Chapter 7

“If a coachman has a dispute about his fare with a gentleman that has hired him, and the gentleman offers to fight him to decide the quarrel, the coachman consents with all his heart. The gentleman pulls off his sword, lays it in some shop with his cane, gloves and cravat, and boxes in the manner I have described. If the coachman is soundly drubbed, which happens almost always, that goes for payment, but if he is thebeatorthebeateemust pay the money about which they quarrelled. I once saw the lateDuke of Grafton at fisticuffs in the open street, the widest part of the Strand, with such a fellow whom he lamm’d most horribly.”

The same author says that the London squares are enclosed with railings to keep the coaches from crossing them.

CAB DRIVING A LUCRATIVE OCCUPATION.

It has been remarked on a previous page that the hackney coachman drove a thriving business; how profitable it was we may learn from two petitions which were evoked by Queen Anne’s Act of 1710, which increased the number of licenses to 800 on payment of 5s. a week, such licenses to hold good for thirty-two years. Seven hundred coaches were more than profitable employment could be found for, if we might believe the inevitable petition put in against this Act; but nevertheless the new 800 licensees joined in petitioning that their licenses “may again be made assets” as under the Act of 1694. “In consideration of which, notwithstanding the rent of 5s. per week, we most humbly offer to raise £16,000 as a fine of £20 on each license for the use of His Majesty King George.”

That there was money to be made in the business is shown even more clearlyby a petition submitted by James, Lord Mordington and others about this time. The petitioners offer to “farm the 800 hackney coaches which are now thought necessary” at £6 per license for 21 years; they were also prepared to pay £2,000 a year during that period, on which the King might raise a sum of £20,000; to pay £500 a year to the orphans of the City of London; and also to raise and equip a regiment of foot at a cost of £3,000!

The Act of 1710, it should be observed, altogether removed the prohibition against plying on Sunday. It licensed 200 hackney chairs and fixed the chair tariff at two-thirds of that in force for the coach (1s. for one and a half miles, and 1s. 6d. for two miles). An injunction to the Commissioners to fix at the Royal Exchange a table of distances must have been appreciated by the users of hackney coaches in London. It also repeated the injunction to use horses of fourteen hands at least; which repetition seems to have been very necessary, as Misson remarks that the regulation at the time of his visit was “but ill obeyed.”

It was about this time that a curious system of wig stealing was adopted by the London thieves. We read in theWeekly Journalof March 30, 1713, that:—

“The thieves have got such a villainous way now of robbing gentlemen, that they cut holes through the backs of hackney carriages, and take away their wigs or the fine headdresses of gentlewomen.”

The writer counsels persons travelling alone in a hackney coach to sit on the front seat to baffle the thieves.

In vol. 3 of theCarriage Builders’ and Harness Makers’ Art Journal(1863) was published an advertisement from an old newspaper; this was thought by the contributor who discovered it to be the first advertisement of the practical application of springs to coaches; it refers to a patent granted for fourteen years to Mr. John Green in 1691:—

“All the nobility and gentry may have the carriages of their coaches made new or the old ones altered, after this new invention, at reasonable rates; and hackney and stage coachmen may have licenses from the Patentees,Mr. John GreenandMr. William Dockwra, his partner, at the rate of 12d.per week, to drive the roads and streets, some of which having this week began, and may be known from the common coaches by the words Patent Coach being over both doors in carved letters. These coaches are so hung as to render them easier for the passenger and less labour to the horses, the gentleman’s coaches turning in narrow streets and lanes in as little or less room than any French carriage with crane neck, and not one third part of the charge. The manner of the coachman’s sitting is more convenient, and the motion like that of a sedan, being free from the tossing andjolting to which other coaches are liable over rough and broken roads, pavements or kennels. These great Conveniences (besides others) are invitation sufficient for all persons that love their own ease and would save their horses draught, to use these sort of carriages and no other, since these carriages need no alteration.”

This advertisement is the more noteworthy as it clearly refers to some kind of turning head; however valuable the improvements thus offered, the springs at least do not appear to have been appreciated, for their use did not become general till the latter half of the eighteenth century.

COACHES AND ROADS IN QUEEN ANNE’S TIME.

From the advertisements in old newspapers we obtain some particulars of the speed made by stage coaches in the early part of the eighteenth century. In 1703, when the roads were good, the coach from London to Portsmouth did the journey, about ninety miles, in fourteen hours. In 1706, the York coach left London on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, performing the 200 mile journey in four days; each passenger was allowed 14 lbs. of luggage and overweight was charged for at 3d. per lb. In winter the cross-roads were execrable, as appears from theAnnals of Queen Anne(London, 1704). In December, 1703, the King of Spain slept at Petworth in Sussex, on his way from Portsmouth to Windsor, and Prince George of Denmark went to meet him there: concerning the journey one of the Prince’s attendants writes:—

“We set out at six o’clock in the morning to go to Petworth, and did not get out of the coaches (save only when we were overturned or stuck fast in the mire) til we arrived at our journey’s end. “’Twas hard service for the prince to sit fourteen hours in the coach that day without eating anything and passing through the worst ways that I ever saw in my life; we were thrown but once indeed in going, but both our coach, which was the leading, and his highnesse’s body-coach would have suffered very often if the nimble boors of Sussex had not frequently poised it or supported it with their shoulders from Godalmin almost to Petworth; and the nearer we approached to the Duke’s house the more unaccessible it seemed to be. The last nine miles of the way cost us six hours time to conquer them, and indeed we had never done it if our good master had not several times lent us a pair of horses out of his own coach, whereby we were enabled to trace out the way for him.”

COACHING IN GEORGEI.’S AND GEORGEII.’S REIGNS.

Markland,[16]referring to the above passage, states on the authority of a correspondent that in 1748 persons travelling from Petworthto Guildford were obliged to make for the nearest point of the great road from Portsmouth to London; plainly indicating that the main arteries of traffic were much superior to the cross-roads.

[16]Remarks on the Early Use of Carriages in England.

Dean Swift, writing to Pope on August 22, 1726, refers to the “closeness and confinement of the uneasy coach.” At this period there was still considerable prejudice against the use of carriages by men who were physically able to ride, as appears from a letter written by Swift to his friend Mr. Gay, on September 10, 1731:—

“If your ramble was on horseback I am glad of it on account of your health; but I know your arts of patching up a journey between stage coaches and your friends’ coaches; for you are as arrant a cockney as any hosier in Cheapside ... you love twelve-penny coaches too well, considering that the interest of a whole thousand pounds brings you but half-a-crown a day ... a coach and six horses is all the exercise you can bear.”

The reference to Mr. Gay’s income indicates that the saddle was a much cheaper means of travelling than the coach. Six horses seem to have been the number used in private coaches during the first half of the eighteenth century, if we may judge by the frequency with which Swift refers to “to coach and six.”

An agreement made in 1718 between aMr. Vanden Bampde and Charles Hodges, a job-master, is worth noticing. Under this contract Hodges undertook to maintain for Mr. Bampde “a coach, chariot, and harness neat and clean, and in all manner of repair at his own charge, not including the wheels.” If the coachman should break the glass when the carriage was empty, Hodges was to make good the damage. He was to supply at a charge of 5s. 6d. a day, a pair of “good, strong, serviceable, handsome well-matched horses of value between £50 and £60”; also a “good, sober, honest, creditable coachman,” who, with the horses, should attend as Mr. Bampde or his lady might require in London or Westminster. If Mr. Bampde went into the country Hodges was to find him one or more pairs of horses at half-a-crown per pair per day extra.

DEAN SWIFT ON COACHES AND DRIVERS.

The hackney coachmen appear to have been quite as independent and offensive a class in Swift’s time as they were in Pepys’. Writing from Dublin on July 8, 1733, he compares the advantages of residence in that city with residence in London, and gives prominence to the following items:—

“I am one of the governors of all the hackney coaches, carts and carriages round this town; who dare not insult me like your rascally waggoners or coachmen, but give me the way.”

It may be observed here that there was still plenty of work for the wherrymen on the Thames in the middle of the eighteenth century. Swift writes on April 16, 1760, praying Mr. Warburton to leave London and pay him a visit at Twickenham, and by way of inducement he adds: “If the press be to take up any part of your time, the sheets may be brought you hourly thither by my waterman.”

The Dean’sHumorous Advice to Servantscontains some sarcastic observations addressed to the coachman, which shed light upon what we must suppose was the usual character of that servant. He is advised that “you are strictly bound to nothing but to step into the box and carry your lord and lady;” and he is enjoined to take every opportunity of drinking. The following passage shows how wheels of carriages suffered from the battering on the roads:—

“Take care that your wheels be good; and get a new set bought as often as you can whether you are allowed the old as your perquisite or not; in one case it will turn to your honest profit and on the other it will be a just punishment on your master’scovetousness, and probably the coach-maker will consider you too.”

ROADS IN THE 18TH CENTURY.

Every author of the time has something to say about the roads. Daniel Bourn[17]says:—

“So late as thirty or forty years ago [i.e., 1723-33] the roads of England were in a most deplorable condition. Those that were narrow were narrow indeed, often to that degree that the stocks of the wheels bore hard against the bank on each side, and in many places they were worn below the level of the neighbouring surface, many feet, nay, yards perpendicular; and a wide-spreading, brushy hedge intermixed with old half-decayed trees and stubbs hanging over the traveller’s head intercepting the benign influence of the heavens from his path, and the beauties of the circumjacent country from his view, made it look more like the retreat of wild beasts and reptiles than the footsteps of man. In other parts where the road was wide, it might be, and often was too much so, and exhibited a scene of a different aspect. Here the wheel-carriage had worn a diversity of tracks which wore either deep, or rough and stony, or high or low as Mother Nature had placed the materials upon the face of the ground; the space between these were frequently furzy hillocks of thorny brakes, through or among which the equestrian traveller picked out his entangled and uncouth steps.“To these horrible, stony, deep, miry, uncomfortable, dreary roads the narrow-wheel waggon seems to be best adapted, and these were frequently drawnby seven, eight, or even ten horses, that with great difficulty and hazard dragged after them twenty-five or thirty hundredweight, seldom more.”

“To these horrible, stony, deep, miry, uncomfortable, dreary roads the narrow-wheel waggon seems to be best adapted, and these were frequently drawnby seven, eight, or even ten horses, that with great difficulty and hazard dragged after them twenty-five or thirty hundredweight, seldom more.”

[17]Treatise of Wheeled Carriages, London, 1763.

Bourn’s reference to the “narrow-wheel waggon” touches a matter which formed the subject of hot debate for generations. It was urged that the narrow wheels of waggons were largely the means of cutting up the roads, and no doubt these did contribute to the general condition of rut and ridge that characterised them. This view was adopted by Parliament, and to encourage the use of wide wheels a system of turnpike tolls was adopted which treated the wide tire far more leniently than the narrow; anything under 9 inches in width being considered narrow.

Mr. Daniel Bourn’s Roller Wheel Waggon,A.D.1763.

Bourn was a warm advocate for wide wheels, and the book from which the above passage is taken describes an improved waggon invented by himself; the drawing isfrom the inventor’s work. The wheels of this vehicle resemble small garden rollers; they are 2 feet high and 16 inches wide. Each is attached independently to the body of the waggon and the fore wheels being placed side by side in the centre, while the hind wheels are set wide apart, the waggon is practically designed to fulfil the functions of a road-roller.[18]It does not appear that Bourn’s invention obtained any general acceptance, which is perhaps not very surprising.

[18]In theSt.James’s Chronicleof December 30, 1772, a correspondent “observes with particular pleasure the good effects of the rolling machine on the turnpike road to Stony Stratford. For this important improvement Mr. Sharp is responsible.” The writer proceeds to describe with the exactness and appreciation due to so useful an invention, the first patent of the familiar road-roller.

SPEED OF THE 18TH CENTURY STAGE COACH.

In 1742, the Oxford coach, leaving London at seven in the morning, reached High Wycombe (about forty miles) at five in the evening, remained there the night, and concluded the journey on the following day. The Birmingham coach made its journey at about the same pace, forty miles per day, resting half a day atOxford. Night travel does not seem to have been at all usual. Apart from the badness of the roads, the audacity of highwaymen was a sufficient reason for refraining from journeys by night.

Some improvements were made in private carriages at this period, but there was little change for the better in the stage coaches, which differed slightly from the “machine” of a century earlier; the driver’s seat was safer and less uncomfortable, and that was the only noteworthy alteration. An advertisement of 1750 announces “accommodation behind the coach for baggage and passengers; fares 21s., and servants 10s. 6d., riding either in the basket behind or on the box beside the driver.”

Endeavour to expedite the service between the great towns of the kingdom is shown in an advertisement of the “Flying Coach,” which was put on the London and Manchester road in 1754. This informs possible patrons that “incredible as it may appear, this coach will actually arrive in London in four days and a half after leaving Manchester.” The distance between the two cities is about 187 miles, making the rate of speed a little over 44 miles per day.

The stage coach of 1755 is thus described by Mr. Thrupp.

“They were covered with dull black leather, studded by way of ornament with broad-headed nails, with oval windows in the quarters, the frames painted red. On the panels were displayed in large characters the names of the places where the coach started and whither it went. The roof rose in a high curve with an iron rail around it. The coachman and guard sat in front upon a high narrow boot, often garnished with a spreading hammer-cloth with a deep fringe. Behind was an immense basket supported by iron bars in which passengers were carried at lower fares. The whole coach was usually drawn by three horses, on the first of which a postillion rode, in a cocked hat and a long green-and-gold coat. The machine groaned and creaked as it went along with every tug the horses gave it, and the speed was frequently but four miles an hour.”

Three horses may have done the work in summer, but there is no reason to suppose that the roads of 1755 were any better than they had been sixteen years earlier, when Thomas Pennant thus described a journey in March from Chester to London. The stage, he says:—

“was then no despicable vehicle for country gentlemen. The first day, with much labour, we got from Chester to Whitchurch, twenty miles; the second day to the Welsh Harp; the third to Coventry; the fourth to Northampton; the fifth to Dunstable; and as a wondrous effort on the last, to London, before the commencement of night. Thestrain and labour of six good horses, sometimes eight, drew us through the sloughs of Mireden and many other places.”

TRAVELLING POSTING CARRIAGE, 1750.

THE APPLICATION OF SPRINGS.

In the year 1768 Dr. R. Lovell Edgeworth, who had devoted much attention to the subject, and had made numerous experiments,[19]succeeded in demonstrating that springs were as advantageous to the horses of, as to the passengers in a coach; and he constructed a carriage for which the Society of English Arts and Manufactures awarded him three gold medals. In this conveyance the axletrees were divided and the motion of each wheel was relieved by a spring. Just one dozen patents for springs were granted during the eighteenth century, and it is impossible to say which invention had most influence on methods of building coaches. In 1772 a patent was granted to James Butler for a new coach-wheel the spokes of which were constructed of springs; but this curious contrivance is mentioned nowhere—so far as the writer’s investigations have shown—but in the Patent Office files, whence we may conclude it was a failure.

[19]An Essay on the Construction of Roads and Carriages.London, 1817.

TRAVELLING POSTING CARRIAGE, 1750.

The adoption of springs was certainly gradual. It is probably right to assume that wealthy men led the way by having coaches built on springs or altering their vehicles. It is impossible to draw a hard and fast line between the period of the coach without and the coach with springs. The illustrations show that travelling carriages on springs and braces were built in 1750. These drawings prove that, clumsy though the public conveyances were, private carriages were both tolerably light and comfortable. The “whip springs” to which the braces are attached were in general use ten years later.

A curious error arose from the application of springs to public conveyances, according to Dr. Lovell Edgeworth. Their introduction, it must be premised, led to the accommodation of passengers and loading of baggage on top of the stage coach, and coachmen, finding the vehicle drew more easily, attributed the fact, not to the springs, but to the increased height and reduced length of the load.[20]

[20]Abolition of the basket on the hind axle would have materially reduced the length of the load.

In the belief that a high and short load possessed some mysterious property whichmade it easier to draw than a low long one, builders vied with each other in building lofty vehicles. “Hence in all probability,” says the authority we are quoting, “arose the preposterous elevation of public carriages.”

OUTSIDE PASSENGERS.

Dr. Lovell Edgeworth gives us to understand that the practice of carrying passengers on the roof of the coach followed the application of springs to stage coaches; and in view of the belief noticed above this seems exceedingly probable. The practice had clearly been in vogue for some years when theAnnual Registerpublished the following paragraph:—

“September 7 (1770).—It were greatly to be wished the stage coaches were put under some regulations as to the numbers of persons and quantity of baggage. Thirty-four persons were in and about the Hertford coach this day when it broke down by one of the braces giving way.”

In 1775, we learn from the same publication, stage coaches generally carried eight persons inside and often ten outside passengers. On another page appears the statement that “there are now of these vehicles [stage coaches], flies, machines anddiligences upwards of 400, and of other wheeled carriages 17,000.”

In 1785 was passed GeorgeIII.’s Act, which forbade the conveyance of more than six persons on the roof of any coach and more than two on the box. This Act was superseded in 1790 by another which permitted only one person to travel on the box and only four on the roof of any coach drawn by three or more horses. A coach drawn by less than three horses might carry one passenger on the box and three on the roof, but such vehicles might not ply more than twenty-five miles from the London Post Office.

The first “long coaches” (i.e.long-stage vehicles) and those called diligences were superseded by what were called the “old heavies,” carrying six inside passengers and twelve out.[21]

[21]The Public Carriages of Great Britain.J. E. Bradfield, London, 1855.

ROADS IN GEORGEIII’s TIME.

The turnpike road had been improved by the year 1773, when Mr. Daniel Bourn wrote a pamphlet[22]answering some objectionswhich had been urged against his waggon on rollers (see p. 79). Mr. Jacob had asserted that the roughness of the roads was an insuperable obstacle to the enormously wide wheels invented by Mr. Bourn; and the latter, while admitting the wretched condition of local roads, refutes this argument as applied to the great roads:—

“A person might follow a waggon from London to York and meet with very few great stones ... let us now view this more agreeable turnpike road, yet even here you will find that there is less degrees of loose dirt and mangled materials.”

[22]Some Brief Remarks upon Mr. Jacob’s Treatise.London, 1773.

In this connection it will be remembered that the road roller had been brought into use in the previous year (see footnote p. 80).

The improvement was by no means universal, however. Arthur Young[23]writes:—

“I know not in the whole range of language terms sufficiently expressive to describe this infernal road. To look over a map, and perceive that it is a principal one, not only to some towns, but even whole counties, one would naturally conclude it to be at least decent; but let me most seriously caution all travellers who may accidentally purpose to travel this terrible country, to avoid it as they would the devil, for a thousand to one but they break their necks or their limbs by overthrows or breakings down. They will here meet with ruts, which I actually measured, four feet deep, and floating withmud, only from a wet summer; what, therefore, must it be after the winter? The only mending it receives, in places, is the tumbling in loose stones, which serve no other purpose but jolting the carriage in a most intolerable manner. These are not merely opinions, but facts, for I actually passed three carts broken down in these eighteen miles of execrable memory.”

[23]Tour in the North of England.London, 1770.

IMPROVEMENTS IN STAGE COACHES.

The last twenty-five years of the eighteenth century saw great increase of the coaching industry and many important improvements. The “long stages” were still slow; theEdinburgh Courant, of 1779, contains an advertisement of the London Coach which “will run every Tuesday, occupying ten days, resting all Sunday at Barrowbridge; for the better accommodation of passengers will be altered to a new genteel two-end coach machine hung upon steel springs, exceeding light and easy.” At this period the newspapers often contained advertisements inviting a companion to share with the advertiser the risks and expenses of posting to London.

It was no doubt the love of Englishmen for privacy which led a Mr. Crispus Claggett to patent in 1780 his “Imperial Mercury.” This vehicle had the outward appearance of one carriage, but it wasdivided into four equal compartments with space in each for four persons. Each compartment was entered by its own door and was partitioned off from the others by doors and glasses, This curious conveyance must have somewhat resembled an early railway coach.

THE MAIL COACH.

Mr. John Palmer’s[24]“diligences” were put upon the road in 1783, and with these the proprietor laid the first crude foundation of the mail service. The ordinary post was carried by boys on horseback and was both slow and uncertain owing to the poor quality of the horses, the badness of the roads and not least to the untrustworthiness of the boys. Every letter for which expedition was necessary was now sent by diligences where they were established, and they ran from nearly all the towns in the kingdom to London and between many of the principal towns. Postage by these was very expensive: a letter by the ordinary post fromBath to London cost fourpence, whereas it cost two shillings for “booking, carriage and porterage” if sent by diligence. The greater speed and safety were the inducements to use the diligence for important letters, as on the stage coaches both guard and coachman were well armed; the former sat on the box with the driver, and, says a writer of the time, “always sat with his carbine cocked on his knees.”

[24]The story of John Palmer’s work in connection with the postal service, may be read in Joyce’sHistory of the Post Office(1893), and in many histories and other works dealing with Bath. Palmer became Member of Parliament for Bath in 1801.

The conveyance of letters by diligence or “coach diligence” from Bath, where Mr. Palmer resided, to London was an experiment on the success of which that gentleman depended largely in his battle with the officials of Parliament and Parliamentary Committees when he sought to bring about change in the method of carrying letters. For a considerable time those in authority refused to admit the possibility of a coach travelling from Bath to London, 108 miles, in eighteen hours; but after a hard struggle Mr. Palmer triumphed, and the first mail coach ran from Bristol to London on August 2, 1784. Six miles an hour had been promised, but the journey, 117 miles, was performed in seventeen hours, or at a rate of nearly seven miles an hour, about double the speed of the mounted post-boy.

JOHN PALMER.(From a portrait in the possession of Henry G. Archer, Esq.)

JOHN PALMER.

(From a portrait in the possession of Henry G. Archer, Esq.)

These early mail coaches (the “old heavies”) were cumbrous vehicles, and by no means remarkable for strength of construction: indeed, until Mr. Palmer took the matter firmly in hand and compelled the contractors to replace their worn-out coaches by new ones (which were built by Besant), three or four breakdowns or upsets were daily reported to the Post-master General. They were drawn by four horses; carried six inside passengers and, until the law of 1785 already noticed, twelve “outsides.” Their speed on the principal roads was gradually accelerated about this time, and after the mail coaches began to work the pace of “fly stage coaches,” or flying coaches, was increased to eight miles an hour.

On some roads the old slow coaches remained; as late as the year 1798 the Telegraph left Gosport at one o’clock in the morning and reached Charing Cross at eight in the evening, thus occupying nineteen hours over a journey of 80 miles; a speed of little over four miles an hour.

In 1792 sixteen mail coaches left London daily; and seven years later these had increased to about eighty.

REGULATIONS FOR MAIL AND STAGE COACHES.

During GeorgeIII’s reign, three Acts of Parliament had been passed defining the number of outside passengers that any stage coach might carry, and making other regulations in the public interest; these three Acts were repealed by a fourth placed on the statute book in 1810, which enacted that any “coach, berlin, landau, chariot, diligence, calash, chaise-marine or other four-wheeled vehicle,” employed as a public carriage and drawn by four horses might carry ten outside passengers including the guard but not the coachman; that only one person might share the box with the coachman; and of the remaining nine, three should sit in front and six behind. No passenger might sit on the baggage. Stages drawn by two or three horses might carry not more than five outside passengers; “long coaches” or “double-bodied coaches” might carry eight.

The social distinction between “inside” and the “outside” is betrayed by a clause of this law which forbade any outside passenger to travel inside unless with the consent of one inside passenger; and the “inside” who gave consent was to have the “outside” placed next him.

This Act also prescribed important limitations to the height of coaches: neither passenger nor luggage might be carried on the roof of any coach the top of which was over 8 feet 9 inches from the ground and whose width was under 4 feet 6 inches measured from the centre of one wheel track to the centre of the other. On a four-horse coach 8 feet 9 inches high the baggage might be piled to a height of two feet; on one drawn by two or three horses, to a height of eighteen inches. As it was considered expedient to encourage low-hung coaches with the view of attaining greater immunity from accidents, it was legal to pile baggage up to a height of 10 feet 9 inches from the ground. Any passenger might require any turnpike keeper to count the “outsides” or to measure the height of the luggage on the roof. At a later date the fast mail coaches were prohibited by the Post-master General from carrying any baggage at all on the roof.

MAIL COACH PARADE ON THE KING’S BIRTHDAY.

Mr. Thrupp gives the following description of the mail coaches as they appeared at the “King’s Birthday Parade,” an interesting display which appears to have been heldfor the first time in the year 1799, and which remained an annual function until 1835. The coaches assembled in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and drove through the streets pastSt.James’ Palace and back to the General Post Office, then in Lombard Street:—

“Each coach was new or turned out to look like new and was painted red with the Royal Arms on the door panel, and on the smaller panel above the name of the town to which the coach went; on the boot the number of the mail, and on each upper quarter one of the stars of the four Orders of the Knighthood of the United Kingdom, the Garter, the Bath, the Thistle andSt.Patrick. The coaches were built just big enough to contain four inside and three or four outside, and coachman and guard. The body was hung upon a perch carriage and eight telegraph springs, the underworks being both solid and simple in construction.”

A writer inBaily’s Magazine(June, 1900), gives a description of this parade; only the coachmen and guards, in new uniforms, were allowed on the coaches, for which gentlemen used to lend their best teams; the procession generally consisted of about twenty-five coaches and was prolonged by the presence of a horseman between every two coaches.

THE MAIL COACHMAN AND GUARD.

The mail coaches in their daily routine assembled in Lombard Street between 8 and 8.20 p.m. every evening to receive the mails, and drew up in double file. Each was known by the name of the town to which it ran, and on the call of “Manchester,” “Liverpool,” or “Chester,” the coach bound thither broke rank and came up to the post-office door to receive the mails; the bags were tossed into the boot and the slamming of the lid of the boot was the signal to start.

Most of the mails for the Western counties started at 7 p.m. from the Gloucester Coffee House in Piccadilly, the mail bags being brought thither from the General Post Office in gigs drawn by fast-trotting horses, The stages for the West started from Hatchett’s; for the North, from the Peacock, Islington.

The mail guard was a considerable personage; when the modern style of build was adopted, the hind seat over the mail boot was strictly reserved to him, nobody being allowed to share it, as a precaution against robbery of the mails. To obtain an appointment as guard on a mail coach the applicant had to produce a recommendation from a Member of Parliament showing that he bore a high character, and a medical certificateto effect that he was of good constitution (exceedingly necessary in view of the nature of his work); if accepted as a probationer he had to spend a term in a coach factory and there learn how to repair a broken pole and patch up any other fracture that might occur on the road. His pay was only 10s. per week, but his perquisites were considerable; he might make as much as £3 or £4 a week, by taking charge of plate chests and valuables entrusted to his care; and it was the custom to allow the guard and coachman to divide all fares of 3s. or less between them.

The guard went the whole way with his coach; the coachman’s “stage” was generally forty or fifty miles out and home again. The latter’s wages were supplemented by tips from the passengers, who were admonished that the time had come to open their purses by the coachman’s polite “Gentlemen, I leave you here.”

The money thus collected by the driver of a first-class coach amounted, it is said, to £200 or £300 a year. The coachman was subject to numerous regulations which aimed at the security of passengers and mails. He might not allow anyone else to drive, without the consent of the coach proprietor oragainst the wishes of the other passengers; he might not leave his box unless a man was at the leaders’ heads; and there were many such minor instructions to be observed.

Until about 1815 the coachman’s box was not part of the body of the vehicle, and while the passengers rode comfortably on springs the unfortunate driver had a seat as comfortless as want of springs could make it. When this was done away with, it was quite in accord with British traditions that strong objections should be made, the chief being founded on the idea that if the coachman were made so comfortable he would go to sleep on his box. The Manchester Telegraph, celebrated as one of the smartest coaches of the day, was the first which was thus altered.

The guard was responsible for the punctuality of the coach, and each evening when leaving the General Post Office he was handed a watch officially set and officially locked in a case in such wise that it could not be tampered with. The guard also carried what was called a “snow book” from the fact that entries therein were most usually caused by heavy snowstorms. In this he recorded any such incidents as the hire of extra horses when these might beneeded, of saddle horses to carry the mail bags forward if the coach came to grief, or of any other outlay.

“THE ROAD” IN WINTER.

Mention of the guard’s “snow book” suggests that a winter’s journey in the coaching days was an undertaking not to be lightly faced. One morning in March, 1812, the Bath coach arrived at Chippenham with two outside passengers frozen to death in their seats, and a third in a dying state. A snow shovel strapped behind his seat was a regular item of the guard’s winter equipment, but only too often a shovel was useless. In the winter of 1814, the Edinburgh mail had to be left in the snow and the mail bags forwarded to Alnwick on horseback; in the same week eight horses were needed to draw the York coach to Newcastle. When a coach was snow-bound it was the guard’s duty to get the mails forward; this he did when possible by taking two of the horses and riding one while the other carried the bags. Some of the best of Pollard’s coaching pictures represent such incidents as occurred in the severe winters of 1812, 1814, and 1836.

The winter of 1814 was long remembered for the great and prolonged fog which disorganised traffic; the fog was followed by a singularly severe snow storm which continued for forty-eight hours; while it lasted no fewer than thirty-three mails in one day failed to arrive at the General Post Office.

The Christmas season of 1836 is historical in meteorological annals for the unprecedented severity of the snowfall. The storm lasted for the best part of the week, and for ten days travelling was suspended. Christmas night was the worst, and scarcely a single coach ventured to quit London on the 26th and 27th,St.Albans was literally full of mails and stages that could not get forward; on December 27, no fewer than fourteen mail coaches were abandoned snow-bound on various roads; and the Exeter mail, on December 26, was dug out five times on the way to Yeovil. In flat and open country all traces of the roads were lost, and the coachman had to trust the safety of the vehicle to his horses’ instinct. In some places the snow drifts gathered to an enormous depth and made the roads utterly impassable.

It was an article of the coaching creed to “get forward” if humanly possible; and thefeats of endurance and courage accomplished by guards and coachmen in these old times prove them to have been a remarkably fine class of public servant, deserving all that has been written of them.

PASSENGER FARES.

Passenger fares by mail coach were higher than by the ordinary stage; on the former the rates were from 4d. to 5d. per mile for “outsides,” and 8d. to 10d. per mile for “insides”; on the stage coach the outside passenger paid from 2½d. to 3d. per mile, and the inside from 4d. to 5d. Posting cost about eighteenpence per mile, and was therefore reserved to rich men.

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN STAGE AND MAIL COACH.

In the early days of the century, though the actual rate of travel was about eight miles an hour by the ordinary stage coach, much time was occupied over the journey. There appears to have been no such thing as a “time bill.” The coachman would go out of his way to set down or pick up a passenger: he would wait to oblige a friend if desired, and “Nimrod” in his famous articleon “The Road” cites, as an example of the leisurely fashion prevalent, the civility of “Billy” Williams, who drove the Shrewsbury-Chester coach in his school days, and took twelve hours to cover the forty miles, Two hours were allowed for dinner at Wrexham, but this obliging coachman would come into the parlour and say, “The coach is ready, gentlemen, but don’t let me disturb you if you wish for another bottle.”

Very different was the case with the Royal Mail: every second was economised: at some places horses were changed within the space of a minute, and so jealously punctual were the coachmen that the village people set their clocks by the mail as it sped along the street. The Royal Mail paid no tolls, and if a turnpike keeper had not his gate open ready for its passage he was fined 40s. The passing of the London coach was the event of the day in quiet villages during the coaching age, as the guard performed the functions now discharged by the newspaper and telegraph wire. “The grandest chapter in our experience,” says a regular traveller during the stirring times of 1805-1815, “was on those occasions when we went down from London with news of a victory.”

THE “GOLDEN AGE” OF COACHING.

The adoption of Macadam’s system of road-making gave birth to the brief “golden age” of coaching. John Macadam, an Ayrshire man, born in 1756, had devoted many years to the subject of road improvement, and between the years 1798 and 1814 travelled over some 30,000 miles of highway in Great Britain, His method of spreading small broken fragments of hard stone, none ever six ounces in weight, stamped or rolled into a compact crust, was finally approved in 1818, and “macadamised” roads were rapidly made all over the kingdom. The inventor was awarded a grant of £10,000, and in 1827 he was appointed Surveyor-General of Roads. He died in 1836, when fast coaching was at the zenith of its prosperity.

The portrait of which a reproduction is here given is believed to be the only one in existence. It was painted by Raymond, about the year 1835, and was given by Mr. Macadam’s widow to Mr. Allen of Hoddesdon, Essex, who for several years had made road-mending tools and appliances to the great road-maker’s patterns. The portrait was bequeathed to Mr. Allen’s granddaughter,by whom it was sold in 1902, to the present owner, Major McAdam.

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