Notes.
The fastest coaches were the "Defiance" (Edinburgh and Aberdeen), the "Wonder" (Shrewsbury and London), for which alone 150 horses were kept, and the mail from Liverpool to Preston. The next fastest were the Holyhead, Exeter, and Scotch mails, and those to Bath and Bristol (which last ones did not stop for meals on the road). The slowest is the Stroud mail, but formerly was the Worcester mail, which used to be most frequently overturned of any. The Hastings and Brighton mails had only two horses. For some reason or other, with which I am not acquainted, the Liverpool mail, and, I believe, the Halifax also, though leaving London at the same time as the others, had a day coach on the up journey, arriving at St. Martin's-le-Grand about 7 p.m. One of the Birmingham coaches was lighted by gas for a time, as far back as 1834. A coach running every day between London and Birmingham paid annually for toll-gates the sum of £1,428. The double miles of the mails travelling reached at one time 6,619 a journey.
The fastest coaches were the "Defiance" (Edinburgh and Aberdeen), the "Wonder" (Shrewsbury and London), for which alone 150 horses were kept, and the mail from Liverpool to Preston. The next fastest were the Holyhead, Exeter, and Scotch mails, and those to Bath and Bristol (which last ones did not stop for meals on the road). The slowest is the Stroud mail, but formerly was the Worcester mail, which used to be most frequently overturned of any. The Hastings and Brighton mails had only two horses. For some reason or other, with which I am not acquainted, the Liverpool mail, and, I believe, the Halifax also, though leaving London at the same time as the others, had a day coach on the up journey, arriving at St. Martin's-le-Grand about 7 p.m. One of the Birmingham coaches was lighted by gas for a time, as far back as 1834. A coach running every day between London and Birmingham paid annually for toll-gates the sum of £1,428. The double miles of the mails travelling reached at one time 6,619 a journey.
SCOTCH AND IRISH MAILS.
It is interesting to compare the running of the Edinburgh and Glasgow coaches out of London. Both left St. Martin's at the same hour, but by a different road. At Alconbury (65 miles out of London) the two coaches must have frequently been in sight of each other on a moonlight night—if punctual a bare four minutes divided them (not a yokel in that part of Huntingdonshire but could discuss the merits of the rival whips)—and at Grantham (108 miles out) they probably transferred some mail bags picked up upon their different roads.
At Doncaster (159 miles from London) less than a quarter of an hour divided the two vehicles after travelling all through the night and portion of the following day, a feat successfully performed that would make the hair of a modern South-Eastern Railway guard stand upon end. Indeed, tradition says that the up and down coaches nearly always "crossed" within a few yards of the same bridge. Even that northern metropolis, Newcastle, was treated with scant ceremony; as soon as fresh horses were attached and the mail bags exchanged, the coach went forward without pause, the next "stop and examine coach" after York being at Belford (near Berwick-upon-Tweed).
With the Edinburgh coach there were three halts only upon the road for refreshments, and these were liable to curtailment in heavy weather when any minutes had been lost on the way—at the ordinary stages the changes of horses being sometimes made in less than a minute.
The Glasgow coach, though over a considerably more uneven road, was slightly the quicker of the two, the rival distances by road being almost identical. This coach was not encumbered with heavy bags for the Highlands, and had the additional stimulus for the first dozen miles or so out of London of racing the Holyhead mail through Barnet. This celebrated mail made its "first stop" (other than for change of horses) at Birmingham, its second at Shrewsbury, its third at Corwen, and its fourth at Bangor. The speed of this mail was no less than nine and three-quarters miles an hour, or over ten miles if stoppages are taken into account.
At Shrewsbury five minutes only were allowed for refreshments, and the timing of this coach was so close that it was due there one minute before the beautiful, varied, and sonorous clocks of that proud borough struck the hour of noon (11.59 a.m.). At Wolverhampton it was timed to arrive also at one minute past the hour (9.1 a.m.), while the timepieces of the guards were checked once or twice on the road by special clocks, and the discrepancy, if any, taken note of in writing.
Another notable piece of "good running" was shown by the rival mails to Caermarthen, which reached there from town the following evening. The Gloucester coach arrived at eight o'clock (224 miles), and was followed at only half-an-hour's interval by the Bristol (238 miles) coming by a different road the whole journey, and having often to face a rough sea when transferring its passengers at Aust Passage, near Chepstow. This last mail was one of the quickest of all out of London; as far as Bristol it was expedited in 1837 to run at the speed of ten miles and three furlongs an hour, prior to which time it had to cede the palm to the celebrated Falmouth (or, as it was often miscalled, Devonport—confusing it with the Plymouth coach) Quicksilver mail. No doubt a higher speed still would have been attained in the winter months had these coaches not to include so much night work in their running.
It is very difficult, unless precise dates are attached, to give now the absolute distances travelled. Each year roads were straightened out and bends removed, gradients modified, or minor deviations to towns of less importance struck out. A list of such accelerations will be found in Mogg's edition of Paterson and of the principal ordinary routes traversed in Paterson, Leigh, or Cary.
What prospects the Coventry bicycle might have hadbeforethe arrival of the telegraph and railway epoch it is difficult to conjecture; but its speed must then have placed it in the first rank of means of locomotion.
1837. Scotch Mails. DOWN.
Western and Foreign Mails.—1837.—Up and Down.