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.

The Cambridge, Ely, and King’s Lynn Road: The Great Fenland Highway.

Cycle Rides Round London.

The Oxford, Gloucester, and Milford Haven Road: Two Vols.[In the Press.

MAIL-COACH PASSING ST. GEORGE’S CIRCUS, SOUTHWARK, 1797.
After Dalgety

STAGE-COACH
AND MAIL IN
DAYS OF YORE

A PICTURESQUE HISTORY
OF THE COACHING AGE

VOL. II

By CHARLES G. HARPER

Illustrated from Old-Time Prints
and Pictures

London:
CHAPMAN & HALL, Limited
1903

All rights reserved

PRINTED BY
HAZELL, WATSON AND VINEY, LD.,
LONDON AND AYLESBURY.

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

SEPARATE PLATES

ILLUSTRATIONS IN TEXT

STAGE COACH AND MAIL IN DAYS OF YORE

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 the time to 42 hours. By 1838 it was 41 hours 17 minutes. Nowadays it can be done by quickest train in exactly eight hours; the railway mileage 401½ miles. In 1812 it cost an inside passenger all the way to Glasgow, for fare alone, exclusive of tips to coachmen and guards, and the necessary expenditure for food and drink all those weary hours, no less than £10 8s.; about 6⅙d. a mile. To-day, £2 18s. franks you through, first-class; or 33s. third—itself infinitely more luxurious than even the consecrated inside of a mail-coach.

The mails starting from London were perfection in coaches, harness and horses; but as the distance from the Metropolis increased so did the mails become more and more shabby. Hawker, travelling north, found them slow and slovenly, the harness generally second-hand, one horse in plated, another in brass harness; and when they did have new (which, he tells us, was very seldom) it was put on like a labourer’s leather breeches, and worn till it rotted, without ever being cleaned.

Of course, very few people ever did, or could have had the endurance to, travel all that distance straight away, and so travel was further complicated, delayed, and rendered more costly by the halts necessary to recruit jaded nature.

Hawker evidently did it in four stages: to Ferrybridge, 179 miles, where he rested the first night and picked up the next mail the following; thence the 65 miles onward to Greta Bridge; on again, 59 miles, to Carlisle; and thence, finally, to Glasgow in another 101 miles. In his diary he gives “a table to show for how much a gentleman and his servant (the former inside, with 14 lb. of luggage; the latter outside, with 7 lb.) may go from London to Glasgow.”

Such were the costs and charges of a gentleman travelling to pay a country visit in 1812, exclusive of hotel bills for self and servant on the way.

The great factor in the acceleration of the mails was the improvement in the roads, a work carried out by the Turnpike Trusts in fear of the Post Office, whose surveyors had the power, under ancient Acts, of indicting roads in bad condition. Great bitterness was stirred up over this matter. The growing commercial and industrial towns—Glasgow prominent among them—naturally desired direct mail-services, and the Post Office, using their needs as means for obtaining, not only roads kept in good condition, but sometimes entirely new roads and short cuts, declined to start such services until such routes were provided. It was not within the power of the Department to compel new roads, but only to see that the old ones were maintained; but in the case of Glasgow, to whose merchants a direct service meant much, the Corporation, the Chamber of Commerce, and individual persons contributed large sums for the improvement of the existing road between that city and Carlisle, and a Turnpike Trust was formed for one especial section, where the road was entirely reconstructed. These districts were wholly outside Glasgow’s sphere of responsibilities, but all this money was expended for the purpose of obtaining a direct mail through Carlisle, instead of the old indirect one through Edinburgh; and when obtained, of retaining it in face of the continued threats of the Post Office to take it off unless the road was still further improved. It certainly does not seem to have been a remarkably good road, even after these improvements, for Colonel Hawker, travelling it in 1812, describes it as being mended with large soft quarry-stones, at first like brickbats and afterwards like sand.

But the subscribers who had expended so much were naturally indignant. They pointed out that the district was a wild and difficult one and the Trust poor, in consequence of the sparse traffic. The stage-coaches, they said, had in some instances been withdrawn because they could not hold their own against the competition of the mail, and the Trust lost the tolls in consequence; while the mail, going toll-free and wearing the road down, contributed nothing to the upkeep. They urged that the mail should at least pay toll, and in this they were supported by every other Turnpike Trust.

The exemption of mail-coaches from payment of tolls, a relief provided for by the Act of 25th George III., was really a continuation of the old policy by which the postboys of an earlier age, riding horseback and carrying the mailbags athwart the saddle, had always passed toll-free. Even the light mail-cart partook of this advantage, to which there could then have been no real objection. It had been no great matter, one way or the other, with the Turnpike Trusts, for the posts were then infrequent and the revenue to be obtained quite a negligeable quantity; but the appearance of mail-coaches in considerable numbers, running constantly and carrying passengers, and yet contributing nothing towards the upkeep of the roads, soon became a very real grievance to those Trusts situated on the route of the mails, but in outlying parts of the kingdom, little travelled, and where towns were lacking and villages poor, few, and far between. Little wonder, then, that the various Turnpike Trusts in 1810 approached Parliament for a redress of these disabilities. They pointed out that not only was there a greater wear and tear of the roads now the mail-coaches were running, but that travellers, relying on the fancied security of the mails, had deserted the stages, which in many cases had been wholly run off the road. Pennant, writing in 1792, tells how two stages plying through the county of Flint, and yielding £40 in tolls yearly, had been unable to compete with the mail, and were thus withdrawn, to the consequent loss of the Trust concerned. It was calculated, so early as 1791, by one amateur actuary, that the total annual loss through mail exemptions was £90,000; but another put it at only £50,000 in 1810.

The case of the remote country trusts was certainly a hard one. Like all turnpikes, they were worked under Acts of Parliament, which prescribed the amounts of tolls to be levied, and they were, further, authorised to raise money for the improvement of the roads on the security of the income arising from these taxes upon locomotion. The security of money sunk in these quasi-Government enterprises had always been considered so good that Turnpike Trust bonds and mortgages were a very favourite form of investment; but when Parliament turned a deaf ear to the bitter cry of the remote Trusts, the position of those interested in the securities began to be reconsidered. The woes of these undertakings were further added to by the action of the Post Office, which, zealous for its new mail-services, sent out emissaries to report upon the condition of the roads. The reports of these officials bore severely against the very Trusts most hardly hit by the mail-exemption, and the roads under their control were frequently indicted for being out of repair, with the result that heavy fines were inflicted. It had been suggested that as the Post Office on one hand required better roads, and on the other deprived the rural Trusts of a great part of their income, the Government should at least pay off the debts of the various turnpikes. But nothing was done; the mails continued to go free, and in the end the iniquity was perpetrated of suffering the local Turnpike Acts to lapse and the roads to be dispiked before the Trusts had paid off their loans. The greater number of Trust “securities” therefore became worthless, and the investors in them ruined.

THE WORCESTER MAIL, 1805. After J. A. Atkinson.

Mail-coaches continued to go toll-free to the very last in England, although from 1798 they had paid toll in Ireland. In Scotland, too, the Trusts were treated with tardy justice, and in 1813 an Act was passed repealing the exemption in that kingdom. But what the Post Office relinquished with one hand it took back with the other, clapping on a halfpenny additional postage for each Scotch letter. It was like the children’s game of “tit-for-tat.” But it did not end here. The Trusts raised their tolls against the mail-coaches, and smiled superior. It was then the Department’s call, and it responded by immediately taking off a number of the mails. That ended the game in favour of St. Martin’s-le-Grand.

Although Parliament never repealed the exemption for the whole of the United Kingdom, it caused an estimate to be prepared of the annual cost of paying tolls, should it ever be in a mind to grant the Trusts that relief. It thus appeared, from the return made in 1812, that the cost for Scotland would have been £11,229 16s. 8d.; for England, £33,536 2s. 3d.; and for Wales, £5224 3s. 10d.: total, £49,990 2s. 9d. per annum.

The mails, travelling as they did throughout the night, were subject to many dangers. They were brilliantly lighted, generally with four, and often with five, lamps, and cast a very dazzling illumination upon the highway. It is true that no certainty exists as to the number of lamps mail-coaches carried, and that old prints often show only two; so that the practice in this important matter probably varied on different routes and at various times. But the crack mails at the last certainly carried five lamps—one on either side of the fore upper quarter, one on either side of the fore boot, and another under the footboard, casting a light upon the horses’ backs and harness. These radiant swiftnesses, hurtling along the roads at a pace considerably over ten miles an hour, were highly dangerous to other users of the roads, who were half-blinded by the glare, and, alarmed by the heart-shaking thunder of their approach and fearful of being run down, generally drove into the ditches as the least of two evils. The mails were then, as electric tramcars and high-powered motor-cars are now, the tyrants of the road.

But they were not only dangerous to others. Circumstances that ought never to have been permitted sometimes rendered them perilous to all they carried. The possibilities of that time in wrong-doing are shown in the practice of Sir Watkin Williams Wynn (who assuredly was not the only one) being allowed to send his refractory carriage-horses to the mails, to be steadied. On such occasions the passengers from Oswestry found themselves in for a wild start and a rough stage, and Sir Watkin had the steam taken out of his high-mettled horses at an imminent risk to the lives and limbs of the lieges.

From 1825, when the era of the fast day-coaches began, the mails gradually lost the proud pre-eminence they had kept for more than forty years. Even though they had been accelerated from time to time as roads improved, they went no quicker than the new-comers, and very often not so quick, from point to point. They suffered the disabilities of travelling by night, when careful coachmen dared not let their horses out to their best speed, and of being subject to the delays of Post Office business; and so, although they might, and did, make wonderful speed between stages, the showing on the whole journey could not compare with the times of the fast day-coaches, which halted only for changing horses and for meals, and, enjoying the perfection of quick-changing, often got away in fifty seconds from every halt. Going at more seasonable hours, the day-coaches now began to seriously compete with the mails, whose old-time supporters, although still sensible of the dignity of travelling by mail, were equally alive to the comfort and convenience of going by daylight. Modern writers, enlarging upon the times of our ancestors, lay great stress upon the endurance our hearty grandfathers “cheerfully” displayed, and show us great, bluff, burly, red-cheeked men, who enjoyed this long night-travelling. But that is an absurdity. They did not enjoy it; they were not all bluff and burly; and that they welcomed the change that gave them swift travelling by day instead of night is obvious from the instant success of the fast day-coaches, and from the later business-history of the mails. Mail-contractors, who in the prosperous days of no competition were screwed down by the Post Office to incredible mileage figures, began to grumble; but for long they grumbled in vain. Even in 1834 the Post Office continued to pay only 2d. a mile on 42 mails, 1½d. a mile on 34, and only one received as much as 4d. The Liverpool and Manchester carried the mailbags for nothing, and three actually paid the Post Office for the privilege. At this time the old rule forbidding more than three outside passengers on the mails was relaxed. This indulgence began in Scotland, where the contractors, in consideration of the sparseness of the population and the scarcity of chance passengers on the way, were allowed a fourth outside passenger; and eventually many of the mails, like the stages, carried from eight to twelve outsides. This, however, did not suffice, for those passengers did not often present themselves; and at last the contractors really did not care to obtain the Post Office business, finding it pay better to devote their attention to fast day-coaches on their own account.

THE MAIL. After J. L. Agasse, 1824.

Thus the Post Office found itself in a novel and unwonted position. Coach-proprietors and contractors, instead of anxiously endeavouring to obtain the mail-contracts, held aloof, and the Post Office surveyors, when renewals were necessary, found they had to make the advances and do the courting. Then the tables were turned with a vengeance! For Benjamin Horne’s “Foreign Mail,” carrying what were called the “black bags” (i.e. black tarpaulin to protect the mail from sea-water) between London and Dover, 1s. 3¾d. per double mile was paid; 11⅙d. for the Carmarthen and Pembroke; and 8d., and then 9d., for the Norwich Mail, by Newmarket, strongly opposed as it was by the Norwich “Telegraph,” and therefore loading badly on that lonely road. For the Chester, originally contracted for at 1s. a mile, then down to 3d., and in 1826 up to 4d., 6d. was paid, on account of passengers going by the direct Holyhead Mail, and the Holyhead itself was raised to the same figure when fast day-stages had begun to run from Shrewsbury.

A Committee of the House of Commons had sat upon this question before these prices were given, and much evidence was taken; but these revised tariffs did by no means end the matter. Substantial contractors would in many instances have nothing to do with the Post Office, and the Department could not run the risk of employing irresponsible men who could not be held to their undertakings. In some few instances ordinary night-stages were given the business, and it was seriously proposed to employ the guards of existing stage-coaches to take charge of the bags, but this was never carried out. In the midst of all these worries, when it seemed as though the despatch of the mails must needs, in the altered conditions of the time, be eventually changed from night to day, railways came to relieve official anxieties, which existed not only on account of the increasing cost, but also on the score of the continually growing bulk of mail-matter, piled up to mountainous heights on the roof, instead of, as originally, being easily stowed away in the depths of the hind boot. It was considered a great advantage of the mail-coaches built by Waude in these last days that they were not only built with a low centre of gravity, but that, with a dropped hind axle, they made a deeper and more capacious boot possible, in which were stowed the more valuable portions of the mail. Had railways not at the very cynthia of the moment come to supply a “felt want,” certainly the mails must on many roads have been carried by mail-vans devoted exclusively to the service. But in 1830 the Liverpool and Manchester Railway carried mailbags, and in anticipation of the opening throughout of the London and Birmingham, the first long route, in September 1838, an Act of Parliament was passed on August 14th in that year, authorising the conveyance of mails by railways. We must not, however, suppose that such instant advantage was always taken of new methods. That would not be according to the traditions of the Post Office. Accordingly, we find that, although what is now the London and South-Western Railway was opened between Nine Elms and Portsmouth in May 1840, it was not until 1842 that the Portsmouth Mail went by rail. For two years it continued to perform the 73 miles 3 furlongs in 9 hours 10 minutes, when it might have gone by train in 6 hours 10 minutes less.

With these changes, London lost an annual spectacle of considerable interest. From 1791 the procession of the mail-coaches on the King’s birthday had been the grand show occasion of the Post Office year. No efforts and no expense were spared by the loyal contractors (loyal in spite of the ofttimes arbitrary dealings of the Post Office with them) to grace the day; and Vidler and Parratt, who for many years had the monopoly of supplying the coaches, equalled them in the zeal displayed. The coaches were drawn up at twelve, noon, to the whole number of twenty-seven, at the factory on Millbank, beautiful in new paint and new gilding; the Bristol Mail, as the senior, leading, the others in the like order of their establishment. On this occasion the Post Office provided each guard with a new gold-laced hat and scarlet coat, and the mail-contractors who horsed the coaches, not to be outdone, found scarlet coats for their coachmen, in addition to providing new harness. The coachmen and guards, unwilling to be beaten in this loyal competition, provided themselves with huge nosegays, as big as cauliflowers. When, as in the reign of William IV., the King’s birthday fell in a pleasant time of the year, the procession of the mails was a beautiful and popular sight, attracting not only the general public, but the very numerous sporting folks, who welcomed the opportunity of seeing at their best, and all together, the one hundred and two noble horses that drew the mails from the Metropolis to all parts of the kingdom. Everything, indeed, was very special to the occasion. Each coach was provided with a gorgeous hammer-cloth, a species of upholstery certainly not in use on ordinary journeys. No one was allowed on the roof, but the coachman and guard had the privilege of two tickets each for friends for the inside. Great, as may be supposed, was the competition for these. For the contractors themselves there was the cold collation provided by Vidler and Parratt at Millbank, at three o’clock, when the procession was over.

THE BRISTOL MAIL AT HYDE PARK CORNER, 1838. After J. Doyle.

The route varied somewhat with the circumstances of the time, always including the residence of the Postmaster-General for the time being. Punctually at noon it started off, headed by a horseman, and with another horseman between each coach. Nearing St. James’s Palace, it was generally reduced to a snail’s pace, for the crowd always assembled densely there, on the chance of seeing the King; and the authorities of that period were not clever at clearing a route. Imagine now the front of Carlton House Palace, or St. James’s, and the Londoners of that age assembled in their thousands. The procession with difficulty approaches, and halts. Two barrels of porter—Barclay & Perkins’ best—are in position in front of the Royal residence, and to each coachman and guard is handed a capacious pewter pot—it is a sight to make a Good Templar weep. The King and Queen and the Royal family now appear at an open window, the King removing his hat and bowing, to a storm of applause—as though he had done something really clever or wonderful. Now the coachman of the Bristol Mail uncovers, and holding high the shining pewter, exclaims: “We drink to the health of His Gracious Majesty: God bless him!” and suiting the action to the words, dips his nose into the pot, which in an incredibly short time is completely inverted and emptied. Fifty-three other voices simultaneously repeat the same words, and fifty-three pint pots are in like manner drained in the twinkling of an eye. The King and his family now retire, and the procession prepares to move on; but the mob, moved by loyalty and the sight of the beer-barrels, grows clamorous: “King, King! Queen, Queen!” cry a thousand voices; while a thousand more yell, “Beer, beer!” When at length the King does return, to bow once more, he gazes upon two thousand people struggling for two half-empty barrels, which in the scuffle have upset, and speedily become empty. Meanwhile the coaches have moved off, to complete their tour to the General Post Office, and thence back to Millbank.

These processions, from some cause or another not now easily to be discovered, were omitted in 1829 and 1830. May 17th, 1838, when twenty-five mails paraded, was the last occasion; for already the railway was threatening the road, and when Queen Victoria’s birthday recurred the ranks of the mails were sadly broken.

This memorable year, 1837, then, was the last unbroken year of the mail-coaches starting from London. Since September 23rd, 1829, when the old General Post Office in Lombard Street was deserted for the great building in St. Martin’s-le-Grand, they had come and gone. The first ever to enter its gates, as the result of keen competition, had been the up Holyhead Mail of that date; the last was the Dover Mail, in 1844.

The mail-coaches loaded up about half-past seven at their respective inns, and then assembled at the Post Office Yard to receive the bags. All, that is to say, except seven West of England mails—the Bath, Bristol, Devonport, Exeter, Gloucester, Southampton and Stroud—whose coaches started from Piccadilly, the bags being conveyed to them at that point by mail-cart. There were thus twenty-one coaches starting nightly from the General Post Office precisely at 8 o’clock. Here is a list of the mails setting out every night throughout the year:—

A List of Mail-Coaches starting nightly from London in 1837.

With the exception of the Brighton, Portsmouth, Dover and Hastings, they were all splendidly-appointed four-horse coaches; but those four places being only at short distances, speed was unnecessary, and they were only provided with pair-horse mails. Had a speed similar to that maintained on most other mails been kept up, letters and passengers would have reached the coast in the middle of the night.

The so-called “Yarmouth Mail” was, we are told by those who travelled on it, an ordinary stage-coach, carrying the usual four inside and twelve outside, chartered by the Post Office to carry the mail-bags; but the old print, engraved here, does not bear out that contention.

The arrival of the mails in London was an early morning affair. First of all came the Leeds, at five minutes past four, followed at an interval of over an hour—5.15—by the Glasgow, and then, at 5.39, by the Edinburgh. All arrived by 7 o’clock.

There was then, as now, no Sunday delivery of letters in London, and Saturday nights were, by consequence, saturnalias for the up-mails. Although the clock might have been set with accuracy by their passing at any other time, their coming into London on Sundays was a happy-go-lucky, chance affair. The coachmen would arrange to meet on the Saturday nights at such junctions of the different routes as Andover, Hounslow, Puckeridge, and Hockliffe, and so in company have what they very descriptively termed a “roaring time.”

THE YARMOUTH MAIL, AT THE “COACH AND HORSES,” ILFORD.
After J. Pollard.

In 1836 the fastest mail ran on a provincial route. This was the short 28-miles service between Liverpool and Preston, maintained at 10 miles 5 furlongs an hour. The slowest was the 19-miles Canterbury and Deal, at 6 miles an hour, including stops for changing. The average speed of all the mails was as low as 8 miles 7 furlongs an hour.

In 1838 there were 59 four-horse mails in England and Wales, 16 in Scotland, and 29 in Ireland, in addition to a total number of 70 pair-horse: some 180 mails in all. It was in this year that—the novelty of railways creating a desire for fast travelling—the Post Office yielded to the cry for speed, and, abandoning the usual conservative attitude, went too far in the other direction, overstepping the bounds of common safety. For some time the mails between Glasgow and Carlisle, and Carlisle and Edinburgh were run to clear 11 miles an hour, which meant an average pace of 13 miles an hour. These were popularly called the “calico mails,” because of their lightness. The time allowed between Carlisle and Glasgow, 96 miles, was 8 hours 32 minutes, and it was a sight to see it come down Stanwix Brow on a summer evening. It met, however, with so many accidents that cautious folk always avoided it, preferring the orthodox 10 miles an hour—especially by lamplight in the rugged Cheviots. Even at that pace there had been more than enough risk, as these incidents from Post Office records of three years earlier clearly show:—

No place was better served by the Post Office than Exeter in the last years of the road, and few so well. Before 1837 it had no fewer than three mails, and in that year a fourth was added. All four started simultaneously from the General Post Office, and reached the Queen City of the West within a few hours of one another every day. On its own merits, Exeter did not deserve or need all these travelling and postal facilities, and it was only because it stood at the converging-point of many routes that it obtained them. Only one mail, indeed, was dedicated especially to Exeter, and that was the last-established, the “New Exeter,” put on the road in 1837. The others continued to Devonport or to Falmouth, then a port, a mail-packet and naval station of great prominence, where the West Indian mails landed, and whence they were shipped. To the mail-coaches making for Devonport and Falmouth, Exeter was, therefore, only an incident.

THE “QUICKSILVER” DEVONPORT MAIL, PASSING KEW BRIDGE.
After J. Pollard.

The “Old Exeter” Mail, continued on to Falmouth, kept consistently to the main Exeter Road, through Salisbury, Dorchester and Bridport. Before 1837 it had performed the journey to Exeter in 20 hours and to Falmouth in 34¾ hours, but was then accelerated one hour as between London and Exeter, and although slightly decelerated onwards, the gain on the whole distance was 49 minutes.

Five minutes in advance of this ran the “Quicksilver” Devonport Mail, as far as Salisbury, where, until 1837, it branched off, going by Shaftesbury, Sherborne and Yeovil, a route 5¾ miles shorter than the other. It was 1¾ hours quicker than the “Old Exeter” as far as that city. Here is the time-table of the “Quicksilver” at that period, to Exeter:—

Leaving General Post Office at 8 p.m.

Thus 18 hours 14 minutes were allowed for the 173 miles. In 1837 the “Quicksilver” was put on the “upper road” by Amesbury and Ilminster, and her pace again accelerated; this time by 1 hour 38 minutes to Exeter and 4 hours 39 minutes to Falmouth. This then became the fastest long-distance mail in the kingdom, maintaining a speed, including stops, of nearly 10¼ miles an hour between London and Devonport. It should be remembered, when considering the subject of speed, that the mails had not only to change horses and stay for supper and breakfast, like the stage-coaches, but also had to call at the post offices to deliver and collect the mailbags, and all time so expended had to be made up. The “Quicksilver” must needs have gone some stages at 12 miles an hour.

Time also had to be kept in all kinds of weather, and the guard—who was the servant of the Post Office, and not, as the coachman was, of the mail-contractors—was bound to see that time was kept, and had power, whenever it was being lost, to order out post-horses at the expense of the contractors. Six, and sometimes eight, horses were often thus attached to the mails. The route of the “Quicksilver” from 1837 was according to the following time-bill:—

Leaving General Post Office at 8 p.m.

The complete official time-bill for the whole distance is appended:—

Time-Bill, London, Exeter and Devonport (“Quicksilver”) Mail, 1837.

The time of working each stage is to be reckoned from the coach’s arrival, and as any lost time is to be recovered in the course of the stage, it is the coachman’s duty to be as expeditious as possible, and to report the horsekeepers if they are not always ready when the coach arrives, and active in getting it off. The guard is to give his best assistance in changing, whenever his official duties do not prevent it.

By command of the Postmaster-General.
George Louis, Surveyor and Superintendent.

The “New Exeter” Mail went at the moderate inclusive speed of 9 miles an hour, and reached Exeter, where it stopped altogether, 1 hour 38 minutes later than the “Quicksilver.” The fourth of this company went a circuitous route down the Bath Road to Bath, Bridgewater, and Taunton, and did not get into Exeter until 3.57 p.m. Halting ten minutes, it went on to Devonport, and stopped there at 10.5 that night.

The tabulated form given on opposite page will clearly show how the West of England mails went in 1837.

The starting of the “Quicksilver” and the other West-country mails was a recognised London sight. That of the “Telegraph” would have been also, only it left Piccadilly at 5.30 in the morning, when no one was about besides the unhappy passengers, except the stable-helpers. Chaplin, who horsed the “Quicksilver” and other Western mails from town, did not start them from the General Post Office, but from the Gloucester Coffee-House, Piccadilly. The mail-bags were brought from St. Martin’s-le-Grand in a mail-cart, and the City passengers in an omnibus. The mails set out from Piccadilly at 8.30 p.m.

The West of England Mails, 1837.

It was at Andover that the “Quicksilver,” from 1837, leaving its contemporary mails, climbed up past Abbot’s Ann to Park House and the bleak Wiltshire downs, along a lonely road, and finally came, up hill, out of Amesbury to the most exposed part of Salisbury Plain, at Stonehenge, in the early hours of the morning. The “Quicksilver” was a favourite subject with the artists of that day, who were never weary of pictorially representing it. They have shown it passing Kew Bridge, and the old “Star and Garter,” on the outward journey, in daylight—presumably the longest day in the year, because it did not reach that point until 9 p.m. Two of them have, separately and individually, shown us the famous attack by the lioness in 1816; and two others have pictured it on the up journey, passing Windsor Castle, and entering the City at Temple Bar; but no one has ever represented the “Quicksilver” passing beneath that gaunt and storm-beaten relic of a prehistoric age, Stonehenge. One of them, however, did a somewhat remarkable thing. The picture of the “Quicksilver” passing within sight of Windsor was executed and published in 1840, two years after the gallant old mail had been taken off that portion of the road, to be conveyed by railway. Perhaps the print was, so to speak, a post-mortem one, intended to keep the memory of the old days fresh in the recollection of travellers by the mail.

The London and Southampton Railway was opened to Woking May 23rd, 1838, and to Winchfield September 24th following, and by so much the travels of the “Quicksilver” and the other West-country coaches were shortened. For some months they all resorted to that station, and then to Basingstoke, when the line was opened so far. June 10th, 1839. This shortening of the coach route was accompanied by the following advertisement in the Times during October 1838, the forerunner of many others:—

THE “QUICKSILVER” DEVONPORT MAIL, ARRIVING AT TEMPLE BAR, 1834. After C. B. Newhouse.

“Bagshot, Surrey—49 Horses and harness. To Coach Proprietors, Mail Contractors, Post Masters, and Others.—To be Sold by Auction, by Mr. Robinson, on the premises, ‘King’s Arms’ Inn, Bagshot, on Friday, November 2, 1838, at twelve o’clock precisely, by order of Mr. Scarborough, in consequence of the coaches going per Railway.

“About Forty superior, good-sized, strengthy, short-legged, quick-actioned, fresh horses, and six sets of four-horse harness, which have been working the Exeter ‘Telegraph,’ Southampton and Gosport Fast Coaches, and one stage of the Devonport Mail. The above genuine Stock merits the particular Attention of all Persons requiring known good Horses, which are for unreserved sale, entirely on Account of the Coaches being removed from the Road to the Railway.”

In Thomas Sopwith’s diary we find this significant passage: “On the 11th May, 1840, the coaches discontinued running between York and London, although the railways were circuitous.” Thus the glories of the Great North Road began to fade, but it was not until 1842 that the Edinburgh Mail was taken off the road between London, York, and Newcastle. July 5th, 1847, witnessed the last journey of the mail on that storied road, in the departure of the coach from Newcastle-on-Tyne for Edinburgh. The next day the North British Railway was opened.

The local Derby and Manchester Mail was one of the last to go. It went off in October 1858. But away up in the far north of Scotland, where Nature at her wildest, and civilisation and population at their sparsest, placed physical and financial obstacles before the railway engineers, it was not until August 1st, 1874, that the mail-coach era closed, in the last journey of the mail-coach between Wick and Thurso. That same day the Highland Railway was opened, and in the whole length and breadth of England and Scotland mail-coaches had ceased to exist.

THE “QUICKSILVER” DEVONPORT MAIL, PASSING WINDSOR CASTLE.
After Charles Hunt, 1840.

The mail-coaches in their prime were noble vehicles. Disdaining any display of gilt lettering or varied colour commonly to be seen on the competitive stage-coaches, they were yet remarkably striking. The lower part of the body has been variously described as chocolate, maroon, and scarlet. Maroon certainly was the colour of the later mails, and “chocolate” is obviously an error on the part of some writer whose colour-sense was not particularly exact; but we can only reconcile the “scarlet” and “maroon” by supposing that the earlier colouring was in fact the more vivid of the two. The fore and hind boots were black, together with the upper quarters of the body, and were saved from being too sombre by the Royal cipher in gold on the fore boot, the number of the mail on the hind, and, emblazoned on the upper quarters, four devices eloquent of the majesty of the united kingdoms and their knightly orders. There shone the cross of St. George, with its encircling garter and the proud motto, “Honi soit qui mal y pense”; the Scotch thistle, with the warning “Nemo me impune lacessit”; the shamrock and an attendant star, with the Quis separabit? query (not yet resolved); and three Royal crowns, with the legend of the Bath, “Tria juncta in uno.” The Royal arms were emblazoned on the door-panels, and old prints show that occasionally the four under quarters had devices somewhat similar to those above. The name of each particular mail appeared in unobtrusive gold letters. The under-carriage and wheels were scarlet, or “Post Office red,” and the harness, with the exception of the Royal cypher and the coach-bars on the blinkers, was perfectly plain.

One at least of the mail-coaches still survives. This is a London and York mail, built by Waude, of the Old Kent Road, in 1830, and now a relic of the days of yore treasured by Messrs. Holland & Holland, of Oxford Street. Since being run off the road as a mail, it has had a curiously varied history. In 1875 and the following season, when the coaching revival was in full vigour, it appeared on the Dorking Road, and so won the affections of Captain “Billy” Cooper, whose hobby that route then was, that he had an exact copy built. In the summer of 1877 it was running between Stratford-on-Avon and Leamington. In 1879 Mr. Charles A. R. Hoare, the banker, had it at Tunbridge Wells, and also ordered a copy. Since then the old mail-coach has been in retirement, emerging now and again as the “Old Times” coach, to emphasise the trophies of improvement and progress in the Lord Mayor’s Shows of 1896, 1899 and 1901, in the wake of electric and petrol motor-cars, driven and occupied by coachmen and passengers dressed to resemble our ancestors of a hundred years ago.

MAIL-COACH BUILT BY WAUDE, 1830.
Now in possession of Messrs. Holland & Holland.

The coach is substantially and in general lines as built in 1830. The wheels have been renewed, the hind boot has a door inserted at the back, and the interior has been relined; but otherwise it is the coach that ran when William IV. was king. It is a characteristic Waude coach, low-hung, and built with straight sides, instead of the bowed-out type common to the products of Vidler’s factory. It wears, in consequence, a more elegant appearance than most coaches of that time; but it must be confessed that what it gained in the eyes of passers-by it must have lost in the estimation of the insides, for the interior is not a little cramped by those straight sides. The guard’s seat on the “dickey”—or what in earlier times was more generally known as the “backgammon-board”—remains, but his sheepskin or tiger-skin covering, to protect his legs from the cold, is gone. The trapdoor into the hind boot can be seen. Through this the mails were thrust, and the guard sat throughout the journey with his feet on it. Immediately in front of him were the spare bars, while above, in the still-remaining case, reposed the indispensable blunderbuss. The original lamps, in their reversible cases, remain. There were four of them—one on either fore quarter, and one on either side of the fore boot, while a smaller one hung from beneath the footboard, just above the wheelers. The guard had a small hand-lamp of his own to aid him in sorting his small parcels. The door-panels have apparently been repainted since the old days, for, although they still keep the maroon colour characteristic of the mail-coaches, the Royal arms are gone, and in their stead appears the script monogram, in gold, “V.R.”

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 imitations—all of them extraordinarily thin and poor. Sentimental travellers, without a scintilla of the wit that jewelled Sterne’s pages, gushed and reflected in a variety of travels, and became a public nuisance. Surely no one then read their mawkish products, any more than they do now.

Murray’s book was, then, obviously, to any one who now dips into it, as trite and jejune as the rest of them; but it has now, unlike its fellows, an interesting aspect, for the reason that he gives details of road-travelling life which, once commonplace enough, afford to ourselves not a little entertainment. Equally entertaining, too, and full of unconscious humour, are those would-be eloquent rhapsodies of his which could only then have rendered him an unmitigated bore. It should be noted here that although his picture of road-life is in general reliable enough, we must by no means take him at his word when he says he journeyed all the way from Newcastle to London. We cannot believe in a traveller making that claim who devotes many pages to the first fifteen miles between Newcastle and Durham, and yet between Durham and Grantham, a distance of a hundred and fifty miles, not only finds nothing of interest, but fails to tell us whether he went by the Boroughbridge or the York route, and mentions nothing of the coach halting for the night between the beginning of the journey at Newcastle, and the first specified night’s halt at Grantham, a hundred and sixty-five miles away. Those were the times when the coaches inned every night, and not until the “Wonder” London and Shrewsbury Coach was started, in 1825, did any coach ever succeed in doing much more than a hundred miles a day. So much in adverse criticism. But while a very casual glance is sufficient to expose his pretensions of having made the entire journey in this manner, it is equally evident that he knew portions of the road, and that he was conversant with the manners and customs that then obtained along it—as no one then could help being. The fare between Newcastle and London, the lengthy halts on the way, and the manner in which the passengers often passed the long evenings at the towns where they rested for the night—witnessing any theatrical performance that offered—are extremely interesting, as also is the curious sidelight thrown upon the fact that actors—technically, in the eyes of the law, “rogues and vagabonds”—were then actually so regarded. How poorly considered the theatrical profession then was, is, of course, well known; but it is curious thus to come upon a reference to the fact that London theatres then had long summer vacations, in which the actors and actresses must starve if they could not manage to pick up a meagre livelihood by barnstorming in the country; as here we see them doing.

So much by way of preface. Now let us see what our author has to say.

To begin with, he, like many another before and since, found it disagreeable to be wakened in the morning. When a person is enjoying sweet repose in his bed, to be suddenly awakened by the rude, blustering voice of a vociferous ostler was distinctly annoying. More annoying still, however, to lose the coach; and so there was no help for it, provided the stage was to be caught. The morning was very fine when the passengers, thus untimely roused, entered the coach. Nature smiled around them, who only yawned in her face in return. Pity, thought our author, that they were not to ride on horseback: they could then enjoy the pleasures of the morning, snuff the perfumes of the fields, hear the music of the grove and the concert of the wood.

These reflections were cut short by the crossing of the Tyne by ferry. The bridge had fallen on November 17th, 1771, and the temporary ferry established from the Swirl, Sandgate, to the south shore was the source of much inconvenience and delay. The coach was put across on a raft or barge, but in directing operations to that end, the ferryman was not to be hurried. One had to wait the pleasure of that arbitrary little Bashaw, who would not move beyond the rule of his own authority, or mitigate the sentence of those who were condemned to travel in a stage-coach within a ferry-boat.

Our author, as he hated every idea of slavery and oppression, was not a little offended at the expressions of authority used on this occasion by the august legislator of the ferry. The passengers were now in the barge, and obliged to sit quiet until this tyrant gave orders for departure. The vehicle for carrying coach and passengers across the river was the most tiresome and heavy that ever was invented. Four rowers in a small boat dragged the ponderous ferry across the river, very slowly and with great exertions, and almost an hour was consumed in thus breasting the yellow current of the broad and swiftly-running Tyne. Meanwhile, there was plenty of time to reflect on what might happen on the passage, and abundant opportunity for putting up a few ejaculations to Heaven to preserve them all from the dangers of ferryboats and tyrants.

But the voyage at last came to an end. So soon as they were landed on the south side of the river Tyne, they were saluted by a blackbird, who welcomed them to the county of Durham. It seemed to take pleasure in seeing them fairly out of the domains of Charon, and whistled cheerfully on their arrival. “Nature,” said Mr. James Murray to himself, “is the mistress of real pleasure: this same blackbird cannot suffer us to pass by without contributing to our happiness. Liberty (he continued) seems to be the first principle of music. Slaves can never sing from the heart.”

No: they sing, like everyone else, from the throat.

But these observations carried them beyond Gateshead and to the ascent of the Fell, along whose steep sides the pleasures of the morning increased upon them. The whins and briars sent forth a fragrance exceedingly delightful, and on every side of the coach peerless drops of dew hung dangling upon the blossoms of the thorns, adding to the perfume. Aurora now began to streak the western sky—something wrong with the solar system that morning, for the sun commonly rises in the east—and the spangled heavens announced the advent of the King of Day. Sol at last appeared, and spread his healthful beams over the hills and valleys, and the wild beasts now retired to their dens, and those timorous animals that go abroad in the night to seek their food were also withdrawn to the thickets. The hares, as an exception—and yet this was not the lunatic month of March—were skipping across the lawns, tasting the dewy glade for their morning’s repast. The skylark was skylarking—or, rather, was already mounted on high, serenading his dame with mirthful glee and pleasure. (Here follow two pages of moral reflections on skylarks and fashionable debauchees, with conclusions in favour of the larks, and severe condemnation of “libidinous children of licentiousness,” who are bidden “go to the lark, ye slaves of pollution, and be wise. He does not stroll through the grove or thicket to search for some new amour, but keeps strictly to the ties of conjugal affection, and cherishes the partner of his natural concerns.”)

In the midst of these idyllic contemplations, a grave and solemn scene opened to the view. Hazlett, who had robbed the mail in 1770, hung on a gibbet at the left hand. “Unfortunate and infatuated Hazlett! Hadst thou robbed the nation of millions, instead of robbing the mail and pilfering a few shillings from a testy old maid, thou hadst not been hanging, a spectacle to passers-by and a prey to crows. Thy case was pitiable—but there was no mercy: thou wast poor, and thy sin unpardonable. Hadst thou robbed to support the Crown, and murdered for the Monarchy, thou might’st have been yet alive.”

The place where Hazlett hung, the writer considered to be the finest place in the world for a ghost-walk. “At the foot of a wild romantic mountain, near the side of a small lake, are his remains; his shadow appears in the water and suggests the idea of two malefactors. The imagination may easily conjure up his ghost. Many spirits have been seen in wilds not so fit for the purpose. This robber is perhaps the genius of the Fell, and walks in the gloomy shades of night by the side of this little lake. This (he adds—it must have been a truly comforting thought to the other passengers) is all supposition.” The dreary place was one well calculated for raising gloomy ideas, tending to craze the imagination.

After this, it was a relief to reach Durham, a very picturesquely situated city with a grand cathedral and bishop’s palace. The pleasant banks on the west side of the river Wear were adorned with stately trees, mingled with shrubs of various kinds, which brought to one’s mind the romantic ideas of ancient story, when swains and nymphs sang their loves amongst trees by the side of some enchanted river. The abbey and the castle called to mind those enchanted places where knights-errant were confined for many years, until delivered by some friend who knew how to dissolve the chains and charm the necromancy.

Durham, he thought, would be a very fine place, were it not for the swarms of clergy in it, who devoured every extensive living without being of any real service to the public. The common people in Durham were very ignorant and great profaners of the Sabbath Day, and, indeed, over almost the whole of England the greatest ignorance and vice were under the noses of the bishops. He would not pretend to give a reason for this, but the fact was apparent.

Durham was a very healthful place—the soil dry, the air wholesome; but the Cathedral dignitaries performed worship rather as a grievous task than as a matter of choice, a thing not infrequently to be observed in our own days. The woman who showed the shrine of St. Cuthbert did not understand Mr. Murray when he referred to the Resurrection, a fact that gave him a good opportunity to enlarge upon the practically heathenish state of Durham’s ecclesiastical surroundings.

All this sightseeing, and these reflections and observations at Durham (and a good many more from which the reader shall be spared) were rendered possible by a lengthy halt made by the coach in that city. Thus there was ample time for seeing the cathedral—“very noble and delightful to the eyes of those who had a taste for antiquity or Gothic magnificence,” he says.

After they were wearied with sauntering in this old Gothic abbey, they went down to the river side. There the person who was fond of rural pleasures might riot at large. Comparisons drawn on the spot between the choristers of the grove, who sang from the heart, and the minor canons and prebendaries of the cathedral, who wearily performed their duties for a living, were, naturally, greatly to the disadvantage of the dignified clergy.

Strolling through the suburb of Old Elvet, the company at last returned to the inn—the “New Inn” it was called. The landlord of this hostelry was a jolly, honest man; his house spacious, and fit even to serve the Bishop. All things were cheap, good, and clean at this inn. If a person came in well pleased, he would find nothing to offend him, provided he did not create some offence to himself—which sounds just a little confused.

While our itinerant chronicler was noting down all these things, orders were given for departure, and so he had hurriedly to conclude.

And now, turning from wayside reflections, we get a description of the passengers. The coach, when it left Newcastle, was full. Four ladies, a gentleman of the sword and our humble servant made up its principal contents. They sat in silence for some time, until they were jolted into good humour by the motion of the vehicle, which opened their several social faculties. One of their female companions, who was a North Briton, a jolly, middle-aged matron with abundance of good sense and humour, entertained the company for a quarter of an hour with the history of her travels. She had made the tour of Europe, and had visited the most remarkable places in Christendom, in the quality of a dutiful wife, attending her valetudinary husband, travelling for the recovery of his health. Her easy, unaffected manner in telling a story made her exceedingly good company, and none had the least inclination to interrupt her until she was pleased to cease. She knew how to time her discourse, and never, like the generality of her sex, degenerated into tediousness and insipidity.

At every stage she was a conformist to all the measures of the company, and went into every social proposal that was made.

Another companion was a widow lady of Newcastle, quite as agreeable as the former. She understood how to make them laugh. Unfortunately, she only went one stage, and they then lost the pleasure of her company.

The third passenger was a Newcastle lady, well known in the literary world for her useful performances for the benefit of youth. This female triumvirate would have been much upon a par had they all been travellers, for their gifts of conversation were much alike; but the lady who had taken the tour of Europe possessed in that the advantage of circumstances.

The fourth lady was the Scottish lady’s servant. As she said nothing the whole way (remarks Mr. Murray), I shall say nothing of her.

The fifth person was an officer in the army, who appeared very drowsy in the morning, and came forth of his chamber with every appearance of reluctance. His hair was dishevelled and quite out of queue, and he seemed to be as ready for a sleep as if he had not been to bed. He was, for a time, as dumb as a Quaker when not moved by the spirit, and by continuing in silence, at last fell asleep until they had completed nearly half the first stage. During this time, Mr. Murray sarcastically observes, he said no ill.

They finished their first stage without exchanging many words with this son of Mars, except some of those flimsy compliments gentlemen of the sword pay frequently to the ladies. After a dish of warm tea the tissues of his tongue were loosed, and he began to let his companions know that he was an officer in the army, and a man of some consequence. He seemed to be very fond of war, and spoke in high terms upon the usefulness of a standing army. When he had exhausted his whole fund of military arguments in favour of slavery and oppression, Mr. Murray observed to him that a standing army had a bad appearance in a free country, and put it in the power of the Crown to enslave the nation—with the like arguments, continued for an unconscionable space.

It is not at all surprising that the soldier resented this. The spirit of Mars began to work within him, and he threatened that if he were near a Justice of the Peace he would have this argumentative person fined for hindering him from getting recruits, adding that he once had a man fined for persuading others not to enlist in his Majesty’s service.

To this Mr. Murray rejoined that the officer certainly had a right to say all the fine things he could to recommend the service of his master, but, having done that, he had no more to do; and that any man had also a right to tell his friends, whom he saw ready to be seduced into bondage, that they were born free, and ought to take care how they gave up their liberty—together with remarks derogatory of the justice of courts martial.

Our author did not, however, find this military hero a bloodthirsty man, for, by his own confession, he and a brother officer had a few months before surrendered their purses to a highwayman between London and Highgate for fear of bloodshed. This showed that some officers were abundantly peaceable in time of danger, and discovered no inclination for taking people’s lives. This gentleman of sword and pistol, in particular, had a great many solid reasons why men should not adventure their lives for a little money. He said there was no courage in fighting a highwayman, and no honour to be had in the victory over one; that soldiers should preserve their lives for the service of the country in case of war, and not run the risk of losing them by foolish adventure.

These reasons did not altogether satisfy the ladies, for one of them observed that robbers were at war alike with laws and governments, and that the King’s servants were hired to keep the peace and to defend the King’s subjects from violence; that officers in the army were as much obliged by their office and character to fight robbers as they were bound to fight the French, or any other enemy; and that footpads were invaders of the people’s rights and properties, and ought to be resisted by men whose profession it was to fight, and who were well paid for so doing. It was for money all the officers in the army served the King and fought his battles, and why should they not as well fight for money in a stage-coach as in a castle or a field? She insisted that only one of them could have been killed by the highwayman, or perhaps but wounded, and there were several chances that he might have missed them both. But, supposing the worst—that one had been shot—it was only the chance of war, and the other might have secured the robber, which would have been of more service to the country than the life of the officer. In short, she observed, it had the appearance more of cowardice than disregard for money, for two officers to surrender their purses to a single highwayman, who had nothing but one pistol.

The lady’s reflections were severely felt by the young swordsman, and produced a solemn silence in the coach for a quarter of an hour, during which time some fell asleep, and so continued until coming to the next inn, where the horses were changed. There two or three glasses of port restored the officer’s courage, and he determined, in case of an attack, to defend every one from the assaults of all highwaymen whatsoever. To show the courage that sometimes animated him, he told the story of how he had dealt with a starving mob in Dumfries. The hungry people of that town, not disposed to perish while food was abundant, and corn held by the farmers and corn-factors for higher prices, assembled to protest against such methods; and the magistrates, who thought the people had a right to starve, sent for the military to oblige them to famish discreetly or else be shot. Our hero had command of the party, where, according to his own testimony, he performed wonders. The poor people were shot like woodcocks, and those who could get away with safety were glad to return home to wrestle with hunger until Heaven should think fit to provide for them.

The officer was very liberal in abusing those whom he called “the mob,” and said they were ignorant, obstinate and wicked, and added that he thought it no crime to destroy hundreds of them.

The lady who had already given him a lecture then began to put him in mind of the footpad whom he and his brother officer had suffered to escape with their purses, and asked him how he would quell a number of highwaymen. Taken off his guard at the mention of footpads, he stared out of the window with a sort of wildness, as if one had been at the coach door.

Nothing was seen worthy of note until the coach came to Grantham, which place they reached about seven in the evening. The first things, remarks Mr. Murray—with all the air of a profound and interesting discovery—that travellers saw in approaching large towns were, generally speaking, the church steeples. Ordinarily higher than the rest of the buildings, they were—remarkable to relate—on that account the more conspicuous. The steeple of Grantham was pretty high, and saluted one’s eyes at a good distance before the town was approached. It seemed to be of the pyramidical kind.

Grantham was a pleasant place, although the houses were indifferently built. On reaching it, they wandered through the town before returning to the inn for supper, when the captain took care to say some civil things to the landlady’s sister, who was a very handsome young woman. It was, however, easy to perceive that she was acquainted with these civilities, and could distinguish between truth and falsehood. She made the captain keep his distance in such a manner as put an entire end to his compliments. The fineness of her person and the beauty of her complexion were joined with a modest severity that protected her from the rudeness and insults which gentlemen think themselves entitled to use towards a chambermaid, the character she acted in.

After supper was done, the coach-party were informed that some of Mr. Garrick’s servants were that night to exhibit in an old thatched house in a corner of the town. They had come abroad into the country during the summer vacation, to see if they could find anything to keep their grinders going until the opening of Drury Lane Theatre. They were that night to play the Went Indian and the Jubilee.

The whole of the passengers went to see the performance. The actors played their parts very indifferently, but, after all, not so badly but that one could, with some trouble, manage to perceive as much meaning in their actions as to be able to distinguish between an honest man and a rogue. Our ingenious and imaginative Mr. Murray thought it must be dangerous for an actor to play the rogue often, for fear of his performance becoming something more than an imitation. But after all, he says, with the fine intolerant scorn of the old-time dissenting minister, the generality of players had little morality to lose.

It was a very poor theatre—being, indeed, not a theatre at all, and little better than a barn. The audience, however, was good, and well dressed, and the ladies handsome. The performance was over by eleven o’clock, and the company dismissed. Mr. Murray concludes his account of the evening’s entertainment by very sourly observing that their time and that of the rest of the audience might have been better employed than in seeing a few stupid rogues endeavouring to imitate what some of them really were.

The coach left Grantham at two o’clock the next morning; much too early, considering the short rest the night’s gaiety had left them. But there was no choice—they were under authority, and had to obey. That person would be a fool who, having paid £3 8s. 6d. for a seat in a stage-coach from Newcastle to London, should consent to lose it by not rising betimes. The worst of it was, that here one had to take care of one’s self, because no one would wait upon him or return him his money. Observe the passengers, therefore, all, in the coach by 2 a.m. The company being seated, the driver went off as fast as if he would have driven them to Stamford in the twinkling of an eye. So early was the hour that we are not surprised to be told that the author fell asleep by the time they were clear of the town, and doubtless the others did the same. It may be remarked here that a very excellent proof of this being a fictitious journey is found in there being no mention of the passengers being turned out of the coach to walk up the steep Spitalgate Hill—a thing always necessary at that period of coaching history.

The remainder of this not-inaptly named Travels of the Imagination is made up chiefly of a long disquisition upon sleep—itself highly soporific—which only gives place to remarks upon the journey when the coach arrives on Highgate Hill. Coming over that eminence, they had a peep at London.

“It must be a wonderful holy place,” he suggests to the other passengers, “there are so many church steeples to be seen.”

The others, who must have known better, said nothing.

“Are we there?” he asked when they had reached Islington.

“No, not there yet.”

“Is it a large place: four times as large, for instance, as Newcastle?”

“Ten times as large.”

“Where are the town walls?”

“There are no walls.”

At last they reached Holborn, and the end of the journey, where the company dispersed and our chronicler went to bed.

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 pay a return visit along that same highway—the Great North Road. He does not explain how he came through Highgate, but for our part, the first sixty miles or so go along the Old North Road, and we do not touch Highgate at all.

Now, since we are setting out merely for the purpose of seeing something of what life is like on a great highway, there is no need to mortify the flesh by arising early in the blushing hours of dawn, to the tune of the watchman’s cry of “five o’clock and a fine morning!” and so we will e’en, like Christians and Britons able to call their souls their own, go by the afternoon coach. Let the “Lord Nelson” in this year 1830 go if it will from the “Saracen’s Head,” Snow Hill, at half-past six in the morning. For ourselves, we will wait until a quarter to three in the afternoon, and take the “Lord Wellington” from the “Bull and Mouth.” We can do no better, for the “Lord Wellington” goes the 274 miles in 30 hours, which a simple calculation resolves into 9 miles an hour, including stops. The fare to Newcastle is £5 15s. inside, or about 5d. a mile. Outside, it is £3 10s., or a fraction over 3d. a mile. As our trip is taken in summer-time, we will go outside; and so, although a good deal of the journey will have to be through the night, we, at least, shall not have the disadvantage of being stewed during the daytime in the intolerable atmosphere of the inside of a stage-coach on a July day. Why, indeed, coach-proprietors do not themselves observe that in summer-time the outside is the most desirable place, and charge accordingly, is not easily understood; nor, indeed, to be understood at all. That clever fellow De Quincey notices this, and points out that, although the roof is generally regarded by passengers and everyone else connected with coaching as the attic, and the inside as the drawing-room, only to be tenanted by gentlefolk, the inside is really the coal-cellar in disguise.

We recollect, being old travellers, that the fares to Newcastle used to be much cheaper. Time was when they were only four guineas inside and £2 10s. outside, but prices went up during the late wars with France, and they have stayed up ever since. The travelling, however, is better by some five hours than it was fifteen years ago.

Here we are at the “Bull and Mouth,” in St. Martin’s-le-Grand, now newly rebuilt by Sherman, and named the “Queen’s.” It is a handsome building of red brick, with Portland stone dressings, but the old stables are still to be seen at the side, in Bull-and-Mouth Street. A strong and penetrating aroma of horses and straw pervades the neighbourhood.

Wonderful building, the new General Post Office, opened last year, nearly opposite. They say the Government has got something very like a white elephant in that vast pile. A great deal too big for present needs, or, indeed, for any possible extension of Post Office business. Here’s the “Lord Wellington.” What’s that the yard-porter says?—He says “they don’t call it nothin’ but the ‘Vellington’ now.”—Smart, turn-out, is it not, with its yellow wheels and body to match? You can tell Sherman’s coaches anywhere by that colouring. What a d——d nuisance those boys are, pestering one to buy things one doesn’t want! No; be off with you, we don’t want any braces or pocket looking-glasses, nor the “Life and Portrait of His Late Majesty,” nor any “Sure Cure for Fleas”—use it on yourselves, you dirty-looking devils!

THE “QUEEN’S HOTEL” AND GENERAL POST OFFICE. After T. Allom.

Thank goodness! we’re off, and the sooner we’re out of this traffic and off the stones at Kingsland Turnpike the better. These paved streets are so noisy, one can scarcely hear oneself talk, and the rattling sends a jar up one’s spine. How London grows! we shall soon see the houses stretching past Kingsland and swallowing up the country lanes of Dalston and Stoke Newington.

Hal-lo! That was a near shave. Confound those brewers’ drays; Shoreditch is always full of ’em; might have sent us slap over. Why don’t you keep your eyes open, fool?

The drayman offers to fight us all, one after the other, with one hand tied behind his back, for sixpence a head, money down; but though we have some of “the Fancy” aboard, the “Wellington” can’t stop for a mill in the middle of Shoreditch High Street.

Now at last we’re fairly in the country. If you look back you’ll be able to see St. Paul’s. This is Stamford Hill, where the rich City indigo and East and West India merchants live. Warm men, all of them. There, ahead of us, on the right, goes the river Lea: as pretty fishing there as you’d find even in the famous trout streams of Hampshire. What a quaint, quiet rural place this is at Tottenham! And Edmonton, with its tea-gardens; why, London might be fifty miles away!

Here we are, already at Waltham Cross, and at our first change. This is something like traveling! We change horses at the “Falcon” in little more than two minutes, and so are off again, on the ten-mile stage to Ware, through the long narrow street of Cheshunt, past the New River at Broxbourne, and along the broad thoroughfare of Hoddesdon. At Ware we change teams at the “Saracen’s Head,” and four fine strong-limbed chestnuts are put in, to take us the rather hilly stage on to Buntingford. At this sleepy little town they take care to give us as strong a team as you will find in any coach on any road, for the way rises steadily for some miles over Royston Downs. A good thing for the horses that the stage on to Royston town is not more than seven miles. “I believe you, sir,” says the coachman; “vy, I’ve heerd my father say, vot driv’ over this ’ere road thirty year ago, that he vore out many a good ’orse on this stage; an’ ’e vere a careful man too, as you might say, and turned out every blessed one, hinside to hout, to valk up-hill for two mile, wet or fine; strike me blue if he didn’t.”

“They talk of lowering the road through the top of Reed Hill, don’t they, coachman?”

“Oh! yes; they torks, and that’s about all they does do. Lot o’ good torking does my ’orses. Vot I vants to know is, v’y does we pay the turnpikes?”

We change at the “Red Lion,” Royston, and then come on to the galloping ground that brings us smartly, along a level road, to Arrington Bridge, the spelling of whose name is a matter of divergent opinions among the compilers of road-books. But whether called Arrington or Harrington, it is a pretty, retired spot, with a handsome inn and an equally handsome row of houses opposite.

“Will you please to alight?” asks the stately landlady of the “Hardwicke Arms” inn and posting-house, with perhaps a little too much air of condescension towards us, as coach-passengers. We of the stage-coaches—nay, even those of the mails—occupy only a second place in the consideration of mine host and hostess of this, one of the finest inns on the road. Their posting business brings them some very free-handed customers, and their position, hard by my lord of Hardwicke’s grand seat of Wimpole, spoils them for mere ordinary everyday folks.

However, it is now more than half-past seven o’clock, and we have had no bite nor sup since two. Therefore we alight at the landlady’s bidding and hasten into the inn, to make as good a supper as possible in the twenty minutes allowed.

Half a crown each, in all conscience, for two cups of tea, and some bread and butter, cold ham and eggs! We climb up to our places, dissatisfied. Soon the quiet spot falls away behind, as our horses get into their stride; and as we leave, so does a yellow po’shay dash up, and convert the apparently sleepy knot of smocked post-boys and shirt-sleeved ostlers, who have been lounging about the stable entrance, into a very alert and wide-awake throng.

Caxton, a busy thoroughfare village, where the great “George” inn does a very large business, is passed, and soon, along this flattest of flat roads, that grim relic, Caxton Gibbet, rises dark and forbidding against the translucent evening sky. Does the troubled ghost of young Gatward, gibbeted here eighty years ago for robbing the mail on this lonely spot, ever revisit the scene, we wonder?

The wise, inscrutable stars hang trembling in the sky, and the sickle moon is shining softly, as, having passed Papworth St. Everard, we drop gently down through Godmanchester and draw up in front of the “George” at Huntingdon, 58½ miles from London, at ten o’clock.

We take the opportunity afforded by the change of filling our pocket-flasks with some rich brown brandy of the right sort, and invest in some of those very special veal-and-ham sandwiches for which good Mrs. Ekin has been famous these years past. Our coachman “leaves us here,” and we tip him eighteenpence apiece when he comes round to inform us of the fact.

The new coachman, after some little conversation with the outgoing incumbent of the bench, in which we catch the remark made to the newcomer that some articles or some persons are “a pretty fair lot, taking ’em all round”—a criticism that evidently sizes us up for the benefit of his confrère—climbs into his seat, and giving us all a comprehensive and impartial glance, settles himself down comfortably. “All right, Tom?” he asks the guard over his shoulder. “Yes,” answers that functionary. “Then give ’em their heads, Bill,” he says to the ostler; and away we go into the moonlit night at a steady pace.

The box-seat passenger, who very successfully kept the original coachman in conversation nearly all the way from London to Huntingdon, does not seem to quite hit it off with our new whip, who is inclined to be huffish, or, at the least of it, given to silence and keeping his own counsel. “Have a weed, coachman?” he asks, after some ineffectual attempts to get more than a grunt out of him. “Don’t mind if I do,” is the ungracious reply, and he takes the proffered cigar and—puts it into some pocket somewhere beneath the voluminous capes of his greatcoat. After this, silence reigns supreme. For ourselves, we have chatted throughout the day, and now begin to feel—not sleepy, but meditative.

The moon now rides in unsullied glory through the azure sky. We top Alconbury Hill at a few minutes to twelve, and come to the junction of the Old North and the Great North Roads. Everything stands out as clearly as if it were daylight, but with a certain ghost-like and uncanny effect. “The obelisk,” as the coachmen have learned to call the great milestone at the junction of the roads (it is really a square pedestal) looks particularly spectral, but is not the airy nothing it seems—as the coachman on the Edinburgh Mail discovered, a little while ago. The guard tells us all about it. The usual thing. Too much to drink at the hospitable bar of the “George,” at Huntingdon, and a doubt as to which of the two milestones he saw, on coming up the road, was the real one. The guard and all the outsides were in similar case—it was Christmas, and men made merry—and so there was nothing for it but to try their quality. Unfortunately, he drove into the real stone, and not its spectral duplicate, conjured up by the effects of strong liquors. We see the broken railings and the dismounted stone ball that once capped the thing as we pass. The local surgeon mended the resultant broken limbs at the “Wheatsheaf,” whose lighted windows fall into our wake as we commence the descent of Stonegate Hill.

Stilton. By this time we are too drowsy to note whether we changed at the “Bell” or at its rival, directly opposite, the “Angel.” At any rate, nobody asks us if we would not like a nice real Stilton cheese to take with us, as they usually do: it is midnight.

We now pass Norman Cross, and come in another eight miles to Wansford turnpike, where the gate is closed and the pikeman gone to bed. “Blow up for the gate,” said the coachman, when we were drawing near, to the guard, who blew his horn accordingly; but it does not seem to have disturbed the dreams of the janitor. “Gate, gate!” cry the guard and coachman in stentorian chorus. The guard himself descends, and blows a furious series of blasts in the doorway, while the coachman lashes the casement windows.

THE TURNPIKE GATE. From a contemporary lithograph.

At last a shuffling and fumbling are heard within, and the door is opened. The pikeman has not been to bed after all; he was, and is, only drunk, and had fallen into a sottish sleep. He now opens the gate, in the midst of much disinterested advice from both our officials—the guard advising him to stick to Old Tom and leave brandy alone, and the coachman pointing out that the Mail will be down presently and that he had better leave the gate open if he does not wish to present the Postmaster-General with forty shillings, that being the penalty to which a pike-keeper is liable who does not leave a clear passage for His Majesty’s Mails.

We now cross Wansford Bridge, a very long and narrow stone structure over the river Nene. Having done so, slowly and with caution, we know no more: sleep descends insensibly upon us.

... Immeasurable æons of time pass by. We are floating with rhythmic wings in the pure ether of some unterrestrial paradise. Our gross earthly integument (twelve stone and a few extra pounds avoirdupois of flesh and blood and bone) has fallen away. We want nothing to eat, for ever and ever, and have left everything gross and unspiritual far, far below us, and ... a fearful crash! Convulsively, instinctively, our arms are thrown out, and we awake, tenaciously grasping one another. What is this that has brought us down to earth again and made us unwillingly assume once more that corporeal hundredweight, or thereabouts, we had left so gladly behind? Are we overturned?

No; it was nothing: nothing, that is to say, but the hunchbacked bridge over the river Welland, that leads from Stamford Baron into Stamford Town. It is only the customary bump and lurch, the guard informs us. May all architects of hunchback bridges be converted from straight-backed human beings into bowed and crooked likenesses of their own abominable creations! We will keep awake, lest another such rude awaking await us.

With this intent we gaze, wide-eyed, upon Stamford Town, its noble buildings wrapped round in midnight quiet, the moon shining here full upon the mullioned stone windows of some ancient mansion, there casting impenetrable black shadows, making dark mysteries of grand architectural doorways decorated with curious scutcheons and overhung with heavy pediments, like beetling eyebrows. Grand churches whose spires soar away, away far into the sky, astonish our newly-awakened vision as the coachman carefully guides the coach through the narrow and crooked streets, in which the shadows from cornices and roof-tops lie so black and sharp that none but he who has driven here before could surely bring this coach safely through. Once or twice we have quailed as he has driven straight at some solid wall, and have breathed again when it has proved to be only some oblique monstrous silhouetted image cast athwart the way. Fear only leaves us when we are clear of the town and once more on the unobstructed road; then only is there leisure for the mind to dwell upon the beauties of that glorious old stone-built town. We are thus ruminating when, between Great Casterton and Stretton, where we enter Rutlandshire, the glaring lamps of a swiftly approaching coach lurch forward out of the long perspective of road, and, with a clatter of harness and a sharp crunching of wheels, fall away, as in a vision. The guard, answering someone’s question, says it is the Leeds “Rockingham,” due in London at something after ten in the morning.

The determination to keep awake was heroic, but without avail. Even the screaming and grumbling of the skid and the straining of the wheels down Spitalgate Hill into Grantham did not suffice to quite waken us. But what that noise and the jarring of the wheels failed to do, the stoppage at the “George” at Grantham and the sudden quiet do succeed in. Our friend the moon has by now sunk to rest, and a pallid dawn has come; someone remarks that it is past three o’clock in the morning, and someone else is wakened and hauled forth from amid the snoring insides, whose snores become gasps and gulps, and then resolve themselves into the yawns and peevish exclamations of tired men. The person thus awakened proves to be a passenger who had booked to Colsterworth, which is a little village we have now left eight miles behind us. He had been asleep, and as Colsterworth is not one of our stopping or changing places, the guard forgot all about him until the change at Grantham. The passenger and the guard are now waging a furious war of words on the resounding pavements of the sleeping town. It seems that the unfortunate inside, besides being himself carried so far beyond his destination, has a heavy portmanteau in the like predicament. If he had been a little bigger and the guard a little smaller, his fury would perhaps make him fall upon that official and personally chastise him. As it is, he resorts to abuse. Windows of surrounding houses now begin to be thrown up, and nightcapped heads to inquire “what the d——l’s the matter, and if it can’t be settled somewhere else or at some more convenient season?” The guard says “This ’ere gent wot’s abusing of me like a blooming pickpocket goes to sleep and gets kerried past where he wants to get out, and when I pulls him out, ’stead of taking ’im him on to Newark or York, ’e——” “Shut up,” exclaims a fierce voice from above: “can’t a man get a wink of sleep for you fellows?”

So, the change being put to, the altercation is concluded in undertones, and we roll off; the irate passenger to bed at the “George,” vowing he will get a legal remedy against the proprietors of the “Wellington” for the unheard-of outrage.

At Newark, a hundred and twenty-five miles of our journey performed, it is broad daylight as the coach rolls, making the echoes resound, into the great market-square. Clock-faces—a little blanched and debauched-looking to our fancy—proclaim the hour to be 5.30 a.m. The change is waiting for us in front of the “Saracen’s Head,” and so is our new coachman. The old one leaves us, but before doing so “kicks us”—as the expressive phraseology of the road has it—for the usual fees. He has been, so far as we remember him, a dour, silent, unsociable man, but we think that, perhaps, as we have been asleep during the best part of his reign on the box-seat, any qualities he may possess have not had their due opportunity, and so he gets two shillings from ourselves. A passenger behind us gives him a shilling, which he promptly spits on and turns, “for luck” as he says, and “in ’opes it’ll grow.” The passenger who gave it him says, thereupon—in a broad Scots accent—that he is “an impudent fellow, and desairves to get nothing at all;” to which the jarvey rejoins that he has in his time brought many a Scotchman from Scotland, but, “this is the fust time, blow me, that hever I see one agoin’ back!”—which is a very dark and mysterious saying. What did he mean?

Our new coachman is a complete change from our late Jehu. He is a spruce, cheerful fellow, neat and well brushed, youthful and prepossessing. “Good morning, gentlemen,” he says cheerily: “another fine day.” We had not noticed it. All we had observed was of each other, and that as every other looked pale, wearied and heavy-eyed, so we rightly judged must be our own condition.

“Chk!” says our youthful charioteer to his horses, and away they bound. Newark market-square glides by, and we are crossing the Trent, over a long bridge. “Newark Castle, gentlemen,” says our coachman, jerking his whip to the left hand; and there we see, rising from the banks of the broad river, the crumbling, time-stained towers of a ruined mediæval fortress. Much he has to say of it, for he is intelligent beyond the ordinary run. A good and graceful whip, too—one of the new school: much persuasion and little punishment for the horses, who certainly seem to put forward their best paces at his merest suggestion. It is a good, flat, and fairly straight road, this ten-mile stage to Scarthing Moor. We cross the Trent again, then a low-lying tract of water-meadows, where the night mists still cling in ghost-like wisps to the grass, and then several small villages. “This”—says our coachman, pointing to a church beside the road, and down the street of one of these little villages—“this is where Oliver Cromwell came from.”

“What is the name of it?” we ask, knowing that, whatever its name, the Protector came from quite a different place.

“Cromwell,” he says.

So this was probably the original seat of that family many centuries before Oliver came into the world, which has since then been so greatly exercised about him.

“Blow up for the change,” says the coachman to the guard, as, having passed through Carlton-on-Trent, Sutton-on-Trent, and round the awkward bend of the road at Weston, we approach Scarthing Moor and the “Black Bull.” “They’re a sleepy lot at the ‘Bull,’” he says, in explanation. The guard produces the “yard of tin” from the horn-basket, and sounds a melodious tantara: quite unnecessarily, after all, it seems, for, quite a distance off, the ostler, dressed after his kind in trousers and shirt only, with braces dangling about him, is seen standing in the road, with the change ready and waiting.

“Got up before you found yourself, this morning?” asks the coachman.

The ostler says he don’t take no sauce from no boys what ain’t been breeched above a twelvemonth.

“All right, Sam,” replies the coachman; “your ’art’s all right, if you have got a ’ed full of wool. Shouldn’t wonder if you don’t make up for this mistake of yourn by sleepin’ it out for a month of Sundays after this. If so be you do, jest hang the keys of the stable outside, and when we come down agen, Jim and me ’ll put ’em in ourselves, won’t we, Jim?”

Jim says they will, and will petition Guv’ment to pension him off, and retire him to the “R’yal ’Orsepital for Towheads.”

Evidently some ancient feud between the ostler and the coach is in progress, and still far from being settled. The ostler sulkily watches us out of sight, as we make our next stage to Retford. The clocks in the market-place of that busy little town mark half-past seven, and the “White Hart,” where we drop a passenger for the Gainsborough coach and another for Chesterfield, and take up another for York, is a busy scene. Appetising aromas of early breakfasts being prepared put a keener edge upon our already sharpened appetites, and we all devoutly wish we were at Doncaster, where our breakfast awaits the coming of the coach. Across Barnby Moor, past the great “Bell” inn, we take our way, and come to one more change, at the “Crown,” Bawtry; then hie away for Doncaster, which we reach, past Rossington Bridge and the famous St. Leger course, at half-past nine o’clock.

“Twenty minutes for breakfast, gentlemen,” announces the coachman as we pull up in front of the “New Angel” inn; while the guard, who has come with us all the way from London, now announces that he goes no farther. We give him half a crown, and hasten, as well as stiffened limbs allow, down the ladder placed for us outsides to alight by, to the breakfast-room.

We catch a glimpse of ourselves in a mirror as we enter. Heavens! is it possible an all-night journey can make so great a difference in a man’s personal appearance? While here is a lady who has been an inside passenger all the way from town, and yet looks as fresh and blooming as though she had but just dressed for a walk. How do they manage it, those delicate creatures?

Our friend, who says he is starving, refuses to discuss this question. He remarks, with eye wildly roving o’er the well-laden table-cloth, that something to eat and drink is more to the point. We cannot gainsay the contention, and do not attempt it, but sink into a chair.

“Coffee, sir; tea, sir; ’ot roll; ’am and heggs. Yorkshire brawn, tongue,” suggests the waiter, swiftly.

We select something and fall-to. After all, it is worth while to take a long coach journey, even if it be only for the appetite it gives one. Here we are, all of us, eating and drinking as though we had taken no meals for a week past. Yes, another cup of coffee, please, and I’ll thank you to pass the——

“Time’s up, gents; coach just agoin’ to start!”

“Oh! here, I say, you know. We’ve only just sat down.”

“Ain’t got more’n ’nother couple o’ minutes,” says the new guard; and so, appetite not fully satisfied, we all troop out and resume our places.

Our coach goes the hilly route, by Ferrybridge and Tadcaster, to York. We change on the short stage out of Doncaster, at Robin Hood’s Well, where the rival inns, the “New” and the “Robin Hood,” occupy opposite sides of the road; and again at Ferrybridge, at the “Swan,” where our smart coachman resigns his seat to an enormously fat man, weighing nearly, if not quite, twenty stone. He is so unwieldy that quite a number of the “Swan” postboys gather round him, and by dint of much sustained effort, do at last succeed in pulling and pushing him into his place, resembling in so doing the Liliputians manipulating Gulliver; the coachman himself, breathing like a grampus, encouraging them by calling out, “That’s it, lads; another heave like t’last does it. All together again, and I’ll mak’ it a gallon!”

Across the river Aire to Brotherton, and thence through Sherburn to Tadcaster, where, having changed at the “White Horse,” we come along a level stage into York; the new guard, who rejoices in the possession of a key-bugle and a good ear for music, signalising our entrance by playing, in excellent style, “The Days when we went Gipsying, a Long Time Ago.”

The coach dines at York. The “Black Swan,” to which we come, is a house historic in the annals of coaching, for it was from its door that the original York and London stage set forth; but it is a very plain and heavy building. Half an hour is allowed for dining, and, unlike the majority of houses down the road, the table-cloth and the knives and forks and glasses are not the only things in readiness.

“What have you got, waiter?”

“Hot roast beef, sir, just coming in; very prime.”

“Haven’t you any cold chicken for a lady here?”

“Yessir; cold chicken on the table, sir; in front of you, sir.”

“You call that chicken, waiter! why, it’s only a skeleton. Take it away and give it to the dog in the yard.”

“Very sorry, sir; ‘Royal Sovereigns’ very hungry to-day; very good appetites they had, sir; wonder they left even the bones.”

“You’re laughing at me, you rascal; bring another chicken!”

“No more chickens, sir; roast lamb, would the lady like? hot or cold; green peas, new potatoes?” ...

“Your apple tart, sir. Ale, sir. Claret, ma’am.” ...

Dinner disposed of, the coach is ready, but one of our passengers is missing. Has any one seen him? He went off, it seems, to see the cathedral, instead of having dinner. Fortunately for himself he comes hurrying up just as we are starting, and the guard hauls him up to his outside place by main force.

“Tip us a tune,” says the coachman to the guard, who, rendered sentimental by the steak and the bottle of stout he had for dinner in the bar, in company with the buxom barmaid, responds with “Believe me, if all those Endearing Young Charms,” as we pass the frowning portal of Bootham Bar and bump along the very rough street of Clifton, York’s modern suburb.

This is a thirteen-and-a-half mile stage from York to Easingwold; but although long, it is an easy one for the horses, if the coachman does not demand pace of them, on account of the dead level of the road. He very wisely lets them take their own speed, only now and then shaking the reins when they seem inclined to slacken from their steady trot. It is a lonely stretch of country, treeless, flat, melancholy; and the appearance of Easingwold is welcomed. At the “Rose and Crown” the new team is put in, and off we go again, the ten miles to Thirsk. At Northallerton the horses are changed for a fresh team at the “Golden Lion,” and the fat coachman, assisted down with almost as much trouble as he was hoisted up, resigns the ribbons into the hands of another.

The usual knot of sightseers of the little town are gathered about the inn to witness the one event of the day, the arrival of the London coach. Among them one perceives the coachman out of a place; a beggar out at elbows; three recruits with ribbons in their hats, not quite recovered from last night’s drink, and stupidly wondering how the ribbons got there; the “coachman wot is to take the next stage”; several errand boys wasting their masters’ time; and a horsey youth with small fortune but large expectations, who is the idler of the place—the local man about town. There is absolutely nothing else for the inhabitants of Northallerton to do for amusement but to watch the coaches, the post-chaises and the chariots as they pass along the one long and empty street.

Our box-seat passenger leaves us here. Although he has, all the way down, shown himself anxious to be intimate with the successive coachmen, and has paid pretty heavily for the privilege of occupying that seat of honour, it has been of no sporting advantage to him, for he is only a Cockney tradesman, who has never even driven a trap, let alone four-in-hand. So when each whip in turn asked him the questions, conventional among whips, “whether he had his driving-gloves on, and would like to take the ribbons for the next few miles,” he evaded the offer by “not being in form,” or not knowing the road, or something else equally annoying to the coachman, who, in not having an amateur of driving on the box, thereby missed the canonical tip of anything from seven shillings to half a sovereign which the handling of the reins for twenty miles or so was worth to the ordinary sportsman.

Our new coachman, on our starting from Northallerton, keeps the seat beside him vacant. He says he has a passenger for it down the road. Tom Layfield, for that is the name of our present charioteer, works the “Wellington” up and down between this and Newcastle on alternate days, Ralph Soulsby being the coachman on the other. Tom Layfield is a very prim-looking, tall and spare man, tutor in coachmanship to many gentlemen on these last fifty-five miles; and it does not surprise some of us when, passing Great Smeaton, we are hailed by a very “down the road” looking young man, whose hat is cocked at a knowing angle, and whose entire get-up, from the gigantic mother-o’-pearl buttons on his light overcoat to the big scarf-pin in the semblance of a galloping coach and horses, proclaims “amateur coachman.” It is the young squire of Hornby Grange, on the right hand, we are told, who is anxious to graduate in coaching honours, and to be mentioned in the pages of the Sporting Magazine by Nimrod, in company with Sir St. Vincent Cotton, the Brackenburys, and other distinguished ornaments of the bench.

“‘Afternoon, squire,” says Layfield, as that young sportsman swings into the seat beside him; and they talk guardedly about anything and everything but coaches, until Layfield asks—as though it had just occurred to him—if he would not like to “put ’em along” for a few miles. He accepts, and is just about to take the reins over when the voice of a hitherto silent gentleman is heard from behind.

“I earnestly protest, coachman,” he says, “against your giving the reins into the hands of that young gentleman, and endangering our lives. I appeal to the other passengers to support me,” he continues, glancing round. “We read in the papers every day of the many serious, and some fatal, accidents caused by control of the horses being given to unqualified persons. If you are well advised, young gentleman, you will relinquish the reins into their proper keeping; and you, coachman, ought to know, and do know, that you would be liable to a fine of any amount from £5 to £10, at the discretion of a magistrate, for allowing an unauthorised person to drive.”

The coachman takes back the reins, and sulkily says he didn’t know he had an informer up; to which the gentleman rejoins by saying that, so long as the coachman drives and performs the duty for which he is paid by his proprietors, he himself is not concerned to teach him proper respect; but he cannot refrain from pointing out, to the coachman in especial, and to the passengers generally, that it would have been the policy of an informer to allow the illegal act to be committed and then to lay an information. He was really protecting the coachman as well as the passengers, because it was well known that the road swarmed with informers, and continued infractions of the law could not always hope to go unpunished.

Every one murmurs approval, except the coachman and his friend, and the guard. The guard, as an official, is silent; the amateur coachman has a hot flush upon his face. The coachman, however, clearly sees himself to be in the wrong, and awkwardly apologises. Still, we all feel somewhat constrained, and, passing Croft Spa and coming to Darlington, experience an ungrateful relief when the champion of our necks and limbs leaves us there.

He is no sooner gone than tongues are wagging about him. “Who is he? What is he? Do you know him?”

“Talks like a Hact o’ Parlymint,” says the coachman to his friend.

“And a very good reason, too,” says a man with knowledge: “he is a Justice of the Peace and Chairman of the Bench of Magistrates at Stockton, which holds a higher jurisdiction than your bench, coachman. I think you’ve had a very narrow escape of parting with £10 and costs.”

The guard has a few parcels to take out of the boot at the “King’s Head,” and a few new ones to put in, and then we’re off for Rushyford Bridge, where the coach takes tea, and where we leave the amateur coachee at the “Wheatsheaf.”

Durham and the coal country open out on leaving secluded Rushyford. Durham Cathedral, although itself standing on a height, has the appearance of being in a profound hollow as the coach, with the skid on, slowly creaks and groans down the long hill into the city. Changing at the “Three Tuns,” the new team toils painfully up the atrociously steep streets to Framwellgate Bridge, where the river Wear and the stern grandeur of the Norman Cathedral, with the bold rocks and soft woods around it, blend under the westering sun-rays of a July evening into a lovely mellowed picture.

Chester-le-Street and Gateshead are ill exchanges for the picturesqueness of Durham, but they serve to bring us nearer our journey’s end, and, truth to tell, we are very weary; so that, coming down the breakneck streets of Gateshead in the gathering darkness to the coaly Tyne and dear dirty Newcastle, with the hum of its great population and the hooting of its steamers in our ears, we are filled with a great content. “Give ’em a tune,” says the coachman; and, the guard sounding a fanfare, we are quickly over the old town bridge, along the Side, and at the Turf Hotel, Collingwood Street. It is nearly ten o’clock. The journey is done.

Let us tot up the expenses per head:—

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 over by the first train. It seems to ourselves incredible, but it was the fact, that there were those who ascribed this fatality to the wrath of God against mechanical methods of travelling. Then first arose that favourite saying among coachmen, “In a coach accident, there you are; in a railway accident, where are you?” The impression thus intended to be conveyed was that a coaching disaster was a very trifling affair compared with a railway accident. But was it? Let us see.

The Rev. William Milton, who in 1810 published a work on coach-building, lamented the great number of accidents in his time, and said that not a tenth part of them was ever recorded in the newspapers. He darkly added that the coach-proprietors could probably explain the reason. However that may be, the following pages contain a selection of the most tragical happenings in this sort, culled from the newspapers of the past. It does by no means pretend to completeness; for to essay a task of that kind would be to embark upon a very extensive work, as well as a very severe indictment of the coaching age. Moreover, it may shrewdly be suspected that many drowsy folk fell off the box-seats in the darkness, and quietly and unostentatiously broke their necks, without the least notice being publicly taken. Mere upsets and injuries to passengers and coachmen are not instanced here. Only a selection from the fatal accidents has been made.

1807.—Brighton and Portsmouth coach upset; coachman killed.

1810.—Rival Brighton and Worthing coaches racing; one upset; coachman killed.

1819.—“Coburg” (Brighton coach) upset at Cuckfield, on the up journey. The horses were fresh, and, dashing away, came into collision with a waggon. All the eleven outsides were injured. A Mr. Blake died next day at the “King’s Head,” Cuckfield, where the injured had been taken.

1826. April.—The Leeds and Wakefield “True Blue,” going down Belle Hill with horses galloping, on the wrong side of the road, came into collision with a coal-cart. The coachman’s skull was fractured, and he died instantly. One outside passenger’s leg had to be amputated, and he died the next day. The recovery of another passenger was regarded as doubtful.

One of the more serious among coach accidents was that which befell the London and Dorking stage, in April 1826. It was one of those coaches that did not carry a guard. It left the “Elephant and Castle” at nine o’clock in the morning, full inside and out, and arrived safely at Ewell, where Joseph Walker, who was both coachman and proprietor, alighted for the purpose of getting a parcel from the hind boot. He gave the reins to a boy who sat on the box, and all would have been well had it not been for the thoughtless act of the boy himself, who cracked the whip, and set the horses off at full speed. They dashed down the awkwardly curving road by the church and into a line of wooden railings, which were torn down for a length of twelve yards. Coming then to some immovable obstacle, the coach was violently upset, and the whole of the passengers hurled from the roof. All were seriously injured, and one was killed. This unfortunate person was a woman, who fell upon some spiked iron railings, “which,” says the contemporary account, “entered her breast and neck. She was dreadfully mutilated, none of her features being distinguishable. She lingered until the following day, when she expired in the greatest agony.” The gravestone of this unfortunate person is still to be seen in the leafy churchyard of Ewell, inscribed to the memory of “Catherine, wife of James Bailey, who, in consequence of the overturning of the Dorking Coach, April 1826, met with her death in the 22nd year of her age.”

A MIDNIGHT DISASTER ON A CROSS ROAD: FIVE MILES TO THE NEAREST VILLAGE. After C. B. Newhouse.

1827. December.—The up Salisbury coach was driven, in the fog prevailing at the time, into a pond called the “King’s Water,” at East Bedfont, on Hounslow Heath. An outside passenger, a Mr. Lockhart Wainwright, of the Light Dragoons, was killed on the spot, by falling in the water. The pond was only two feet deep, but it had a further depth of two feet of mud, and it was thought that the unfortunate passenger was smothered in it. The four women inside the coach had a narrow escape of being drowned, but were rescued, and the coach righted, by a crowd of about a hundred persons, chiefly soldiers from the neighbouring barracks, who had assembled.

1832. February 19th.—Mr. Fleet, coachman and part-proprietor of the Brighton and Tunbridge Wells coach, killed by the overturn of his conveyance.

1832. October 30th.—Brighton Mail upset at Reigate. Coachman killed on the spot. The three outsides suffered fractured ribs and minor injuries.

In 1833 the Marquis of Worcester, a shining light of the road in those days, began that connection with the Brighton Road which afterwards produced the “Duke of Beaufort” coach, made famous by the coloured prints after Lambert and Shayer. He was passionately fond of driving, and was so very often allowed by the complaisant professional coachmen to “take the ribbons” that he at last fell into the habit of taking them almost as a matter of right. Of course, the jarveys who had relinquished the reins to him were always well remembered for their so doing; but there were those to whom money was not everything, and in whose minds the sporting instinct was less developed than a wholesome and ever-present fear of the penalties to which coachmen were liable if they permitted other persons to drive. There could have been no objection on the score of coachmanship, for the Marquis was an able whip; but the fact remained that he could not get the reins when he wanted them, and so in revenge set up two coaches on the Brighton Road, in alliance with a Jew named Israel Alexander. A paltry fellow, this Marquis, afterwards seventh Duke of Beaufort, to enter into competition with professional coachmen in order to satisfy a childish spite; not, at any rate, the high-souled sportsman that toadies would have one believe.

THE “BEAUFORT” BRIGHTON COACH. After W. J. Shayer.

The coaches put on the road by this alliance were the “Wonder” and the “Quicksilver,” both with intent to run Goodman, the proprietor of the “Times” coaches, off the route. The coachmen who tooled these new conveyances were, of course, always to give up the reins when my lord thought proper to drive, and so the revenge was complete. But the “Quicksilver,” a fast coach timed to do the 52 miles in 4¾ hours, had not been long on the road before it met with a very serious accident, being overturned when leaving Brighton on the evening of July 15th. A booking-clerk, one John Snow, the son of a coachman, and himself a sucking Jehu, was driving, and upset the coach by the New Steyne, with the result that the passengers were thrown into the gardens of the Steyne, or hung upon the spikes of the railings in very painful and ridiculous postures. Goodman had the satisfaction of presently learning that the bad-blooded sportsman and his partner lost some very heavy sums in compensation awards.

The “Quicksilver” was thereupon repainted and renamed, and, under the alias of the “Criterion,” resumed its journeys. But ill-fortune clung to that coach, for on June 7th, 1834, as it was leaving London, it came into collision with a brewer’s dray opposite St. Saviour’s Church, Southwark. A little way on, down the Borough High Street, the coachman was obliged to suddenly pull up the horses to avoid running over a gentleman on horseback, whose horse had bolted into the middle of the road. The sudden strain on the pole, already, it seems, splintered in the affair with the dray, broke it off. It fell, and became entangled with the legs of the wheelers, who became so restive and infuriated that attempts were made to put on the skid; but before that could be done the coach overturned. Sir William Cosway, who was one of the outsides, and was at that moment attempting to climb down, was pitched off so violently that his skull was fractured, so that he died in less than two hours afterwards. A Mr. Todhunter “sustained” (as the reporters have it) a broken thigh.

1834.—The London and Halifax Mail came into collision with a bridge, five miles from Sheffield. The coachman, Thomas Roberts, was killed.

The Wolverhampton and Worcester coach, in avoiding a cart coming down a hill near Stourbridge, was upset, and a passenger killed.

October.—A wheel came off one of Wheatley’s Greenwich coaches at London Bridge, and one gentleman was killed.

1835. August.—The Liverpool “Albion” fell over on entering Whitchurch, through a worn-out linchpin. A lady inside passenger was disfigured for life.

June.—The Nottingham “Rapid” upset, three miles from Northampton, through the breaking of an axle. A girl’s leg crushed, and afterwards amputated.

November.—The Newcastle and Carlisle Mail upset, two miles from Hexham. Aiken, the coachman, killed.

December 25th.—The down Exeter Mail upset on Christmas night, on nearing Andover, through running against a bank in the prevailing fog. Austin, the coachman, killed.

1836. June.—The up Louth Mail nearly upset by stones maliciously placed in the road by some unknown person, near Linger House bar. Rhodes, the guard, was thrown off and seriously injured.

In September, 1836, a shocking accident befel the down Manchester “Peveril of the Peak,” five miles from Bedford. The coach turned over, and a gentleman named O’Brien was killed on the spot. The coachman lay two hours under the coach, and died from his injuries.

The next disaster on our list was caused by a drunken coachman’s dazed state of mind. Early on a Sunday morning in June, 1837, the Lincoln and London Mails met and came into collision at Lower Codicote, near Biggleswade. The driver of the up mail, Thomas Crouch, was in a state of partial intoxication at the time, and owing to a curve in the road, and the wandering state of his faculties, he did not observe the approach of the other mail. The result was that, although the coachman of the other made room for him to pass, the two coaches came into violent collision. The coach driven by Crouch was turned completely round, ran twenty or thirty yards in a direction opposite to that it was originally taking, and finally settled in a leaning posture in the ditch. Crouch was so injured that he died a few hours afterwards. The passengers were not much hurt, but two horses were killed.

On September 8th, a coachman named Burnett was killed at Speenhamland, on the Bath Road. He was driving one of the New Company’s London and Bristol stages, and alighted at the “Hare and Hounds,” very foolishly leaving the horses unattended, with the reins on their backs. He had been a coachman for twenty years, but experience had not been sufficient to prevent him thus breaking one of the first rules of the profession. He had no sooner entered the inn than the rival Old Company’s coach came down the road. Whether the other coachman gave the horses a touch with his whip as he passed, or if they started on their own accord, is not known, but they did start, and Burnett, rushing out to stop them, was thrown down and trampled on so that he died.

Of another kind was the fatal accident that closed the year on the Glasgow Road. On the night of December 18th, the up Glasgow Mail ran over a man, supposed to have been a drunken carter, who was lying in the middle of the highway.

1837. August.—The up Glasgow Mail, the up Edinburgh Mail, the Edinburgh and Dumfries, and the Edinburgh and Portpatrick Mails all upset the same night, at different places.

1838. August.—The London to Lincoln Express met a waggon at night, at Mere Hall, six miles from Lincoln. The coachman called to the waggoner to make room, and a young man who, it is supposed, was asleep on the top, started up, and rolled off. The waggon-wheels went over and killed him.

September.—The Edinburgh and Perth “Coburg” was the subject of a singular accident. Passengers and luggage were being received at Newhall’s Pier, South Queensferry, when the leader suddenly turned round, and before the coachman and guard, who were stowing luggage, could render assistance, coach and horses disappeared over the quay-wall. Some of the outsides saved their lives by throwing themselves on the pier, but the four insides were less fortunate. Two of them thrust their heads through the windows, and so kept above the sea-water; the other two—a Miss Luff and her servant—were drowned. One outside, who had been flung far out into the sea, could fortunately swim, and so came ashore safe, but exhausted. Nine years later, February 16th, 1847, a similar accident happened to the Torrington and Bideford omnibus, when the horses took fright and plunged with the vehicle into the river from Bideford Quay. Of the twelve passengers, ten were drowned.

October.—The “Light Salisbury,” having met the train at Winchfield Station, proceeded to Hurstbourne Hill, between Basingstoke and Andover, where the bit of one of the horses caught in the pole and the coach was immediately overturned. One passenger died the same afternoon, and another was taken to his house at Andover without the slightest hope of recovery. A young woman’s leg was broken, and two other passengers’ limbs were smashed.

The railway journals, which had even thus early sprung into flourishing existence, did not fail to notice the increasing number of coaching accidents, the Railway Times with great gusto reporting twenty in a few weeks. The prevalence of these disasters was a cynical commentary upon the “Patent Safety” coaches running on every road, warranted never to overturn and doing so with wonderful regularity, and on those coaching prints noticed by Charles Dickens—“coloured prints of coaches starting, arriving, changing horses; coaches in the sunshine, coaches in the wind, coaches in the mist and rain, coaches in all circumstances compatible with their triumph and victory; but never in the act of breaking down, or overturning.”

The last years of coaching were, in fact, even more fruitful in accidents than the old days. Especially pathetic were the circumstances attendant upon the disaster that overtook the “Lark” Leicester and Nottingham Stage on May 23rd, 1840. The coach was on its last journey when it occurred, for the morrow was to witness the opening of the railway between those places. Like most of these last trips, the occasion was marked by much circumstance. Crowds assembled to witness the old order of things visibly pass away, and Frisby, the coachman, had dolefully tied black ribbons round his whipstock, to mark the solemnity of the event. Unfortunately, that badge of mourning proved in a little while to be only too appropriate, for the well-loaded coach had only gone about a mile and a half beyond Loughborough when Frisby, who had been driving recklessly all the way, and had several times been remonstrated with, overturned it at Coates’ Mill. A Mr. Pearson and another were killed. Pearson, who had especially come to take part in this last drive, was connected with the “Times” London and Nottingham coach. He had been seated beside Frisby, and had several times warned him, without avail. His thighs were broken, and he received a severe concussion of the brain, from which he died at midnight. Frisby himself was crippled for life.

A QUEER PIECE OF GROUND IN A FOG: “IF WE GET OVER THE RAILS, WE SHALL BE IN A UGLY FIX.” After C. B. Newhouse.

The pitcher goes oft to the well, but at last it is broken; and so likewise the coachmen who, winter and summer, storm or shine, had driven for almost a generation over the same well-known routes, at length met their death on them in some unforeseen manner. A striking instance of this was the sad end of William Upfold—“unlucky Upfold”—who was coachman of the “Times” Brighton and Southampton Stage, a coach which ran by way of Worthing and Chichester, he was a steady and reliable man, fifty-four years of age, and had been a coachman for thirty-five years, when fatal mischance slew him on a February night, 1840. A singularly long series of more or less serious accidents had constantly attended him from 1831. In that year his leg was broken in an upset, and he had only just recovered and resumed his place when the coach was overturned again, this time through the breaking of an axle. The injuries he received kept him a long time idle. Again, in January 1832, at Bosham, the furies were eager for his destruction. He got off at the wayside inn, and left the reins in the hands of a passenger, who very foolishly alighted also, a minute or so later. When Upfold saw him enter the inn he hastily left it; but the horses had already started. In trying to stop them he was kicked on the leg, and fell under the wheels, which passed over him and broke the other leg.

Poor Upfold recovered at last, and might have looked forward to immunity from any more accidents; but Fate had not yet done with him. When nearing Salvington Corner, one night in February 1840, he was observed by Pascoe, a coachman who was with him, to pull the wrong rein in turning one of the awkward angles that mark this stretch of road.

“Upfold, what are you at with the horses?” he asked.

“I have pulled the wrong rein,” said Upfold.

“Then mind and pull the right one this time,” rejoined Pascoe; but scarcely had he said it when the coach toppled over. Nearly every one was hurt, but Upfold was killed. His pulling the wrong rein was inexplicable. The unfortunate man knew the road intimately, and the witnesses declared he was absolutely sober; and so the country-folk, who knew his history and how often accidents had come his way, were reduced to the fatalistic remark that “it had to be.”

1841. November 8th.—Rival coaches leaving Skipton started racing on the Colne and Burnley road. The horses of one grew unmanageable and ran away. The passengers, alarmed, began to jump off, and a Manchester man, name unknown, who had been sitting beside the coachman, laid hold of the reins to help the coachman pull the horses in. In doing so, he pulled their heads to one side, and they dashed with appalling force into a blank wall. He was killed on the spot. All the passengers who had jumped off were more or less seriously injured; but a woman and a boy, who had remained quietly in their seats on the roof, were unhurt.

1842. January 17th.—The “Nettle,” Welshpool and Liverpool coach, overturned by a stone near Newtown. Mr. Jones, of Gorward, Denbighshire, a Dissenting minister, going to live at Kerry, Montgomeryshire, was thrown off the roof. He died two days later of his injuries, in great agony.

December 28th.—The Mail, coming south from Caithness-shire, broke an axle at Latheronwheel Bridge, and Donald Boss, the coachman, was dashed from his box over the bridge into the rocky burn, thirty feet below, and killed. The guard had a narrow escape. Fortunately, there were no passengers.

1843. February 18th.—The Cheltenham and Aberystwith Mail left the “Green Dragon,” at Hereford, on its way, and proceeded as usual to St. Owen’s turnpike-gate. The gate was open, as a matter of course, for the Mail, but the boisterous wind blowing at the time sent it swinging back across the road as the Mail passed. It hit the near wheeler a violent blow and broke the trace and the reins. Then rebounding, it struck the body of the coach with such force that Eyles, the coachman, was thrown off the box and killed. The horses, thoroughly terrified, then ran away, and, meeting some donkey-carts on the road, ran into them, injuring some old women driving from market. One of them subsequently died from her hurts.

March 22nd.—The Norwich Day Coach upset at Brentwood. The coachman, James Draing, who was also proprietor, was killed.

April 21st.—The Southampton and Exeter Mail upset in the New Forest, two miles from Stony Cross, by the horses, frightened at an overturned waggon, running the coach up a bank. Cherry, the coachman, met a dreadful death, his head being literally split in two. A subscription of £350 was raised for his widow and six children.

May 1st.—The “Red Rover,” Ironbridge and Wolverhampton coach, upset half a mile from Madeley. One passenger, name unknown, killed. He was described as “a very stout gentleman, apparently about sixty years of age, dressed in an invisible green coat and great-coat of the same colour.”

June 26th.—William Cooke, guard of the Worcester coach, fell off his seat and was killed.

September 16th.—The Ludlow and Bewdley “Red Rover” overturned by the breaking of the front axle. The coach was going slowly down-hill at the time, and the wheel had the slipper on. It was a heavily-loaded coach, and all the outsides were violently thrown. A Mr. Thomas, a native of Ludlow, fifty-seven years of age, retired from business, was so seriously injured that he died next day. At the inquest a deodand of £30 was placed on the coach.

ROAD VERSUS RAIL. After C. Cooper Henderson 1845.

From this time forward the records of coaching accidents grow fewer, and occur at longer intervals; but only because coaches themselves were being swiftly replaced by the railways, which had by now come largely into their kingdom. Railway accidents took their place, and the coaching artists began to paint, and the printsellers to publish, pictures like that of “Road versus Rail” engraved here, showing a very smart and well-appointed coach bowling safely along the road, while a railway accident in progress in the middle distance attracts the elegant and rather smug attention of coachman and passengers.

Every one now forgot the numerous casualties of the old order of things—save, indeed, the bereaved and the maimed, suffering from the happenings of pure mischance, or from the drunken or sporting folly of the coachmen.

But to the very last, in those outlying districts to which the rail came late, and where the coaches continued to ply regularly until the ’fifties, the tragical possibilities of the road were insistent, confounding the thorough-going sentimentalists to whom the old times were everything that was good, and the new, by consequence, altogether bad. Listen to the moving tale of the Cheltenham and Aberystwith down mail on a wild night “about” 1852, according to the vague recollection for dates of Moses James Nobbs.