Stage-coach and Mail in Days of Yore, Volume 1 (of 2) / A picturesque history of the coaching age

“What’s in a name? Little enough, by the fact that people travel by the Thame coach, the Hitchin chaises, and the Crawley stage.”—Old Coaching Essay.

It was not until quite late in the coaching era that proprietors began generally to adopt the practice of naming their coaches. In early days there was little or no occasion to do so, for when there were only two or three coaches on the most frequented roads, no difficulty existed in distinguishing between them. One might be the old original stage; another, somewhat better built and more up-to-date, would be the “Machine”; another yet, fastest of all, the “Fly,” or the “Flying Machine.” The earliest named coach of which we have any record was the “Confatharrat” London and Norwich stage, mentioned in 1695. As we have already seen in these pages, this was an old-time way of spelling the word “Confederate,” and the coach was one probably owned and run by a syndicate, who shared the risks and the profits. Before competing coaches began to multiply and hustle one another in the struggle for public support, proprietors were content to announce “a coach,” or “a stage-coach,” to run, and took no trouble to characterise their vehicle in any more attractive fashion. But when an opposition took the road, the vehicles so curtly named became “commodious,” “easy,” “elegant,” and anything else you like in the commendatory kind. The next stage in this development was to appeal to the sentiment of old customers and to endeavour to retain their favour, not usually by increased speed, lower fares, or better accommodation, but by describing an old-established coach as “the original.” Passengers, who did not lay so much stress upon sentiment as upon personal comfort, were generally well-advised to book seats by the new opposition coaches rather than by the “originals,” which had the defect of being old-fashioned, and perhaps, in many cases, worn out. Surely in no other business was rivalry so bitter and unrelenting as in that of coaching, and the annals of the road afford occasion for a sigh or a smile as one reads the furious denunciations levelled by one coach-master against another in their old advertisements. This contention started in the very first years of the Brighton Road. In 1757 James Batchelor extended his old Lewes stage to Brighthelmstone (as Brighton then was known). He took two days to perform the journey. Five years later appeared a certain J. Tubb, allied in partnership with S. Brawne, with intent to drive Batchelor off the road. They advertised, in May 1762, a “Lewes and Brighthelmstone Flying Machine, hung on steel springs, very neat and commodious,” to do the journey in one day. This presumption aroused Batchelor, the old incumbent, to extraordinary energy, for, the very next week, he started a “new large Flying Chariot,” and—reduced his fares! This reduction of fares seems to have struck Mr. Tubb as an exceedingly mean and contemptible move, and he rushed into print with a very long and virulent advertisement in the Lewes Journal, desiring “Gentlemen, Ladies, and others” to “look narrowly into the Meanness and Design of the other Flying Machine to Lewes and Brighthelmstone in lowering his prices, whether ’tis thro’ conscience or an endeavour to suppress me. If the former is the case, think how you have been used for a great number of years, when he engrossed the whole to himself, and kept you two days upon the road, going fifty miles. If the latter, and he should be lucky enough to succeed in it, judge whether he won’t return to his old prices when you cannot help yourselves, and use you as formerly.”

To this Batchelor rejoined with an appeal “to the calm consideration of the Gentlemen, Ladies, and other Passengers, of what Degree soever.” This appeal was chiefly the time-honoured one, that his coach was the original, and therefore deserved support: “Our Family first set up the Stage Coach from London to Lewes, and have continued it for a long Series of Years, from Father to Son and other Branches of the Same Race. Even before the Turnpikes on the Lewes Road were erected, they drove their Stage, in the Summer Season, in one day, and have continued to do over since, and now in the Winter Season twice in the week.” The Lewes and Brighton Road seems, however, to have been long enough and broad enough for both Tubb and Batchelor, for they both continued until four years later, when Batchelor died, and his business was sold to Tubb, who took a partner, and himself in due course experienced the bitterness of a rival on the road, prepared with better machines, a speedier journey, and lower fares.

About this time, when hatreds and rivalries were seething in the south on this then comparatively unimportant road, the Shrewsbury and London road, on its several routes, by way of Birmingham and Coventry, or by Oxford and Banbury, was, as befitted so important a highway, the scene of a much keener and more protracted strife between opposing confederations of coach-proprietors, and in consequence coach nomenclature grew with the rapidity of melons under a glass frame. It should be noted here that coaching did not progress evenly all over the kingdom, but was more advanced on some roads than others. Thus, although the era of “Machines” and “Flying Machines” did not properly dawn until after 1750, yet on the Bath Road we already find a “Flying Machine” in 1667. Just as, nowadays, those people who happen to reside on a branch line of some great railway are commonly fobbed off with the secondhand rolling-stock and other offscourings of the main line, so the inhabitants along the lesser roads had to be content with a mere “stage-coach,” while the great trunk roads were thronged with “machines” and “post-coaches.”

In 1753 the Shrewsbury “Long Coach” and “Stage Coach” were started, and long continued; but from 1764 things changed swiftly. In that year the “Machine” began. The next spring it had become the “Flying Machine,” and in 1773 its success had raised up a “New Flying Machine,” soon re-christened the “New Fly.” To the challenge of this “New Fly,” fitted, according to its proprietors, “quite in the modern taste” and with steel springs, the owners of the “original London and Salop Machine” replied, not only with the boast of being pioneers in days of old, but (much more to the point) advertised that their conveyance also was in the modern taste and fitted with springs; and, moreover, pointed out that the Coventry route, taken by it to London, was shorter than that by Oxford, taken by the rival firm.

“Machine” seems to have been a favourite description for coaches at any time between 1754 and the beginning of the nineteenth century. If the term had any specific meaning at all, and was anything more than a vague, grandiose way of advertising an ordinary stage, it must originally have indicated a vehicle just in advance of the usual ruck. The Bath “Flying Machine” was probably of lighter build than the other coaches, and the Edinburgh “new genteel, two-end glass coach machine, on steel springs,” of 1754, was doubtless only a somewhat neater example of a stage-coach than many then in use on that route.

The next development was the “Diligence,” conveying only three passengers and going at the express rate necessary to cover the distance between Shrewsbury and London in one day. It went three times a week, and charged some four shillings less than the “Flying Machine.” Rivalries on this road had by this time quite outgrown custom. In 1776 there were three distinct coaches between Shrewsbury and London, but they could not all pay their expenses, and so were gradually taken off altogether, or ran less frequently. The “Diligence,” which more than any other had forced the pace, was itself discontinued.

“Diligence” had now become a very popular name for fast coaches, as speed was understood in those times. It derived from across the Channel, where conveyances known by this title had already supplemented the ordinary slow-going stage-coaches, called carrosses; but the importation of the word into this country in connection with stage-coaching was absolutely inexcusable, for already our “Post Coaches” and “Light Post Coaches” had begun to give the travelling public an idea of quick transit.

The English “Diligence,” as originally built and run upon the roads, was nothing more nor less than a light coach, to hold three inside passengers only, facing in the direction the coach travelled. It, indeed, greatly resembled, if even it was not identical in every particular with, the post-chaises of that time, themselves built to hold three persons, and by that measure of accommodation helping to prove every day and upon roads innumerable the truth of the old adage which declares that “Two’s company; three’s none.” If, in fact, we come to the conclusion that post-chaises were sometimes used as “Diligences” and on other occasions as post-chaises, we shall only be giving the proprietors of coaches and chaises their due credit of being clever business men, suiting their stock to the needs of the hour.

Between the appearance of the Shrewsbury “Diligence” and the opening of the nineteenth century, “Diligences” abounded. The first mail-coach was a “Diligence.” It is not to be supposed that they were all fast; and indeed, so early did the impudent slow coaches assume the title, in order to deceive the public, that it soon became a synonym for laziness and unpunctuality, and so far were they in many cases from being light coaches carrying only three passengers, that references to them in the literature of a hundred years ago mention as many as six, or even eight persons.

The word “diligence” in some subtle manner conveys a very true idea of these coaches. There is in it something soothing and trustworthy. In some vague way it radiates a calm atmosphere of plodding virtue and slow-going innocence, to which your dashing but breakneck “Tally-ho’s!” and “Comets” are entirely strange. The “mind’s eye, Horatio,” pictures in the progress of a Diligence a patient toiling against difficulties, rewarded in the end by the happy issue of an arrival at one’s inn, weary perhaps with long hours of travel, but still sound in body; an ending not always so comfortable when travelling by the swift “Tally-ho’s” and “Comets” aforesaid. Then, too, when “Diligence” became shortened into “Dilly,” as it very soon was, the title grew in a sense poetic. The “Derby Dilly,” which, faithful among the faithless, would appear to have remained really and truly a Diligence, has in fact been celebrated in verse by no less an one than Canning, in the lines contributed by him to the Loves of the Triangles:—

Canning’s vivid picture of travelling by Dilly describes in an unapproachable manner the peculiar defects of its construction.

There were those ingrates who, contemporary with the Diligences, did not appreciate them very highly. They valued speed more than safety.

“You should have called it the Sloth,” said the traveller at the Hawes Inn, somewhere about 1790, referring to the “Hawes Fly, or Queen’s-ferry Diligence,” which then plied between Edinburgh and the shores of the Forth; “why, it moves like a fly through a glue-pot.”

It is now necessary to turn aside for awhile to contemplate the final debasement of the Diligence, which in 1835 became, in the hands of Mr. George Shillibeer, something very like an omnibus. In 1829 he had introduced a line of public vehicles running from Paddington to the City, and had himself named them “omnibuses”; but in 1835 he appeared with a long-distance vehicle which he put on the Brighton Road and named “Shillibeer’s Improved New Patent Diligence.” By this, three classes of accommodation were provided: the “Coupé or Chariot,” to convey three persons, at £1 1s. each; behind it, in a separate compartment, the “Omnibus,” to hold eight, at 16s.; and the “Exterior,” as he somewhat grandly named the roof, accommodating an indefinite number at 10s. each. Shillibeer was a great advertiser, and gave this, as well as his omnibuses, due publicity. He was inordinately fond of advertisements cast in a metrical form, and accordingly his tame poet was made to grind out a set of halting verses which fully describe the beauty and convenience of his master’s new enterprise:—

Poor Shillibeer, however, came to an unfortunate crisis in his affairs in this very year, when the omnibuses he put on the road between London and Greenwich had been running in ruinous competition with the new London and Greenwich Railway, and had brought him so very low, financially, that he was unable to meet the demands of the Stamp Office for the duty payable on the vehicles. The Office seized his omnibuses, and presumably his Diligence as well, for we hear nothing more of it, and his mellifluous songster no longer enlivened the pages of the public prints with his rhymes. There was a Diligence on the Brighton Road in the following year, but it was owned by another firm, who made a better performance, for their conveyance did the journey in 5¼ hours, and the fares were much cheaper. Passengers by coupé paid 16s., by second class 12s., and outsides only 8s.

Meanwhile, “Post Coaches” and “Light Post Coaches” were at the head of the coaching hierarchy. Introduced long before mail-coaches came into being, they were then the most expensive and exclusive, as they were also the speediest, of public conveyances, and ranked next after the post-chaises. They were expensive chiefly because they provided only limited accommodation; originally only three or four inside, and one or two out, with no luggage, except small trunks or parcels. The term “Post” had no reference to the Post Office, but was intended to give at once an idea of speed and an approach to that absolute privacy only obtained by specially hiring a post-horse or a post-chaise. Indeed, the earliest Post Coaches not a little resembled a post-chaise hired by a party of friends for the journey. In securing a seat by post-coach, the traveller, in view of the limited accommodation, mathematically reduced his chances of meeting and journeying with vulgar and objectionable characters; while the higher fare tended to produce the same effect by eliminating all but those who were rich enough to afford the cost, and were therefore, by an easily understood process of reasoning, likely to be cleanly and well-mannered. How highly objectionable the company in a stage-coach might and could be we have the testimony of many travellers to tell, from Dean Swift to John Wesley and Macready, the actor. Their trials and experiences are mostly recorded elsewhere in these pages; but two examples may take their place here to illustrate the reason why Post Coaches flourished so greatly.

Let us, then, hear Wesley:—

“I went,” he says, “to Norwich (from London) in the stage-coach with two very disagreeable companions, called a gentleman and gentlewoman, but equally ignorant, insolent, lewd, and profane.

“July 21st, 1779.—(From Coventry) I took coach for London. I was nobly attended: behind the coach were ten convicted felons, loudly blaspheming and rattling their chains; by my side sat a man with a loaded blunderbuss, and another upon the roof.”

The felons, “behind the coach,” would ride in the basket, which was without springs. Their chains would necessarily rattle, and considering the discomfort of ten manacled men, jammed together, without seats, and jolted over bad roads, it is not surprising they “blasphemed.”

Macready travelled in 1811 by the Liverpool stage, from Birmingham to London. He says:—

“I got into the coach; its odours were many, various, and unpleasantly mingled, and the passengers, a half-drunken sailor and an old woman, did not impress me with the prospect of a very pleasant journey. The pace at which the vehicle proceeded made me doubt whether it would ever reach London, and its creakings and joltings seemed to augur a certain overturn.” This objectionable conveyance took five hours to accomplish the eighteen miles between Birmingham and Coventry, and only reached London at five o’clock the next evening.

But there is no subject upon which it is more rash to generalise than that of coaching history. One road might be thirty or forty years in advance of another, and Diligences and Post Coaches mean things very different in one part of the country from conveyances similarly named, but of different construction and capacity, running in other districts. In 1782, for example, there was a self-styled “Post Coach” running between London, Maidenhead, and Marlow, which certainly did not fully answer the description given above; although, from the evidence of the very curious old painting, it still retained a certain elegance, in spite of carrying outsides, and owning that vulgar appendage, a “basket,” behind. This Post Coach, which in the contemporary painting bears its name, starting-point, and place of destination plainly to be seen, is first heard of in 1773, running daily from the “King’s Head,” Old Change, at noon. What the fare was to Marlow we have not been able to discover, but to Maidenhead, distant from the City 31 miles, it was 5s.

“Accommodation” coaches abounded all over the country from about 1800. They were generally slow coaches, with ample room, travelling along the roads in leisurely fashion, and stopping anywhere and everywhere, to pick up passengers and luggage. The nearest parallel to them nowadays is the slow, stopping, long-distance train, which halts at every little wayside station and sees the express flash by at sixty miles an hour.

Thus far we have recorded chiefly the titles by which types of coaches were known. We now come to coaches individually named. Early among these is the “Rockingham,” London and Leeds stage, established in 1781, and continued until the railway came to Leeds, in 1841. Rockingham was, indeed, a name to conjure with in Yorkshire, and there were at least two other coaches with that name running on branch roads from Leeds. The “True Blue” was the name of the old Leeds, Malton and Scarborough coach, originating in the same year as the “Rockingham,” and lasting three years longer. Three others ran between Leeds and Wakefield, Knaresborough and Selby, and Leeds and Bradford. “True Britons,” too, were plentiful in the broad-acred county of Yorkshire, where politics and patriotism kept parties at fever heat and divided even travellers into parties to such an extent that an ardent supporter of the “Buffs” would almost rather walk or post than journey by a “Blue” coach; while a True Blue Tory innkeeper would deny accommodation to a Buff Whig (supposing in the first instance that the Whig had so far forgotten what was due to his faction as to seek shelter there) and think nothing of the custom lost.

In 1784 the “Expedition” coach is first mentioned as running between London and Norwich, by way of Newmarket and Thetford. The “expedition” consisted in going 108 miles in 17½ hours, including stops, or a net running speed of about seven miles an hour.

“Balloon” coaches were first heard of in 1785, when a plentiful scattering of that name over the country proved how deep an impression had been made upon the public mind by the balloon ascents of Lunardi in the previous year. A stone monument marks the spot beside the Cambridge Road, near Ware, on which that aerial traveller descended after his first flight in this country; and the coaches long carried an echo of the wonderment then excited. Coach-proprietors had, indeed, by this time begun to see the commercial advantage of impressing the public with a sounding name. Already, by long use and wont, cars had become blunted by the name of the Flying Machines, which had fallen unmeaningly upon several generations accustomed to liberally discount the absurd pretension. No one at this time, it is safe to say, ever received a mental impression of flying when a flying coach was named. The name had become a mere convention. The Balloon was therefore a godsend to coach-proprietors who, in naming their conveyances after it, succeeded for a while in reviving an outworn figure of speed, and thus again suggested the idea of their coaches gracefully navigating the empyrean, rather than painfully staggering along the rutty roads.

The “Defiance” coaches bring us closer to the great Augustan era of smart coaches and great emulation along the road. The earliest coach of this name was put on the Leeds and Hull road in 1784, and became the parent of many more. Extraordinary ingenuity was used in the selection of “telling” names, supposed to instantly discover the character of a coach to travellers. The various “Highflyers,” for example, spoke to sporting men of a speed that might be neck or nothing. The typical sportsman would book by the “Highflyer,” the “Vixen,” “Spitfire,” the “Flying Childers,” “Lightning,” or “Rapid,” while the typical parson would go by the “Regulator,” the “Reliance,” or, best of all, if opportunity offered, by the “Good Intent.”

It is curious to note in how arbitrary a geographical manner these names were distributed. It is no use seeking a “Highflyer” in the history of the Brighton Road. “Highflyers” were Yorkshire products, and almost exclusively confined to the Great North Road and its affluents. There, indeed, they were numerous. The old original of the name was started in 1788, and kept the road between London and Edinburgh until 1840. There were at least six others.

“Telegraph” coaches, however, were not peculiar to any one road or district. Introduced about 1781 on the Leeds and Newcastle road, there were two others in Yorkshire, and in 1805 and 1811 “New Telegraph” and “Telegraph” coaches were on the Brighton Road. In the ’twenties a “Southampton Telegraph,” a “Manchester Telegraph,” and a “Reading Telegraph” flourished; while beyond all others in their fame and exploits were the immortal “Exeter Telegraph,” started in 1826 by Mrs. Ann Nelson, of the “Bull,” Aldgate, to travel the 173 miles between Piccadilly and Exeter in 17 hours, and the “Manchester Telegraph” day coach of 1833, doing 180 miles in 18 hours. Before the advance of the Great Western Railway brought the “Exeter Telegraph” off the road, it had cut down the length of the journey by three hours, Coaches rejoicing in this name—a synonym for speed—were necessarily the fastest on the road, but they did not, of course, obtain the title from the electric telegraph, invented only in 1838. It was derived from the system of semaphore signalling, the quickest method of communication then known, by which messages were signalled between London and the coast, from lofty hills even yet marked on the Ordnance maps, “Telegraph Hill.” Of how inconceivably swift telegraphy would in a comparatively short time become, the old coach-proprietors could have had not the remotest inkling, but they did not suffer from excess of modesty, and had the instantaneous signalling of electricity been known in their time, it would by no means have deterred them from christening their coaches in impudent rivalry with it.

The “Exeter Telegraph” was put on to compete with another, and equally famous, coach, the Devonport Mail, generally known in coaching annals as the “Quicksilver.” This celebrated mail started about 1820. Passing through Exeter, it went on to Plymouth and Devonport, and performed the whole journey in 21 hours 14 minutes, an average speed, including stops, of 10 miles 1¾ furlongs an hour. “Quicksilvers,” of course, became fashionable on other roads after the fame of this performance had spread.

Our great wars with France and Spain gave coaches a plentiful crop of titles, taking a higher note than merely that of party. The victory of Trafalgar and the death of Nelson, in 1805, produced innumerable “Nelsons,” “Lord Nelsons,” and “Trafalgars,” only rivalled in popularity by the “Wellingtons” and “Waterloos” ten years later. Even Blucher was honoured, in a coach named after him. Coach-proprietors, in fact, were keen to seize the popular incident of the hour, the hero of the day, or the name of the local magnate, to reflect a certain glory upon, or bespeak affection for, their enterprises. Even the “Union” coaches, which were christened in honour of that great political event, the Union of Great Britain and Ireland, and were from that date to be found on almost every great road, and in incredible numbers on the bye-roads, paled their lustre before those named after the naval and military heroes, or the glorious victories of the hour.

But when the glamour of the great achievements won on land and sea by generals and admirals and by our soldiers and sailors had waned, as it speedily did when peace came and the nation was called upon to pay the bill, it is to be feared that the “Wellingtons” and “Nelsons” did not run so frequently with a full way-bill as they had done, and that opportunist coach-proprietors in many cases renamed them in styles that more exactly fitted the humours of the time. When the comets of 1811 and 1818 appeared, flaming in the heavens, to excite the wonderment of the learned and to terrify the ignorant, the coach-proprietors were early in the field to take advantage of the event, and “Comet” coaches, intended to strike the public fancy with an idea of swift travelling, appeared on the main routes with amazing unanimity.

The Brighton “Comet,” established in 1815, ran until 1840, when the London and Brighton Railway was opened. It experienced a good many mishaps in the course of those twenty-five years. On September 2nd, 1815, when it had arrived at Castle Square, Brighton, and had discharged most of its passengers, the coachman turned it so sharply that the front wheels became locked, and in the endeavour to release them the coach was overturned. The careless coachman was himself seriously hurt, and a lady, an inside passenger, and a gentleman on the outside much bruised; but a Mr. Walker, who had just mounted the coach, had his leg broken. The “Comet” evidently went through Epsom, for it was there that another accident happened to it in later years. That coach carried no guard, and the coachman had, therefore, to act that part, as well as drive. He climbed down to take up a passenger, and while doing so the horses backed the coach into a bank and caused it to fall over. A lady travelling outside had her ribs broken. A third accident was due largely to the interference of a passenger, who met his death in consequence. The “Comet” had on this occasion nearly completed its down journey, when, at Patcham, the reins became entangled in some unexplained manner. A Mr. Schraeder, who was on the box-seat, travelling to Brighton to join his family, made an effort, despite the protests of the coachman, to get down to disentangle them, when he fell between the box and the horses, and the coach ran over him. The “Comet” ran to the “Swan with Two Necks,” in Lad Lane, and seems, from Pollard’s spirited picture, to have been an exceptionally smart coach.

The great era of coaching, with its attendant competition, opened about 1820, and from that time the “Defiances,” the “Celerities,” the “Rapids,” “Expresses,” “Reindeers,” “Darts,” “Stags,” and “Antelopes” increased; while fiercely militant titles, such as those of the “Retaliator,” the “Spitfire,” “Vixen,” “Fearless,” “Dreadnought,” and “Invincible” reflected the extraordinary bitterness and animosity with which that competition was conducted. The reverse of this unamiable feature is seen in the names—breathing a spirit of goodwill, or at least of meekness, reliability, and inoffensiveness—of the “Amity,” the “Live and Let Live,” “Hope,” “Endeavour,” the “Give and Take,” “Reliance,” “Safety,” “Regulator,” “Perseverance,” “Good Intent,” and “Pilot” coaches. It is probable that some of these titles were given by small proprietors, anxious to disclaim rivalry with more powerful men. Others were intended to secure the patronage of the old ladies and the timorous, and all those to whom coach travelling, with its many accidents and hairbreadth escapes, was a disagreeable necessity.

To reassure the old ladies of both sexes such coaches as the “Patent Safeties” were introduced. Many of those so called were neither safe nor patent, but an exception must be made in the case of the coach invented and patented in December 1805 by the Reverend William Milton, Vicar of Heckfield, near Reading. This gentleman, who yearned for a larger sphere of action than that provided by his rural parish, and apparently did not find his duties sufficient to occupy his time, studied the subject, and produced a book in whose pages he sets forth the design of his coach and its superiority over anything that had hitherto appeared on the road. His principle not only consisted in lowering the body of the vehicle upon its axles, so reducing the centre of gravity, but in addition provided a luggage box in the rear of the coach, hung so low that it was only fourteen inches from the ground. His idea was to carry the luggage thus, instead of on the roof, so rendering it less top-heavy, and indeed, according to his theory, making the luggage act as ballast, so that the heavier the coach loaded, the safer it would be. Nor was this all. As a protection against overturning in the case of a wheel coming off, he provided what he called a small “idle wheel,” fitted to the axle a short distance inside each running wheel. In the event of a wheel flying off, the coach would only dip slightly, and run on the “idle wheel” until the coachman could bring the whole affair to a stop.

Of course this inventive clergyman found the greatest indifference among coach-proprietors towards his patent safety coach. His book reflects the disappointment he felt, and he enlarges upon the folly of men who had, time and again, been heavy losers in paying compensation claims by injured passengers, and yet would not try the merits of a vehicle which would save them in pocket and in anxiety. He at last gave an order to a firm of coach-builders, had one built to his own design, and prevailed first upon one of the London and Reading proprietors, and then the owners of a Stroud coach, to try it. The general feeling seems to have been that it was safe, but slow, and did not possess so easy a draught as that of the usual build. To these arguments he replied by saying that his luggage-box, providing room for more goods and luggage than carried on ordinary coaches, was generally filled with heavy consignments sent by the Stroud clothiers, and that the heaviness of draught was due to that cause. But explanations of weight, demonstrations of safety, and even the recommendations he had procured from a Parliamentary Committee, were useless, and Milton’s Patent Safety Coach was never more than a fugitive occupant of the road.

But still the public, horrified by the increasing number and the disastrous nature of the accidents that strewed every road with groaning passengers, were intent upon being carried safely, and so various attempts were made to reassure them. So many accidents had happened on the Brighton Road, incomparably the most travelled of all, that in the spring of 1819 it was thought necessary by a prominent firm of coach-proprietors to introduce a “safety” coach. This was the “Sovereign,” an entirely new departure in coach-building. It was at once larger and lighter than an ordinary coach. “It weighs,” said the Brighton Herald, “only 1500¼ lb.; which is 400 lb. lighter than the average of coaches built to carry luggage, and 80¾ lb. less than some gentlemen’s landaus. The different coachmen who have driven it say that on level ground it runs much lighter than others, and every mechanic knows that small wheels have the advantage at a hill.” Evidently then, the “Sovereign” was built with smaller wheels than were usual. It was, in addition, five inches broader in the gauge of the axletrees, while, according to the official description, the weight of the body was “placed five feet lower, so that when the wheels on one side are thrown off, the axle drags on the ground, and will allow the remaining wheels to be lifted twelve inches or more before the coach loses its balance. If a wheel had been thrown off any other coach while going at the rate of nine miles an hour with two outside passengers, it must have gone over; but should it take place with the safe coach, it will not incline on one side so as to make passengers uncomfortable.”

The appearance of this affair was extraordinary. It carried no outsides on the roof; they were placed in a fore-carriage like the body of a landau, constructed between the box and the body of the coach. Under the box was “a spacious lock-up receptacle for the stowage of luggage”; so it was a “safety” coach in more than one particular, and the local newspaper was of opinion that “the confidence which manufacturers and dealers have of their valuable property being secured from wet and pilfering is enough to secure for it the most decided preference, independently of its personal safety.” So great was the interest taken at Brighton in this pioneer of safety coaches that an enormous crowd of nearly two thousand persons assembled to witness the departure on its first journey, Sunday, March 21st, 1819. It made the passage to London in six hours; a speed quite up to the level of the usual performances.

The popularity of the “Sovereign” was so great and immediate that other coach-proprietors lost no time in having “safeties” built. The next to take the road was the “Umpire,” in July of the same year, followed by the “Dart” and “Hero.” These were all swift, as well as safe. A similar Patent Safety was Matthews’s coach. The proprietor of the “Comet” adopted it for a time, as shown in the old print engraved here.

The inevitable debasement of the specific term “safety,” and its general application at the whim of proprietors, quite irrespective of safety construction, is found beginning in 1821, with the advertisement of Whitchurch, Best & Wilkins, of Brighton, in which, while the public were reminded that the firm were the first to run a coach to London in six hours, returning the same day, stress was laid upon the fact that this quick service had been continued daily for six years without an accident. Experienced coachmen, steady horses, and a stern discouragement of racing had procured this desirable immunity, and so (the advertisement continued) it was hoped the public would not deem the proprietors presumptuous in claiming the privilege of calling the coach, although not a patent, a safety. Alas for these pioneers of quick transit and sticklers for decent conduct on the road! The firm very soon decayed, and Whitchurch, the senior partner, was brought to poverty.

To follow the history of the “safety” coaches and the pseudo-“safeties” would be a long business, but it may be said that these specially constructed vehicles did not long continue, and that the average stage-coach passenger took the claims of all very much on trust. To show that he did so we need only quote the anecdote related by “Viator Junior” in the Sporting Magazine of 1828, at the expense of the “Patriot” coach, then newly provided with Cooke’s protection reins:—

“Just as Pickett was starting with his ‘Union’ coach out of Holborn, up comes a pursy old citizen, puffing and blowing like a grampus.

“‘Pray, coachman, is this here the Patriotic Life-Preserver Patent Safety Coach?’

“‘Yes, sir,’ says Pickett, not hearing above half his passenger’s question; ‘room behind, sir: jump up, if you please—very late this morning.’

“‘Why, where’s the machinery?’ cries the old one.

“‘There, sir,’ replies a passenger (a young Cantab, I suspect), pointing to a heavy trunk of mine that was swung underneath, ‘in that box, sir, that’s where the machinery works.’

“‘Ah!’ quoth the old man, climbing up, quite satisfied: ‘wonderful inventions nowadays, sir. We shall all get safe to Brighton: no chance of an accident by this coach.’”

The Brighton Road, as already hinted, was in many ways exceptional. It had exceptionally many Royal associations, reflected vividly enough in the names of its coaches. Among these was, of course, the “Prince Regent,” started in 1813, but preceded by the “Princess Charlotte,” established a year earlier, and followed by the “Regent,” “Royal George,” “Royal Adelaide,” “Royal Clarence,” “Royal Sussex,” “Royal Victoria,” and “Royal York.”

Later sporting names for coaches than the “Tally-ho’s” and the “Highflyers” were such as the “Bang Up,” the “Hieover”—surely no prudent person travelled by a coach with a name so suggestive of broken necks—and the “High-mettled Racer,” while the gay young bloods who drove the crack Windsor coach called it, after the first danseuse of that time, the “Taglioni.” The “Taglioni” was a fast coach, driven by fast men, and had a picture of Taglioni herself, pirouetting round on the tips of her toes, painted prominently on the body. But of all the sporting names, that of the “Tantivy” breathes most the classic spirit of that sporting age, and called forth one of the coaching classics, written in regretful anticipation of coaches being supplanted by railways. The “Tantivy Trot” was written by Egerton Warburton, of Arley, Cheshire. It was sung to the air of “Here’s to the Maiden of Bashful Fifteen,” and was an especial favourite with the brazen-throated young sportsmen of the Bullingdon Club:—

THE TANTIVY TROT

It is a long set of verses, but it should not be difficult, if any one had the mind to it, to continue them indefinitely. In truth, they limp not a little, and do not go the swinging pace of the “Tantivy” itself. But this was the best the old-time enthusiasm for the road could produce, and that it should have been so popular at coaching festivities shows that although coachmen, amateur and professional, were severe critics of other coaching matters, they were sufficiently indulgent to literary efforts on this especial theme.

Rowland Eyles Egerton Warburton, who wrote the “Tantivy Trot” in 1834, at the request of Charles Ford for something to celebrate the Birmingham “Tantivy” coach, was regarded by the sporting world as its laureate. He was the squire of Arley Hall, Cheshire, and the owner of many fat acres in that county. He outlived the coaching age by many a long day, and died in 1891 in his 88th year. The last sixteen years of his life were saddened by the affliction of total blindness.