All this while the stages had gone their journeys with the same horses from end to end, and travel was necessarily slow. To the superficial glance it would seem that neither the dictates of humanity towards animals nor even the faintest glimmering perception of the possibilities of speed in constant relays had then dawned upon coach-proprietors; but it would be too gross an error to convict a whole class of stupidity so dense and brutal. It is not to be supposed that, at a time when ten-mile relays of saddle-horses for gentlemen riding post were common throughout the kingdom, the advantages of frequent changes and fresh animals were hidden from men whose daily business it was to do with coaches and horses. The real reasons for the bad old practice were many. They lay in the uncertainty of passengers, in the extreme difficulty of arranging for changes at known places of call, and, above all, in the impossibility of those coaches changing whose route between given starting-point and destination was altered to suit the convenience of travellers.

The first hint of quicker travel and of a better age for horses is obtained in this advertisement of the Newcastle “Flying Coach,” May 9th, 1734:—

“A coach will set out towards the end of next week for London, or any place on the road. To be performed in nine days, being three days sooner than any other coach that travels the road: for which purpose eight stout horses are stationed at proper distances.”

This, we may take it, was a rival of the old once-a-fortnight London and Edinburgh stage, travelling those 396 miles in fourteen days, and, as we infer from above, reaching Newcastle in twelve. At the same time John Dale came forward with a statement that a coach would take the road from Edinburgh for London, “towards the end of each week,” also in nine days; so that rivalries evidently existed on the great road to the north at that period. No conceivable change can satisfy everyone, and these accelerated services alarmed the innkeepers, who thought they saw their business of lodging and entertaining travellers thus doomed to decay. It was obvious that when the Edinburgh stage travelled an average of forty-four miles a day instead of a mere twenty-eight or twenty-nine, and lay on the road only eight nights instead of thirteen, innkeepers on that route must have lost much custom in the course of the year. Other innkeepers on other roads gloomily heard of these improvements, thought the times moved a great deal too rapidly, and talked of the good old days when travelling was safe and respectable, and an honest licensed victualler could earn a living. All these good folks were, no doubt, greatly relieved when this sudden burst of coaching enterprise died away, as it presently did, either because the proprietors had undertaken to perform more than they could do, or possibly for the reason that they had come to an agreement not to force the pace or cut the fares. Such rivalries and such subsequent agreements were in after years the merest commonplaces of coaching history, and if we seek them here we shall probably be by way of explaining the falling-off that left its traces twenty and thirty years later in the following announcement:—

It is noteworthy that the Sunday was still kept in this year of 1754 as a day of rest. The reference to fares, in the lack of antecedent information, leaves us in ignorance of what the passengers who paid “as usual” really did pay, but it seems that the coach itself was in that year something new and wonderful—a great improvement on what had gone before. The old conveyance, hung on leather straps and with unglazed windows, was discarded, and we have a “glass coach-machine,” on steel springs, and with two ends, whatever they may have been. Also, the coach ran winter and summer. The rough woodcut accompanying this advertisement in the Edinburgh Courant for March 4th, 1754, and subsequent dates, shows us rather a coach built on the lines of the gentleman’s private carriage of that age than a stage-coach. The boasted springs are duly indicated. The driver has four horses in hand, while a postilion, with a face like an agonised turnip, has a couple of leaders.

So much for 1754 on the Great North Road; but 1763 showed that retrogression was still the note of the time in that quarter, for the Edinburgh stage set out only once a month, and only when the weather was favourable did it get to its destination in less than a fortnight.

A feeble effort made about 1739 to expedite travelling on the Exeter Road seems also to have done little. The Exeter “Flying Stage” of that year, purporting to inform the journey in three days, generally took six. In 1752 it was announced that the “‘Exeter Fast Coach,’ for the better conveyance of travellers, starts every Monday from the ‘Saracen’s Head,’ Skinner Street, Snow Hill.” This also, although it promised to get to Exeter in three days and a half, usually took six days in winter.

Its programme was thus set out:—

Monday.—Dines at Egham; lies at Murrell’s Green.

Tuesday.—Dines at Sutton; lies at the “Plume of Feathers,” in Salisbury.

Wednesday.—Dines at Blandford; lies at the “King’s Arms,” in Dorchester.

Thursday.—At one o’clock, Exeter.

It carried six inside, but no outsides.

But let us be just to the coach-proprietors whose fate it was to work the Exeter Road at that time. In that very year a correspondent wrote to the Gentleman’s Magazine pointing out the dreadful character of that road. “After the first forty-seven miles from London,” he said, “you never set eye on a turnpike.” There were turnpikes, and, by consequence, well-kept roads, on the way to Bath, and he declared that every one who knew anything at all about road-travelling went to Exeter by way of Bath. As for the country along the Exeter Road, it was reputed to be picturesque, but the state of the road forbade any one making its acquaintance. “Dorchester is to us a terra incognita, and the map-makers might, if they pleased, fill the vacuities of Devon and Cornwall with forests, sands, elephants, savages, or what they please.”

Meanwhile, manufacturing England was coming into existence, and the growing necessities of trade had brought about an increase of coaches in other directions. Thus Birmingham, whose first direct communication with London has already been shown in existence in 1679, and again in 1731, had set up a “Flying Coach” in 1742, followed in 1758 by an “Improved Birmingham Coach,” with the legend “Friction Annihilated” prominent on the axle-boxes. This the Annual Register declared to be “perhaps the most useful invention in mechanics this age has produced.” Much virtue lingered in that “perhaps,” for nothing more was heard of that wonderful device.

It was not until 1754 that Manchester and London were in direct communication. The desire of the provinces to get into touch with the metropolis has always been greater than that of London to commune with the country towns, and thus we see that it was an association of Manchester men who set up the “Flying Coach,” just as the citizens of Oxford and the good folks of Shrewsbury’s desire to travel to London established conveyances for that purpose, and just as that early railway, the London and Birmingham, was projected and financed at Birmingham, and should, strictly speaking, have been inversely named. But hear what the Manchester men of 1754 said:—

“However incredible it may appear, this coach will actually (barring accidents) arrive in London in four days and a half after leaving Manchester.” The distance, it may be remarked, was 182 miles.

The ancient rivalry of Manchester and Liverpool was roused by this, and four years later the Liverpool “Flying Machine” was established, to travel the 206½ miles between Liverpool and London in three days. The fare, at £2 2s., thus represents about 2½d. a mile. This was followed by the Leeds “Flying Coach” of 1760, advertised to do the 190 miles in three days, by Barnsley, Wakefield, and Sheffield, but actually taking four.

Another great centre of coaching activity at this was Shrewsbury. Those who know that grand old town, seated majestically on its encircling Severn, that girdles the ancient blood-red walls with a flow as yellow as that of the Tiber, will have observed an ancient metropolitan air, an atmosphere of olden self-sufficiency, subtly characterising the place. It is complete in itself: within the double ceinture of river and hoary defensive walls it comprises something typical of each separate estate of the realm. The monarch and the governing idea are represented within that compass by the Castle and by the Council House, and all around are still to be seen the town houses of the old nobility and county families, neighboured by prosperous shops and smaller residences. Shrewsbury, like York and Edinburgh, is in fact an ancient seat of government, delegated directly from the Crown, once as vitally viceregal as the Viceroyalty of India is now and much more so than that of Ireland for long years past has been. Shrewsbury remained the capital of the Marches of Wales until 1689, and the history of the Council that thence ruled the border-lands is still singularly fresh. Nor did it lose its importance even with the abolition of that body; for, more than elsewhere, the town, until the railways came—suddenly breaking up the old order and centralising everything in London—was a centre of social life for wide surrounding districts. The titled and gentle families of Shropshire, Herefordshire and North Wales who had resorted to the old Court of the Marches continued to adorn Shrewsbury, which had its own fashionable season and its own self-contained interests. The whole social movement of those surrounding districts was centred here, and at a time when the great manufacturing future of England had not dawned, creating vastly populated cities and towns, Shrewsbury was not rivalled as a coaching centre even by Bath. A Shrewsbury coach was in existence in 1681, but the roads between the Salopian capital and London proved too bad, and it did not last long, nor was it succeeded by any other coach until the spring of 1753. Stage-waggons were on the road in the interval between 1737 and that date, but they did not fit the requirements of the gentlefolk, who, when they did not ride horseback or drive in their own chariots to London, posted across country to Ivetsey Bank, where they caught the Chester and London stage.

With 1753 the continuous coaching history of Shrewsbury begins, in the starting of the “Birmingham and Shrewsbury Long Coach,” which journeyed to London in four days, by the efforts of six horses. The distance was 152 miles, the fare 18s. The “Long Coach” was a type of vehicle intermediate between the “Caravan” of 1750C and the “Machine,” established in April 1764. It was a cheap method of conveyance, one remove above the common stage-waggons. It set out once a week, and seems to have been so immediately successful that a rival and somewhat higher-class vehicle was put on the road as soon as the coachmakers could build it. It was in the June of that same year that the rival—“Fowler’s Shrewsbury Stage-coach” was the name of it—began to ply to and from London in three and a half days; fare, one guinea inside, outside half a guinea. Thus they continued to run for thirteen years, without the intrusion of a third competitor. We are not told how these outsides were carried. Probably they were obliged to cling to the sloping roof, on which the athletic and adventurous found a fearful joy with every roll and lurch, while those who were neither agile nor imbued with the spirit of adventure grew grey with apprehension. Indeed, it was probably the freak of some wild spirit—perhaps a sailor or a drunken soldier—in seating himself on the roof that first gave coach-proprietors the idea that roofs might be used to carry outsides as well as to shelter the august occupants of the interior. We may be allowed to imagine the arrival of the coach that first carried these freakish persons on that dangerous eminence, and to picture the joy of the proprietor, who thereupon determined that, as these pioneers for the fun of it had arrived safely, there must be a commercial value in places on the roof. The thing was done. Three outsides sat on the front part, with their feet on the back of the driving-box, while one had a place on the box-seat with the driver, and room was left for three more on the hind, and most inconvenient, part of the roof, where, like Noah’s dove, they found no rest for the soles of their feet, and had the greatest difficulty in maintaining their position.

If the “outsides” on Fowler’s Shrewsbury stage of 1753 were not carried on the roof, they must have been carried in “the basket”; but as stage-coaches provided with this species of accommodation were generally stated in their advertisements to have “a conveniency behind,” and the advertisement of this makes no such claim, we are free to assume that the roof was their portion. The “basket” was, however, already a well-established affair. It was a great wickerwork structure, hung on the back of the coach between the hind wheels by stout leather straps, and rested on the axletree. Originally intended to convey the luggage, it was found capable of holding passengers, who suffered much in it in order to ride cheaply. In the racy, descriptive language of the time, this “conveniency” was known much more aptly as the “rumble-tumble.” In this “rumble-tumble,” then, the second-class passengers sat, up to their knees in straw. The more straw the better the travelling, for although the body of the coach had by this time been eased with springs, the basket was not provided with any such luxury, and anything in the nature of padding would have been welcome. Already, in 1747, Hogarth had pictured an inn yard with a coach preparing to start, and had shown a basket fully occupied, and two outsides above.

The coaches were by now hung much higher, and the original driver’s seat had given place to a lofty box, from which the coachman had a greater command over his horses.

The general appearance of stage-coaches at this time has been eloquently described by Sir Walter Scott. They were covered with dull black leather, thickly studded with broad-headed nails, tracing out the panels. The heavy window-frames were painted red, and the windows themselves provided with green stuff or leather curtains which could be drawn at will. On the panels of the body were displayed in large characters the names of the places whence the coach started and whither it went. The coachman and guard (when there was a guard at all) sat in front upon a high narrow boot, often garnished with a spreading hammer-cloth with a deep fringe. The roof rose in a high curve. The wheels were large, massive, ill formed, and generally painted red. In shape the body varied. Sometimes it resembled a distiller’s vat somewhat flattened, and hung equally balanced between the immense back and front springs; in other cases it took the form of a violoncello case, which was, past all comparison, the most fashionable form; again, it hung in a more genteel posture, inclining on the back springs, in that case giving those who sat within the appearance of a stiff Guy Fawkes. The foremost horse was still ridden by a postilion, a longlegged elf dressed in a long green and gold riding-coat and wearing a cocked hat; and the traces were so long that it was with no little difficulty the poor animals dragged their unwieldy burden along. It groaned, creaked, and lumbered at every fresh tug they gave it, as a ship, beating up through a heavy sea, strains all her timbers.

In 1774 the proprietors of the “Original London and Salop Machine, in the modern taste, on steel springs,” announced that, among other improvements, their coach had “bows on the top.” Some consideration of this portentous improvement inclines us to the belief that these “bows” must have been guard-irons on the roof for passengers to hold on by, and to prevent them being thrown off. A little further consideration will perhaps bring us to the conclusion that those “bows” would not even then have been placed there had not some serious accident already happened. Such protection was not uncommon, as may be gathered from an account of a coach journey written by Charles H. Moritz, a worthy German pastor who visited England in 1782. His narrative shows that those who were obliged to ride cheaply had a choice of the basket and the roof, and that although the roof then had no seats, it was provided with little handles, to hold on by. But they were of little use, and when the coach rolled like a ship upon a stormy sea the chances of being flung overboard were still as many as ever. But he, like others, having tried both basket and roof, preferred the latter, and returned to it, groaning with the shocks received in the “rumble-tumble.”

Rowlandson’s picture of a stage-coach in 1780 shows the same preference. Only one passenger is seen in the wickerwork appendage, while the roof, innocent of safeguards or seats, is covered with sprawling passengers who are content to take their chance of an involuntary flight, so that they escape the certain inconveniences of the “conveniency.”

“I observe,” says Moritz, “that they have here a curious way of riding, not in, but upon, a stage-coach. Persons to whom it is not convenient to pay a full price, instead of the inside, sit on the top of the coach, without any seats or even a rail. By what means passengers thus fasten themselves securely on the roof of these vehicles I know not; but you constantly see numbers seated there, apparently at their ease and in perfect safety. This they call riding on the outside, for which they pay only half as much as those who are within.

“Being obliged to bestir myself to get back to London, as the time drew near when the Hamburg captain with whom I intended to return had fixed his departure, I determined to take a place as far as Northampton on the outside. But this ride from Leicester to Northampton I shall remember as long as I live.

“The coach drove from the yard through a part of the house. The inside passengers got in from the yard, but we on the outside were obliged to clamber up in the street, because we should have had no room for our heads to pass under the gateway. My companions on the top of the coach were a farmer, a young man very decently dressed, and a blackamoor. The getting up alone was at the risk of one’s life, and when I was up I was obliged to sit just at the corner of the coach, with nothing to hold on by but a sort of little handle fastened on the side. I sat nearest the wheel, and the moment that we set off I fancied I saw certain death before me. All I could do was to take still tighter hold of the handle, and to be strictly careful to preserve my balance. The machine rolled along with prodigious rapidity over the stones through the town of Leicester, and every moment we seemed to fly into the air, so much so that it appeared to me a complete miracle that we stuck to the coach at all. But we were completely on the wing as often as we passed through a village or went down a hill.

“This continual fear of death at last became insupportable to me, and therefore, no sooner were we crawling up a rather steep hill, and consequently proceeding slower than usual, than I carefully crept from the top of the coach, and was lucky enough to get myself snugly ensconced in the basket behind. ‘O sir, you will be shaken to death!’ said the blackamoor; but I heeded him not, trusting that he was exaggerating the unpleasantness of my new situation. And, truly, as long as we went on slowly up the hill, it was easy and pleasant enough; and I was just on the point of falling asleep, having had no rest the night before, when on a sudden the coach proceeded at a rapid rate downhill. Then all the boxes, iron-nailed and copper-fastened, began, as it were, to dance around me; everything in the basket appeared to be alive, and every moment I received such violent blows that I thought my last hour had come. The blackamoor had been right, I now saw clearly; but repentance was useless, and I was obliged to suffer horrible torture for nearly an hour, which seemed to me an eternity. At last we came to another hill, when, quite shaken to pieces, bleeding, and sore, I ruefully crept back to the top of the coach to my former seat. ‘Ah, did I not tell you that you would be shaken to death?’ inquired the black man, when I was creeping along on my stomach. But I gave him no reply. Indeed, I was ashamed; and I now write this as a warning to all strangers who are inclined to ride in English stage-coaches and take an outside seat, or, worse still, horror of horrors, a seat in the basket.

“From Harborough to Northampton I had a most dreadful journey. It rained incessantly, and as before we had been covered with dust, so now we were soaked with rain. My neighbour, the young man who sat next me in the middle, every now and then fell asleep; and when in this state he perpetually bolted and rolled against me with the whole weight of his body, more than once nearly pushing me from my seat, to which I clung with the last strength of despair. My forces were nearly giving way, when at last, happily, we reached Northampton, on the evening of July 14th, 1782, an ever-memorable day to me.

“On the next morning I took an inside place for London. We started early. The journey from Northampton to the metropolis, however, I can scarcely call a ride, for it was a perpetual motion, or endless jolt from one place to another, in a close wooden box, over what appeared to be a heap of unhewn stones and trunks of trees scattered by a hurricane. To make my happiness complete, I had three travelling companions, all farmers, who slept so soundly that even the hearty knocks with which they hammered their heads against each other and against mine did not awake them. Their faces, bloated and discoloured by ale and brandy and the knocks aforesaid, looked, as they lay before me, like so many lumps of dead flesh. I looked, and certainly felt, like a crazy fool when we arrived at London in the afternoon.”