A hobcart was a type of mobility device designed in the late 1960s by Dr. Steven Perry of Albrighton

Albrighton, Bridgnorth

Albrighton is a large village and civil parish in Shropshire, England. It is located to the northwest of Wolverhampton and is best described as a dormitory village for the city...

, Shropshire

Shropshire

Shropshire is a county in the West Midlands region of England. For Eurostat purposes, the county is a NUTS 3 region and is one of four counties or unitary districts that comprise the "Shropshire and Staffordshire" NUTS 2 region. It borders Wales to the west...

, UK

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

. In his practice he had two young children, both of whom had spina bifida

Spina bifida

Spina bifida is a developmental congenital disorder caused by the incomplete closing of the embryonic neural tube. Some vertebrae overlying the spinal cord are not fully formed and remain unfused and open. If the opening is large enough, this allows a portion of the spinal cord to protrude through...

. He considered that the wheelchair

Wheelchair

A wheelchair is a chair with wheels, designed to be a replacement for walking. The device comes in variations where it is propelled by motors or by the seated occupant turning the rear wheels by hand. Often there are handles behind the seat for someone else to do the pushing...

s the children were provided with were liable to set them apart from other children of their age, so set about designing a mobility device, that would look more like a go-kart

Go-kart

thumb|A [[Kart racing|racing kart]] at the [[Commission Internationale de Karting|CIK-FIA]] European Championship 2008A go-kart is a small four-wheeled vehicle...

. The end result was the hobcart, which when it was first made, was produced at a local borstal

Borstal

A borstal was a type of youth prison in the United Kingdom, run by the Prison Service and intended to reform seriously delinquent young people. The word is sometimes used loosely to apply to other kinds of youth institution or reformatory, such as Approved Schools and Detention Centres. The court...

. The idea behind this was to try to provide the inmates of the borstal the opportunity to be involved in a project which they could see was doing some good. Hobcarts were still being made into the 1980s.