a crash and a breakdown.  Both were fake news but surprisingly prescient, the Clinton/Kaine ticket securing an absolute majority of votes cast but failing to gain the requisite numbers in the Electoral College because the campaign neglected adequately to target areas in states the DNC regarded either (1) solidly in the possession of their machine or (2) populated by folk from the "basket of deplorables" and thus worthy only of a dumping of shit, figurative and literal.  Like the candidate, the 2016 campaign was something like what was planned for 2008, taken from the cold-room, rechauffed and served with the claim it was fresh.  It wasn't quite that the staff had "learned nothing and forgotten everything" but it does seem the operation was top-heavy with political operatives and lacking in those with a mastery of the techniques of data analysis.  All the evidence suggests there was no lack of data, just an inability to extract from it useful information. 

Before Photoshop imbued all with cynical disbelief, the triple decked omnibus was a popular vehicle for April fool's day pranks, the photograph on the left published in Lisbon on the day in 1951.  The one on the right is from 1926 and was in the German magazine Echo Continental (trade publication of the auto and truck parts manufacturer Continental AG) which "reported" the development of Berlin's new triple-decker city omnibus.  So lovely are the art deco lines, it's a shame it wasn't real.