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STAGE-COACH AND MAIL IN DAYS OF YORE
STAGE-COACH AND MAIL IN DAYS OF YORE
WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR The Brighton Road : Old Times and New on a Classic Highway. The Portsmouth Road , and its Tributaries: To-day and in Days of Old. The Dover Road : Annals of an Ancient Turnpike. The Bath Road : History, Fashion, and Frivolity on an Old Highway. The Exeter Road : The Story of the West of England Highway. The Great North Road : The Old Mail Road to Scotland. Two Vols. The Norwich Road : An East Anglian Highway. The Holyhead Road : The Mail-Coach Road to Dublin. Two Vols. T
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PREFACE
PREFACE
“HANG up my old whip over the fireplace,” said Harry Littler, of the Southampton “Telegraph,” when the London and Southampton Railway was opened, in 1833,—“I shan’t want it never no more”: and he fell ill, turned his face to the wall, and died. The end of the coaching age was a tragedy for the coachmen; and even to many others, whose careers and livelihood were not bound up with the old order of things, it was a bitter uprooting of established customs. Many travellers were never reconciled to ra
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CHAPTER I THE INTRODUCTION OF CARRIAGES
CHAPTER I THE INTRODUCTION OF CARRIAGES
The lines quoted above are not remarkably good as poetry. Nay, it is possible to go farther, and to say that they are exceptionally bad—the product of one of those corn-box poets who were accustomed to speak of steam as a “demon foul”; but if his lines are bad verse, the central idea is good. That man who first essayed to drive four-in-hand must indeed have been more than usually courageous. To form anything at all like an adequate idea of the Coaching Age, it is first necessary to discover how
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CHAPTER II THE HORSEMEN
CHAPTER II THE HORSEMEN
“The single gentlemen, then a hardy race, equipped in jack-boots and trousers up to their middle, rode post through thick and thin, and, guarded against the mire, defying the frequent stumble and fall, arose and pursued their journey with alacrity.”— Pennant , 1739. Long before wheeled conveyances of any kind were to be hired in this country, travellers were accustomed to ride post. To do so argued no connection with that great department we now call the Post Office, although that letter-carryin
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CHAPTER III DAWN OF THE COACHING AGE
CHAPTER III DAWN OF THE COACHING AGE
Meanwhile the first stage-coaches had been put upon the chief roads out of London, and had begun to ply between the capital and the principal towns. Stage-coaches are, on insufficient authority, said to have begun about 1640, but no particulars are available in support of that statement, and in considering this point we are bound to look into the social state of England at that time, and to consider the likelihood or otherwise of a public service of coaches being continued throughout those storm
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CHAPTER IV GROWTH OF COACHING IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
CHAPTER IV GROWTH OF COACHING IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
All this while the stages had gone their journeys with the same horses from end to end, and travel was necessarily slow. To the superficial glance it would seem that neither the dictates of humanity towards animals nor even the faintest glimmering perception of the possibilities of speed in constant relays had then dawned upon coach-proprietors; but it would be too gross an error to convict a whole class of stupidity so dense and brutal. It is not to be supposed that, at a time when ten-mile rel
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CHAPTER V THE STAGE-WAGGONS AND WHAT THEY CARRIED: HOW THE POOR TRAVELLED
CHAPTER V THE STAGE-WAGGONS AND WHAT THEY CARRIED: HOW THE POOR TRAVELLED
We have now arrived at the time when the goods traffic became a prominent feature of the road. The precursor of all public vehicles was the carrier’s waggon, a conveyance of hoary antiquity, intended in the first instance for the carriage of heavy goods, but finding room for those wayfarers who were too poor to own or hire a horse, or possibly too infirm to sit one even if their means sufficed. At least a hundred and fifty years before the earliest stage-coach was put on the road, the waggon, th
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CHAPTER VI THE EARLY MAIL-COACHES
CHAPTER VI THE EARLY MAIL-COACHES
Long before the last quarter of the eighteenth century dawned, the time was ripe for Post Office reform in the carrying of the mails; but, as a matter of course, no one within that department saw any necessity for change, and although the Post Office revenue was suffering severely from correspondence being sent in a clandestine manner by stage-coach, the slow and uncertain old methods had been retained. Reform had, as always, to come from without, just as when Ralph Allen of Bath planned his ser
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CHAPTER VII THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: 1800–1824
CHAPTER VII THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: 1800–1824
The period at which this chapter begins is that when outside passengers were first enabled to ride on the roofs of coaches without incurring the imminent hazard of being thrown off whenever their vigilance and their anxious grip were relaxed. It was about 1800 that fore and hind boots, framed to the body of the coach, became general, thus affording foothold to the outsides. Mail-coaches were not the cause of this change, for they originally carried no passengers on the roof. We cannot fix the ex
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CHAPTER VIII COACH LEGISLATION
CHAPTER VIII COACH LEGISLATION
“The law,” said Mr. Bumble, “is a hass!” and scarcely ever has it appeared more asinine than in its dealings with the roads and road-traffic. Legislative traffic restrictions were very early introduced, originally on behalf of the highways; and not until the coaching age was well advanced did it appear necessary to intervene with enactments protecting the passengers as well as the road surface. There was perhaps no necessity to legislate against reckless driving in the early days of coaching; fo
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CHAPTER IX THE EARLY COACHMEN
CHAPTER IX THE EARLY COACHMEN
When stage-coachmen are mentioned, the mind at once flies to Mr. Tony Weller, a stout man with a red face and a hoarse voice proceeding from the depths of capacious shawls in which his throat is muffled. Such was the typical coachman at any time between the introduction of coaches and 1820, when a leaven of smartness and gentility began to be noticeable, and the time-honoured type to fade away. Coachmen were generally fat for the same reason that postboys were thin: it was a necessity of their o
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CHAPTER X THE LATER COACHMEN
CHAPTER X THE LATER COACHMEN
The smart coachmen came into existence with short stages and the fast day-coaches, about 1824. They did not burst suddenly upon an astonished world—were not, like those insect-wonders, chrysalids in the morning and butterflies in the afternoon—but developed by insensible degrees. The first incentive to this improvement was, doubtless, that acquaintance with the moneyed sporting world which began when the country gentlemen ceased to travel horseback and took to going by coach, and thence, from pa
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CHAPTER XI MAIL-GUARDS
CHAPTER XI MAIL-GUARDS
When Palmer first introduced his plan of mail-coaches he proposed that, while the contractors supplied coaches and horses and the men to drive them, the guards should be the servants of the Post Office, and should, considering the dangers of the roads, be retired soldiers, who, from their past training and habits of discipline, would be reliable servants and men capable of defending the mails against attack. This advice was not followed, and the first mail-guards were provided by the contractors
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CHAPTER XII STAGE-COACH GUARDS
CHAPTER XII STAGE-COACH GUARDS
Not every stage-coach carried a guard, and largely to that omission was due the prevalence of accidents in the last years of coaching. When we find guards first mentioned in old stage-coach advertisements, shortly after the middle of the eighteenth century, they were provided strictly for the purpose their name indicates—to guard the coaches against attack; and when such dangers grew more remote they were generally discontinued on day-coaches. Thus very often, except on long-distance stages, eve
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CHAPTER XIII HOW THE COACHES WERE NAMED
CHAPTER XIII HOW THE COACHES WERE NAMED
“What’s in a name? Little enough, by the fact that people travel by the Thame coach, the Hitchin chaises, and the Crawley stage.”— Old Coaching Essay. It was not until quite late in the coaching era that proprietors began generally to adopt the practice of naming their coaches. In early days there was little or no occasion to do so, for when there were only two or three coaches on the most frequented roads, no difficulty existed in distinguishing between them. One might be the old original stage
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CHAPTER XIV GOING BY COACH: BOOKING OFFICES
CHAPTER XIV GOING BY COACH: BOOKING OFFICES
Journeys by coach were entered upon by our grandfathers with much deliberation. It was not then a matter of suddenly making up one’s mind to go somewhere, and going accordingly, with only a few minutes’ preparation. The first step was to book one’s seat, a formality then absolutely necessary, and in most cases some days before the journey was proposed to be taken. Only by doing so could one be sure of finding a place. The nearest modern parallel to this custom is the booking of passages on ocean
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CHAPTER XV HOW THE COACH PASSENGERS FARED: MANNERS AND CUSTOMS DOWN THE ROAD
CHAPTER XV HOW THE COACH PASSENGERS FARED: MANNERS AND CUSTOMS DOWN THE ROAD
There is no consensus of opinion to be found among travellers by coach on the subject of the joys or sorrows of old-time travel. Everything depended on the weather, the coach, the other passengers, and upon the nature of the traveller himself. Sometimes a coach journey was a misery; at others it was a joy to look back upon. Humourists of the early and mid-eighteenth century found the subject of coach-travelling very attractive, and returned again and again to the stock characters of the braggart
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APPENDIX
APPENDIX
Some detailed notice of the Palmer family will have interest here. Mischance long ago destroyed many genealogical documents relating to John Palmer’s ancestors, but family tradition still points to the “John Palmere” who, in 1384, represented Bath in Parliament, as a distinguished forbear. Of ancient and honourable origin, the matrimonial alliances of the Palmers are found among the old county families of Somerset and Wilts. The postal reformer’s mother was one of the Longs, to this day seated i
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STAGE-COACH AND MAIL IN DAYS OF YORE
STAGE-COACH AND MAIL IN DAYS OF YORE
WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR The Brighton Road : Old Times and New on a Classic Highway. The Portsmouth Road , and its Tributaries: To-day and in Days of Old. The Dover Road : Annals of an Ancient Turnpike. The Bath Road : History, Fashion, and Frivolity on an Old Highway. The Exeter Road : The Story of the West of England Highway. The Great North Road : The Old Mail Road to Scotland. Two Vols. The Norwich Road : An East Anglian Highway. The Holyhead Road : The Mail-Coach Road to Dublin. Two Vols. T
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CHAPTER I THE LATER MAILS
CHAPTER I THE LATER MAILS
The Bristol Mail opened the mail-coach era by going at eight miles an hour, but that was an altogether exceptional speed, and the average mail-coach journeys were not performed at a rate of more than seven miles an hour until long after the nineteenth century had dawned. In 1812, when Colonel Hawker travelled to Glasgow, it took the mail 57 hours’ continuous unrelaxing effort to cover the 404 miles—three nights and two days’ discomfort. By 1836 the distance had been reduced by eight miles, and t
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CHAPTER II DOWN THE ROAD IN DAYS OF YORE I.—A Journey from Newcastle-on-Tyne to London in 1772
CHAPTER II DOWN THE ROAD IN DAYS OF YORE I.—A Journey from Newcastle-on-Tyne to London in 1772
In 1773, the Reverend James Murray, Minister of the High Bridge Meeting House at Newcastle, published a little book which he was pleased to call The Travels of the Imagination; or, a True Journey from Newcastle to London , purporting to be an account of an actual trip taken in 1772. I do not know how his congregation received this performance, but the inspiration of it was very evidently drawn from Sterne’s Sentimental Journey , then in the heyday of its success and singularly provocative of imi
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CHAPTER III DOWN THE ROAD IN DAYS OF YORE II.—From London to Newcastle-on-Tyne in 1830
CHAPTER III DOWN THE ROAD IN DAYS OF YORE II.—From London to Newcastle-on-Tyne in 1830
We also will make a tour down the road. It shall not be, in the strictly accurate sense of the word, a “journey,” for we shall travel continuously by night as well as day—a thing quite unknown when that word was first brought into use, and unknown to coaching until about 1780, when coaches first began to go both day and night, instead of inning at sundown at some convenient hostelry on the road. It matters little what road we take, but as Mr. Murray came to town from Newcastle, we may as well pa
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CHAPTER IV ACCIDENTS
CHAPTER IV ACCIDENTS
One of the greatest objections urged by the coaching interest against railways was their danger, and the certain loss of life on them in case of accident. It was unfortunate that the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway was the occasion of a fatal mischance that lent emphasis to the dolorous prophecies of coach-proprietors and the road interests in general; for on that day (September 15th, 1830) Mr. Huskisson, a prominent man in the politics of that time, met his death by being run ov
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CHAPTER V A GREAT CARRYING FIRM: THE STORY OF PICKFORD AND CO.
CHAPTER V A GREAT CARRYING FIRM: THE STORY OF PICKFORD AND CO.
To the incurious public, who are as familiar with the name of “Pickford’s” as with that of their favourite morning newspaper, and to whom the sight of one of Pickford’s vans is a mere commonplace of daily life, this great carrying firm is just a part of our modern commercial system. To suggest to that favourite abstraction—the “average man”—so commonly cited, that Pickford’s is a firm whose origin is to be traced back two hundred and fifty or three hundred years would be a rash thing. He would t
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CHAPTER VI ROBBERY AND ADVENTURE
CHAPTER VI ROBBERY AND ADVENTURE
The whole art and mystery of coach-robbing began to be studied at a very early date. In the London Gazette during 1684 we find the following extremely explicit advertisement:— “A GENTLEMAN (passing with others in the Northampton Stage Coach on Wednesday the 14th instant, by Harding Common about two miles from Market-street) was set upon by four Theeves, plain in habit but well-horsed, and there (amongst other things) robbed of a Watch; the description of it thus, The Maker’s Name was engraven on
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CHAPTER VII SNOW AND FLOODS
CHAPTER VII SNOW AND FLOODS
Severe weather, in the shape of frosts, thunderstorms, or hurricanes, was powerless to stop the coach-service, but exceptionally heavy snowfalls occasionally did succeed in doing so for very brief intervals; and floods, although they never were or could be so general as to wholly suspend coaching, often brought individual coaches to grief. In the severe winter of 1798–9, when snow fell heavily and continuously at the end of January and during the first week of February, several mails, missing on
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CHAPTER VIII THE GOLDEN AGE, 1824–1848
CHAPTER VIII THE GOLDEN AGE, 1824–1848
It was “golden” chiefly from the sportsman’s point of view, and in the opinions of those who found a keen delight in the perfection of coach-building and harness-making, in the smartness of the beautiful horses, and in the speed attained. From the sordid view-point of the profit-and-loss account, although this was the age in which Chaplin and a few others made their great fortunes, it was a time when the high speed and other refinements of travelling made the path of the coach-proprietor a thorn
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CHAPTER IX COACH-PROPRIETORS
CHAPTER IX COACH-PROPRIETORS
None among the servants of the public earned their living more hardly, or took greater risks in the ordinary way of business, than the coach proprietors. It was a business in which the few—the very few—became rich, and the majority lived a strenuous life, with empty pockets at the end of it. It was very truly said of them, as a class, that they lived hard, worked hard, swore hard, and died hard. To this was sometimes added that they held hard, by which you are to understand that what money they
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CHAPTER X COACH-PROPRIETORS (continued)
CHAPTER X COACH-PROPRIETORS (continued)
Edward Sherman , who ranked next to Chaplin as the largest coach-proprietor in London, was in many respects unlike his brethren in the trade. He established himself at the “Bull and Mouth,” St. Martin’s-le-Grand, in 1823, in succession to Willans, and came direct from the Stock Exchange, where he had been a broker in alliance with Lewis Levy, a noted figure in those days of Turnpike Trusts. It is perhaps scarcely necessary to add that Levy was a Jew. He was referred to by Lord Ravensworth in the
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CHAPTER XI THE AMATEURS
CHAPTER XI THE AMATEURS
Thus Horace sings, in his Ode to Mæcenas; and the driving ambition observed by that old heathen, still to be noticed in these days, was a very marked feature of the road at any time between 1800 and 1848, when the railways had succeeded in disestablishing almost every coach, and the opportunities of the gentleman coachman were gone. The amateur coachman was a creation of the nineteenth century, He was, for two very good reasons, unknown before that time. The first was that coachmanship had not y
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CHAPTER XII END OF THE COACHING AGE
CHAPTER XII END OF THE COACHING AGE
“This is the patent age of inventions.”— Byron. In 1789, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, of Shrewsbury, in writing his poem, the Loves of the Plants , penned a most remarkably accurate prophecy, comparable with Mother Shipton’s earlier “carriages without horses shall go.” He wrote:— The first part of this prophecy was fulfilled in the period between 1823 and 1833, when steam-carriages—the motor-cars of that age—had a brief popularity. Before railways successfully assailed the coaches, horsed vehicles had fa
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CHAPTER XIII WHAT BECAME OF THE COACHMEN
CHAPTER XIII WHAT BECAME OF THE COACHMEN
“Steam, James Watt, and George Stephenson have a great deal to answer for. They will ruin the breed of horses, as they have already ruined the innkeepers and the coachmen, many of whom have already been obliged to seek relief at the poor-house, or have died in penury and want.”— The Times , 1839. “Where,” asked Thackeray in Vanity Fair , “where is the road now, and its merry incidents of life? Is there no Chelsea or Greenwich for the honest, pimple-nosed coachmen?” No, there was not. The action
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CHAPTER XIV THE OLD ENGLAND OF COACHING DAYS
CHAPTER XIV THE OLD ENGLAND OF COACHING DAYS
This is the time, now that we have passed the threshold of a new era, when old landmarks are disappearing everywhere around us as we gaze, and the Old England that we have known is being dispossessed and disestablished by a new and strange, an inhospitable and alien England of foreign plutocrats—this is the psychological moment for a brief review of what this England of ours was like in the old days of stage-coach and mail. If we could recapture those times we should find them spacious days, of
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