Transcriber's Note: No copyright date is indicated in the source material, but the last date mentioned is November, 1899.

THE

BRISTOL ROYAL MAIL.

All rights reserved.

The

Bristol Royal Mail.

POST, TELEGRAPH, AND

TELEPHONE.

BY

R. C. TOMBS,

Postmaster of Bristol,
Ex-Controller of the London Postal Service.

BRISTOL:

J. W. Arrowsmith, 11 Quay Street.

CONTENTS.

ILLUSTRATIONS.

PREFACE.

In these days when books on every conceivable subject are written in their thousands annually; when monthly journals are produced by scores, and daily newspapers in hundreds, to supply the public with a record of the world's doings; and when readers are found for them all, it may not be thought unfitting that each large mail centre in the United Kingdom which contributes by its postal and telegraph organisation to the dissemination of much of this literature, should in its turn have some record of its own doings. This present compilation has, therefore, been undertaken with that object in view, as regards the Bristol Post Office, and in the hope that the facts, figures, and incidents contained in it relating to past doings and present days and present ways may prove of interest to the inhabitants of the County and City, and its surrounding districts, and in an unpretentious way commence, or add to, local Post Office history, and demonstrate that though Bristol is not, unfortunately, the leading provincial seaport, as of yore, she has not lagged one step behind her competitors in respect of postal progress.

The profit which may accrue from the publication of The Bristol Royal Mail will be devoted exclusively to the Rowland Hill Memorial and Benevolent Fund, the chief patron of which is Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen-Empress, who is about to show her great interest in works of the kind by visiting our ancient city to open the new Convalescent Home. The object of the fund is the relief of all Post Office servants throughout the United Kingdom, who, through no fault of their own, have fallen into necessitous circumstances. It also affords assistance to their widows and orphans, for whom no provision is made under the Superannuation Acts. The fund is managed by a body of trustees, who are assisted by a committee of recommendation composed of officers of the Post Office. The trustees are well-known gentlemen of high standing and repute in the city of London, to whose benevolent efforts on behalf of the department the fund owes its origin. The Superannuation Acts afford pensions to those who have been in the Post Office not less than ten years. Sometimes a deserving and distressed Post Office servant has not served long enough to qualify for a pension, and sometimes help is needed by persons whose time has been partly spent in the postal service, but who, because they have been permitted to carry on some other occupation, are not entitled by law to any pension at all. A pension, even if it should prove to be sufficient for the pensioner's own support, ceases at death, and the widow and orphans are often left destitute. There are more than eighty-one thousand, and, counting those employed only a portion of their time, nearly one hundred and fifty thousand servants in the Post Office; and in comparison with the number of persons amongst whom cases needing relief may arise, the assured income at the disposal of the trustees of the fund is still inadequate. In the period since 1893 the trustees have granted to necessitous cases in the Bristol district £120, so that any proceeds from the sale of this book will be bestowed where such bestowal is certainly due.

It is right to state that some of the information in these pages has been derived from The History of the Post Office, by the late Mr. Herbert Joyce, C.B.; Forty Years at the Post Office, by Mr. F. E. Baines, C.B.; The Royal Mail, by Mr. J. Wilson Hyde; and from St. Martin's-le-Grand Magazine, also Latimer's Annals of Bristol. Thanks are due also to Mr. Norris Mathews, the Bristol City Librarian, for his courtesy in permitting and facilitating access to old records in the Public Library; to Mr. H. J. Spear, Secretary to the Chamber of Commerce; to the proprietors of the Times and Mirror, for allowing inspection of their old files; and for illustrations to Mr. A. F. Walbrook, of the Bath Chronicle; to the proprietor, Black and White, and many others whose kindness is hereby acknowledged.

THE BRISTOL ROYAL MAIL.

CHAPTER I.

It appears that before Post Offices were established special messengers were employed to carry letters. It is recorded that such a special messenger was paid the sum of one penny for carrying a letter from Bristol to London in the year 1532, but the record affords no further particulars as to the service, and the assumption is that the special messenger was, in his own person, a rough-and-ready "post." Later on, a post would be suddenly established for a particular purpose, and as soon abandoned when no longer specially required. Thus in the year 1621 a post to Ireland—Irish firms being then considered to require "oftener despatches and more expedition"—was set up by way of Bristol, only to be discontinued in a few years.

There was in 1660 a direct but irregular post between London and some of the larger provincial towns, but there were no cross posts between two towns not being on the same post road. Letters could only circulate from one post road to another through London, and such circulation through London involved additional rates of postage. Bristol and Exeter are less than eighty miles apart, but, not being on the same post road, letters from one place to the other passed through London, and were charged, if single, 6d., thus:—one rate of 3d. from Exeter to London, and another rate of 3d. from London to Bristol. This was in conformity with a system established in the reign of Charles II. That system went on until 1696 when a post was established between Bristol and Exeter, that being the first cross post in the kingdom authorised by the Monarch's own personal assent. From Bristol the posts went on Mondays and Fridays, starting at 10.0 in the morning. The posts left Exeter on Wednesdays and Saturdays at 4.0 in the afternoon, and arrived at Bristol at the same hour on the following days. Under this cross post plan, the two towns being less than eighty miles apart, the charge was reduced to 2d. for a single letter. In three or four years the new post produced a profit of £250 a year. In 1678 Provost Campbell established a coach to run from Glasgow to Edinburgh, "drawn by sax able horses, to leave Edinboro' ilk Monday morning, and return again (God willing) ilk Saturday night." In 1700 the service between Bristol and London became fixed, and on alternate days at irregular hours, depending upon the state of the weather and the roads, the extent of the journey and the caprices of the postboys and the sorry nags that carried them, the mail arrived in Bristol. There were, however, only a mere handful of letters and newspapers. At the end of the same year, the Post Office authorities in London, after being earnestly petitioned by local merchants, counselled the Government to establish a "cross post" from this city to Chester. Up to that time the Bristol letters to Chester, Shrewsbury, Worcester, and Gloucester had been carried round by London under the system already described, involving double postage and great delay. The effect of this system, as on the Bristol and Exeter road, had been to throw nearly all the letters into the hands of public carriers, by whose wagons they were conveyed more quickly than by the postboys through London, and at a cheaper rate. Moved by the success of the new cross posts from Bristol to Exeter, the Treasury consented to the starting of the Chester service. The Post Office reported to the Treasury in March, 1702, that the profit for the first eighteen months of the Chester service had been about £156. The accounts of Henry Pyne, the Bristol postmaster, appended to the report in the State papers, show that so far as this part of the service was concerned, he had received £168 for letters by this post, whilst his expenses had been £60.

The people of Cirencester and Exeter, hearing of the Chester concession, hastened to complain of shortcomings affecting themselves. The Devon clothiers had a considerable trade with the wool dealers of the district of Cirencester, which town was served by the postboys riding between Gloucester and London, with a branch postboy mail to Wotton-under-Edge. By there being no direct postal service of any kind between Bristol and Wotton-under-Edge, correspondence between Exeter and Cirencester had to be sent viâ London, and a fortnight elapsed between the despatch of a letter and the receipt of an answer, the result being that not one letter in twenty was sent through the post. All that was needed to shorten the transit from fourteen days to four was to put Bristol in direct communication with Wotton, the expense being estimated at only £30 a year. The Government declined to comply with this reasonable request, and nothing was done!

Soon after this time a Post Office reformer arose in our immediate district in the person of Ralph Allen. He, unlike later reformers, passed all his working days in the Post Office service. Born at the "Duke William Inn," at St. Blazey Highway, in Cornwall in about 1693, he went as a boy to help his grandmother, who was postmistress at St. Columb. In 1710 he was transferred as a clerk to Bath, and on the 26th March, 1712, he became postmaster of that city, in succession to one Mary Collins, and in that year appears to have taken over the management of the Bristol and Exeter Cross Road Post, previously farmed by Joseph Quash, postmaster of Exeter. In 1720 Ralph Allen contracted to farm the cross-country posts throughout the country generally, and to carry the mails by what were subsequently known as "Allen's Postboys," who were supposed to travel on horseback at a pace averaging five miles an hour. A robbery from these postboys carrying the mails between London and Bristol was a common occurrence. Two men were executed in April, 1720, for having twice committed that crime, yet the letter bags were again stolen seven times during the following twelve months. The London Journal of August 27th remarked: "It is computed that the traders of Bristol have received £60,000 damages by the late robberies of the mail." In 1722 the postboys were robbed twice in a single week, and for the crimes three men were executed in London. Another incident of the kind worthy of mentioning occurred in September, 1738. The bag then carried off by three highwaymen contained a reprieve for a man lying under sentence of death in Newgate, and a second reprieve despatched after the robbery became known would have arrived too late to save the man's life, had not the magistrates postponed the execution for a day or two in order that it might not clash with the festivities of a new Mayor's inauguration.

About 1732 the Bristol riding boys were deprived of their perquisite of 1d. a letter for "dropping of letters" at the towns and villages through which they passed. This was done because the postboys not only carried letters which they picked up on the road and did not account for at the next post office of call, but even went to the length of taking out letters from the mail bags when those bags were, as was the case sometimes, not properly chained and sealed. In connection with Ralph Allen's "By-Posts," in the year 1735 arrangements were made so that the mails sent from Manchester, Liverpool, or any other place in Lancashire, to Worcestershire, Gloucestershire, Somerset, Devon, etc., might be answered four days sooner than they could possibly have been answered before. In 1740 a new branch by-post was established from Bristol and Bath to Salisbury, through Bradford, Trowbridge, Devizes, Lavington, Tinhead, Westbury, Warminster, Heytesbury, and Wilton. In 1741 the growth of trade and population encouraged the Bristol citizens to appeal to the Ministry for an improvement in the postal communication with London, which was still limited to three days per week. Yielding to this pressure, Allen converted the tri-weekly posts into six-day posts in June, 1741. The post began to run every day of the week, except Sunday, between London and Bristol, and all intervening towns participated in the benefit. In 1746 a further extension took place, whereby letters were conveyed six days in every week, instead of three days, at Mr. Allen's expense, between London and Wells, Bridgwater, Taunton, Wellington, Tiverton, and Exeter, through Bristol. The mail service is not in further evidence in local history until 1753, when the Bristol merchants again showed themselves tenacious of their rights, and waged a bitter war against the Postmasters-General in respect of the imposition of a double rate of postage on letters which, although under an ounce in weight, contained patterns of silk or cotton or samples of grain. There was a lawsuit, and the Bristol merchants won it.

A Government notification in the local newspapers of the 4th September, 1752, announced an acceleration of the mails between the Southern Counties and Bristol. In future a postboy was to leave Salisbury on Mondays at six o'clock in the morning, to arrive at Bath (a distance of about thirty-nine miles) at eight or nine at night, and to leave Bath for Bristol at six next morning. On Wednesdays and Fridays the departure from Salisbury was in the evening, the journey occupying about nineteen hours. By this arrangement letters from Portsmouth were received in this city two days earlier than before.

Ralph Allen's improvements had great influence in the Post Office services in this western city. The profits on the contracts enabled Allen to take up his residence at Prior Park, Bath, one of the finest Italian houses in England, in addition to having a grand house in the City. It is said that the profits which accrued to him from his long contracts amounted to about half a million of money.

Mansions so lordly are not for the hardest and best workers in the Post Office field of present times, for the nation does not reward its great men so liberally as then. Nowadays an introducer of the inland parcel post service, the foreign parcel post service, an improver of the telegraph service, and leader in bringing about vastly accelerated mail services throughout the country,—works of great moment, even if not comparable with Ralph Allen, John Palmer, or Rowland Hill's great achievements,—has, after forty years at the Post Office, to be contented on retirement with no more than the modest pension due to him, which will not even be continued to his nearest and dearest relative.

Allen benefited the Bristol postal district in another way than by his improved Post Office services when he built the bridge over the Avon at Newton-St.-Loe at a cost of £4,000. He was buried in Claverton Churchyard, near Bath. The inscription on his tomb runs thus:—"Beneath this Monument lieth entombed the Body of Ralph Allen, Esqr., of Prior Park, who departed this life y^e 29th day of June, 1764, in the 71st year of his Age. In full hope of everlasting happiness in another state thro' the infinite merit and mediation of our blessed Redeemer, Jesus Christ."

Ralph Allen did not hoard up his money or spend it on riotous living, but bestowed a considerable portion of his income in works of charity, especially in supporting needy men of letters. He was a great friend and benefactor of Fielding, and in Tom Jones the novelist has gratefully drawn Mr. Allen's character in the person of Squire Alworthy. He enjoyed the friendship of Chatham and Pitt; and Pope, Warburton, and other men of literary distinction were his familiar companions. Pope has celebrated one of his principal virtues—unassuming benevolence—in the well-known lines:

Derrick has thus described Allen's personal appearance shortly before his death: "He is a very grave, well-looking man, plain in his dress, resembling that of a Quaker, and courteous in his behaviour. I suppose he cannot be much under seventy. His wife is low, with grey hair, and of a very pleasing address." Kilvert says that he was rather above the middle size and stoutly built, and that he was not altogether averse to a little state, as he often used to drive into Bath in a coach and four. His handwriting was very curious; he evidently wrote quickly and fluently, but it was so overloaded with curls and flourishes as to be sometimes scarcely legible.

The lack of all show about his garb seems to have somewhat annoyed Philip Thicknesse, the well-known author of one of the Bath Guides, for he speaks of Allen's "plain linen shirt-sleeves, with only a chitterling up the slit."

Allen's son Philip became Comptroller of the "By-Letter" Department in the London Post Office.

CHAPTER II.

Notwithstanding Ralph Allen's innovations, the conveyance of letters between the principal towns was carried on in a more or less desultory fashion. Speaking of the want of improvement in 1770, and the haphazard system under which Post Office business was conducted, a local newspaper gave this instance of unpunctuality: "The London Mail did not arrive so soon by several hours as usual on Monday, owing to the mailman getting a little intoxicated on his way between Newbury and Marlborough, and falling from his horse into a hedge, where he was found asleep, by means of his dog." Mr. Weeks, who entered upon "The Bush," Bristol, in 1772, after ineffectually urging the proprietors to quicken their speed, started a one day coach to Birmingham himself, and carried it on against a bitter opposition, charging the passengers only 10s. 6d. and 8s. 6d. for inside and outside seats respectively, and giving each one of them a dinner and a pint of wine at Gloucester into the bargain. After two years' struggle his opponents gave in, and one day journeys to Birmingham became the established rule.

The mail service was carried on chiefly by means of postboys (generally wizened old men), who continued to travel on worn-out horses not able to get along at a speed of more than four miles an hour on the bad roads. On the London and Bristol route, indeed, it had been found necessary to provide the postboys with light carts, but that method of conveyance of the mail bags brought about no acceleration in time of transit,—from thirty to forty hours, according to the state of the roads. A letter despatched from Bristol or Bath on Monday was not delivered in London until Wednesday morning. On the other hand a letter confided to the stage coach of Monday reached its destination on Tuesday morning, and the consequence was that Bristol traders and others sent letters of value or urgency by the stage coach, although the proprietors charged 2s. for each missive.

At this period John Palmer, of Bath, came on the scene. He had learnt from the merchants of Bristol what a boon it would be if they could get their letters conveyed to London in fourteen or fifteen hours, instead of three days. It is said, however, that it was the sight of Ralph Allen's grand place at Prior Park, and the knowledge of how Allen's money had been made, which first suggested to Palmer the attempt to bring a scheme for a mail coach system to the notice of the postal authorities. John Palmer was lessee and manager of the Bath and Bristol theatres, and went about beating up actors, actresses and companies in postchaises, and he thought letters should be carried at the same pace at which it was possible to travel in a chaise. He devised a scheme, and Pitt, the Prime Minister of the day, who warmly approved the idea, decided that the plan should have a trial and that the first mail coach should run between London and Bristol. On Saturday, the 31st July, 1784, an agreement was signed in connection with Palmer's scheme under which, in consideration of payment of 3d. a mile, five inn-holders—one belonging to London, one to Thatcham, one to Marlborough, and two to Bath—undertook to provide the horses, and on Monday, the 2nd August, 1784, the first "mail coach" started. On its first journey it ran from Bristol,—not from London as generally supposed,—and Palmer was present to see it off. A well-armed mail guard in uniform was in charge of the vehicle, which was timed to perform the journey from Bristol to London in sixteen hours. Only four passengers were at first carried by each "machine," and the fare was £1 8s. The immediate effect was to accelerate the delivery of letters by a day. The coaches were small, light vehicles, drawn by a pair of horses only, but leaders were subsequently added, and four-horse coaches soon became the order of the day, and more passengers were carried. An old painting represents the Bath and Bristol mail trotting along close to a wall, the guard receiving one bag and handing another to the postmaster without the coachman pulling up. One coach left Bristol at 4.0 in the afternoon, reached Bath a couple of hours later, and arrived at the General Post Office, London, before 8.0 the next morning. The down coach started from London at 8.0 in the evening, was at the "Three Tuns," Bath, at a few minutes before 10.0 the next morning, and pulled up at the "Rummer Tavern," Bristol, at noon. Palmer gave up his theatrical enterprises and entered the service of the Post Office as Comptroller at a salary of £1,500 a year, and certain emoluments, which, after a year or two, brought him in an annual sum of more than £3,000. Before Palmer's mail coaches were at work the post left London at all hours of the night, but it was part of his scheme that the mails should all leave at the same time, 8.0; and as the number of mails increased so there was more and more bustle in the vicinity of the General Post Office at that hour. In London the arrival of all the mails was awaited before any one of them was delivered; and this led to the delivery sometimes not taking place until 3.0 or 4.0 in the afternoon, or even later. Palmer, with his regard for the Bristol coach, occasionally had the Bristol mails distributed immediately on reaching St. Martin's-le-Grand, but all other mails if behind were kept waiting as before.

Upon the beginning of Palmer's system on the Bristol road a marvellous superstructure was raised. Coaches were at once applied for by the municipalities of the largest towns, Liverpool being the first to aim at equality with Bristol, and York claiming what was due to the great highway to the North. Palmer's plan made rapid progress and was attended with complete success. A splendid mail service was eventually set up all over the country. One result was that the "expresses" to Bristol, which before had been as many as two hundred in the year, ceased altogether. In July, 1787, the mails from Bristol to Birmingham and the North, previously three per week, were ordered to be run daily. The London to Bristol coach was stopped by other means than those employed by highwaymen, the service having at one time in 1790 been suspended for several days by Palmer, in defiance of the Postmaster-General.

In Bonner and Middleton's (weekly) Journal for the 11th February, 1792, is an announcement to the effect that the Irish mails arrived in Bristol on the 6th instant instead of on the first of the month. The bare fact was stated, and the assumption is, therefore, that it was not an unusual circumstance. Five days' delay would be thought intolerable now, as, indeed, is the present length of time occupied by the Irish night mails on their journey to Bristol. After being conveyed by fast boat to Holyhead and express train to Birmingham, they come on from that city by a "crawler" and do not reach Bristol until nearly the mid-day hour.

In the same year (1792) sixteen mail coaches worked in and out of London every day. There were fifteen cross-country mail coaches, as, for instance, the coach between Bristol and Oxford, or, as it was commonly called, Mr. Pickwick's coach. During winter, in frosty weather, at this period, some of the mail coaches did not run at all, but were laid up for the season, like ships during Arctic frosts.

There is a model of an old mail coach at the General Post Office, St. Martin's-le-Grand, London, popularly supposed to be the model of the first mail coach which was built, but such is not the case, for, as already stated, the first mail coach ran between Bristol and London, and the model has upon it the inscription "Royal Mail from London to Liverpool."

The expense of horsing a four-horsed coach running at the speed of from nine to ten miles an hour was reckoned at £3 a double mile. Mails were exempt from turnpike tolls.

With the introduction of the mail coaches with well-armed, resolute guards, there was a cessation of mail robberies on the main roads. Pilfering, however, was occasionally carried on; for instance, in the early winter of 1794 one Thomas Thomas travelled day after day up and down on the London and Bristol coach. At last his opportunity came when the guard temporarily left his coach with the mailbox unlocked, and then Thomas Thomas looted the mails. On the cross roads the saddle horse and cart posts were frequently stopped and robbed (1796). One of the worst roads in this respect was that between Bristol and Portsmouth. Proposals for the postboys to be furnished with pistols, cutlasses, and caps lined with metal, like hunting caps, for the defence of the head, fell through on account of the expense which their supply would have entailed.

There exists a popular belief that the mail coaches were driven up and down the steep Queen Street in Bristol now known as Christmas Steps. The belief is erroneous, for an inscription over the recessed seats at the top of the passage tells us that—

Probably, however, the postboys who carried the mails in earlier days rode up the steep incline.

A gentleman now writing in the Bristol Times and Mirror under the nom-de-plume of "Old File," delving in the historical garden of Felix Farley's Journal, has unearthed the following very interesting announcements and advertisements, which throw light on the mail services of the time:—

"MILFORD AND BRECKNOCK MAIL COACH.

"A coach sets out from the 'White Hart,' Broad Street, Bristol, over the Old Passage (Aust), every Sunday, Wednesday, and Friday, at noon, and joins the above coach at Ragland the same day; and a corresponding coach returns from Milford on certain days." The chief point in the advertisement was in the paragraph: "N.B.—This road is nineteen miles nearer to Carmarthen and Milford than the lower one," that is, by the New Passage.

This was replied to by another advertisement, as follows:

"A Caution.—The public will please to observe that no other mail coach whatever does now, or ever has, run from Bristol to Milford Haven, excepting the Royal London, Bath, Bristol, and Milford Haven mail coach, which sets out from the 'Bush Inn and Tavern,' Corn Street, every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, and the mail coach to Swansea every day from the same inn, notwithstanding the flaming advertisement of a certain set of men to deceive and mislead the public, by their asserting that the road over the Old Passage is nineteen miles nearer than that over the New Passage, which is so far from being a fact that the road of the New Passage is seven and three-quarters nearer, as was proved by admeasurement by orders of the office, making a difference of twenty-six miles and three-quarters nearer the lower (that is, the New Passage) than the upper road."

On August 4th the proprietors of the New Passage coach came out with a larger announcement, and produced figures to prove their assertion—

"N.B.—This road is nineteen miles nearer to Milford than the lower one, viz:—