Mr. Cross, the driver of the Lynn coach, gives an instance of three rival coaches on the road, of which he was driving one, and that a race for the lead resulted in accomplishing one stage at the extraordinary pace of 20 minutes and a few seconds for an eight miles course, which, if timed correctly, was at the rate of 24 miles an hour! But three of his opponents' horses never came out of the stable again!
One of the most alarming stage coach accidents in England was that between the Holyhead mail and the Chester mail near St. Albans in 1820. There had been a race between the two coaches from just this side Highgate, to near St. Albans. When going down a hill both drivers—Perdy, of the Holyhead, and Butler, of the Chester coach—put their horses into a furious galop, the velocity of the coaches increasing at every step. There was plenty of room, but as Butler found the Holyhead gaining a little upon him, it is said he wildly threw his leaders in front of his rival's and the coaches were immediately upset with a terrible collision. A man named William Hart was killed and others had their limbs shattered. The drivers were put upon their trial at the Hertford Assizes before Baron Gurney, and were found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced each to one year's imprisonment.
Railway passengers are at least tolerably free from the "begging nuisance," but not so the passengers by stage coaches when the coach pulled up for the change of horses, as the following entry in the Royston committee book for 1815 will show:—
"Ordered that Notice be given to John T—— and J. B—— if they are found begging in the street from the Coaches that their pay is to be taken off."
One curious indication that the end of the coaching era was approaching was afforded by the invention of steam coaches. Thus we find in 1839 that "Hancock's steam coach" came through Royston for the first time, being seven hours coming from London, including stoppages. Rather a slow rate from the agency which was to annihilate horse coaches!
One of the arguments against railways was that there would no longer be employment for horses, and yet just before railways were heard of one man stood at the Old Tyburn Turnpike and received the toll and issued tickets for the whole of the Oxford Street traffic! What a picture that old Tyburn turnpike man would form now, standing there in his white apron with its two pockets, "one for half-pence and one for tickets," and assessing the great volume of Oxford Street traffic of to-day! Yet the disappearance of coaches from our highways did make a very considerable difference to old towns like Royston, where, next to malting, the posting business was the most important in the town. As to the effect of the decay of coaching upon towns on the great coach roads, it is said that the town of Barnet had been accustomed to keep upwards of 1,000 horses in its stables, and Hounslow, on the Great Western Road, 2,500 horses!
Coaches and coach horses are not the only things which have disappeared from our high roads. One of the things to be met with on the roads in 1800-20 was the velocipede. It was not unlike in form the "Safety" bicycle which is so universally met with on our roads to-day, with a trifling difference which made long and rapid journeys out of the question. The fact is the mechanical genius of Englishmen, which has made such enormous strides during the century, had not then found out that it was possible to use the solid earth as a fulcrum and at the same time to leave the feet and legs free. A horse used its feet to draw a coach and why not a man! So the velocipede was constructed for the rider's feet to just reach the ground, and by pressing first one foot on the ground and then the other he managed in this undignified attitude, to propel the thing along!
Another characteristic thing about the old locomotion was the dog cart—small carts used by pedlars and others drawn along the high roads by a dog or dogs. Sometimes these old pedlars would drive to Royston market with their "carriage and pair" of dogs in rattling style! This sight was very common during the last century and lingered to about the end of the coaching days. In the Gentleman's Magazine, for 1795, a writer says: "I have sometimes seen two dogs yoked one on each side of a barrow drawing regularly and well, similar to ploughing. Their feet being tender, to prevent their being foot-sore, they should have some sort of shoeing; perhaps leather would be properest."
So well established had the use of dogs for drawing carts become that the subject came before Parliament about fifty years ago. An old magazine of this date gives a kind of petition to Parliament, drawn up by a village schoolmaster and signed by three small hucksters, setting forth, like the three historic tailors of Tooley Street, the injured sense of the "people of England" at the prospect of an interference with the use of dogs, and praying for the suppression of horses and the protection of the small trader's dog, "because the dog carts of poor people were continually, almost, and sometimes quite, run over by these rough beasts [horses], and that this tyranny and wilfulness is very difficult for the poor man to bear, who may have as good a spirit as any coachman, although he is not so high up"!