# The Mystery of a Hansom Cab — Character guide

> Key figures in The Mystery of a Hansom Cab by Fergus Hume.

- [Brian Fitzgerald](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_mystery_of_a_hansom_cab_se/characters/brian_fitzgerald.md): Brian moves easily through Collins Street clubs and Frettlby drawing-rooms, courting Madge and dodging questions about Whyte with a haste that reads as guilt. His evasiveness — snapping at the very mention of the murder,
- [Duncan Calton](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_mystery_of_a_hansom_cab_se/characters/calton.md): Calton argues with detectives over pints and possibilities, puncturing loose accusations against Moreland and demanding evidence rather than conjecture. His legal mind is the counterweight to gossip: where the public see
- [Madge Frettlby](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_mystery_of_a_hansom_cab_se/characters/madge_frettlby.md): Madge is Melbourne's golden girl — charming, teasing, adored by Brian, and utterly at home in the city's social round of ribbons, carriages, and afternoon tea. Her lightness is genuine, but it brushes against the murder 
- [Oliver Whyte](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_mystery_of_a_hansom_cab_se/characters/oliver_whyte.md): Whyte is remembered by acquaintances like Moreland as erratic, fond of other men's wives, and not quite respectable — yet he moved in circles that included the Frettlbys, and Frettlby once wanted him to marry Madge. His 
- [Mark Frettlby](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_mystery_of_a_hansom_cab_se/characters/mark_frettlby.md): Frettlby reads the Age at his club, indulges Madge, and dismisses Whyte as 'not a very desirable companion' — a remark that lands oddly given his own past connection to the dead man. His ease and his evasions sit side by
- [Mr. Gorby](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_mystery_of_a_hansom_cab_se/characters/gorby.md): Gorby arrives at Mrs. Hableton's lodging house with patient, methodical questions, taking the measure of the insolent Moreland and the tearful landlady without missing a detail. He is the story's first pair of official e
- [Mr. Kilsip](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_mystery_of_a_hansom_cab_se/characters/kilsip.md): Kilsip works the hansom cab murder from the police side, pitting his intimate knowledge of Melbourne's low life against the more theatrical methods of his colleague Gorby. Where Gorby blusters and theorizes, Kilsip watch
- [Sal Rawlins](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_mystery_of_a_hansom_cab_se/characters/sal_rawlins.md): Sal Rawlins belongs to the world of back lanes and cheap lodging houses, a survivor whose hard life has taught her to read people as quickly as they misjudge her. She carries secrets about the night of the murder that th
- [Felix Rolleston](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_mystery_of_a_hansom_cab_se/characters/felix_rolleston.md): Felix Rolleston is the kind of young man who plays Offenbach galops after dinner, dismisses poetry as mystical nonsense, and considers a song without a moral perfectly satisfactory. He moves easily through Melbourne's dr
- [Mrs. Hableton](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_mystery_of_a_hansom_cab_se/characters/mrs_hableton.md): Mrs. Hableton keeps a lodging house where the line between genteel respectability and quiet desperation is very thin indeed. She talks freely to the police, but her eagerness to appear helpful masks a keen instinct for s
- [Mother Guttersnipe](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_mystery_of_a_hansom_cab_se/characters/mother_guttersnipe.md): Mother Guttersnipe presides over the poorest quarter of Melbourne like a malevolent queen, her authority built on fear, favours, and the secrets she hoards about everyone around her. She is the keeper of Sal Rawlins and 
- [Roger Moreland](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_mystery_of_a_hansom_cab_se/characters/roger_moreland.md): Roger Moreland moves on the edges of Melbourne society, a man whose friendship with Oliver Whyte links him directly to the victim and whose uneasy manner invites suspicion. He knows more about Whyte's affairs than he is 
- [Dr. Chinston](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_mystery_of_a_hansom_cab_se/characters/dr_chinston.md): A doctor who provides medical evidence at the trial.
- [Malcolm Royston](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_mystery_of_a_hansom_cab_se/characters/malcolm_royston.md): The cabman who drove the hansom cab on the night of the murder.
- [Mrs. Sampson](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_mystery_of_a_hansom_cab_se/characters/mrs_sampson.md): A housekeeper or servant in the Frettlby household.
- [Julia Featherweight](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_mystery_of_a_hansom_cab_se/characters/julia_featherweight.md): A friend or acquaintance of Madge Frettlby.
- [Clement Rankin](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_mystery_of_a_hansom_cab_se/characters/clement_rankin.md): Another cabman involved in the case.
- [Rosanna Moore](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_mystery_of_a_hansom_cab_se/characters/rosanna_moore.md): A deceased woman with a connection to Mark Frettlby.
- [Mr. Valpy](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_mystery_of_a_hansom_cab_se/characters/valpy.md): An elderly gentleman mentioned in passing.
- [Peterson](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_mystery_of_a_hansom_cab_se/characters/peterson.md): A minor character, possibly a servant or constable.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_mystery_of_a_hansom_cab_se/characters