Meanwhile the position of mail-guard had become a dignified and desirable one, often obtained through Parliamentary and other influence brought to bear upon the Postmasters-General. Here, for example, is a copy of a letter of recommendation, unfortunately undated, but showing the methods in vogue:—
“To their Lordships
the Postmasters-General.“My Lords,—
“The bearer of this, John Peters, is very well known at the General Post Office, and is desirous of becoming a Mail Guard, he is 23 years of age, and we beleive (sic) him to be a Sober, Steady Man, and deserving of the Situation.
“We are,
“My Lords,
“Your Lordships’
“Obedient Servts.,“Calthorpe;
“Rd. Spooner, Banker, Birmingham;
“Thomas Attwood, Banker, Birmingham.”
It was not the salary that made the position of a mail-guard so well worth having. He received only 10s. 6d. a week from the Department, and his uniform of trousers, top-boots, scarlet coat, frogged across the front of the body with gold lace, and a gold-banded black tall hat with a cockade. Out of his miserable half-guinea he had to himself provide the cost of oil for the hand-lamp in front of his seat on the dickey, and to pay the stable-helpers who cleaned his tools and tool-box, oiled and reloaded every day his blunderbuss and pair of pistols, and performed a variety of odd jobs that took live shillings a week out of his pocket. He obviously could not exist on his pay: how, then, did he live? That is a question soon answered. A mail-guard going a long distance—anything from a hundred to a hundred and fifty miles was a usual spell—generally looked for half a crown each from inside passengers and two shillings from the outsides. If you could not afford so much he would do with less, but then you lost the touch of the hat that accompanied the larger sum.
A full coach produced 16s. in tips; or, if the trip did not boast so good a waybill, guard and coachman by prescriptive right divided all short fares below 3s. A “good mail”—that is to say, a mail on one of the great direct roads—loading well, would produce sometimes as much as from £300 to £500 a year in tips and fees for services rendered to passengers and others. A guard’s income depended mainly upon his attention and civility to passengers, but there were many other sources. Before 1831 the sale of game was absolutely prohibited, yet a great trade was done in it, with the mail and stage-guards as intermediaries, and there can be no doubt that the coaches afforded every opportunity that poachers could desire of marketing the birds and ground-game that fell to their guns or nets in the darkling midnight woods.
Country squires knew this very well, and threatened and fumed without ceasing, but they or their keepers never by any chance saw those roadside scenes familiar enough to passengers on the up-mails; when, passing at midnight by some dense woodland bordering the road, a low whistle would be heard, and the coach would pull up while a couple of men handed a sack over to the guard, who, thrusting it into the hind-boot and stamping the lid down, called out “Good-night!” and the journey was resumed without comment. The curious or suspicious might connect such an incident with another which often happened on entering London. “Jack,” the guard would sing out, “Mr. Smith wants his luggage left at so-and-so,” and the coach would be brought to a momentary halt outside some public-house, and the sack, from whose neck the inquisitive might perhaps have seen something remarkably like pheasants’ tails projecting, handed to an expectant porter. Any interested person following that porter would observe that the sack was delivered at the nearest poulterer’s.
A guard pocketed half a crown each for all bankers’ parcels he was entrusted with; he was purveyor of tea and fish and buyer of meat to a hundred villages down the road; netted many a guinea from the lawyers in those days before ever the Judicature Act was thought of, when every answer filed in Chancery must needs be filed by special and sworn messenger; had a penny each for all letters picked up on the way, when post-offices were few and far between; was entrusted with great sums of money for payment into the London banks; and purchased wedding-rings for half the love-sick swains in a county. Every one knew him, trusted him, and fed him, and if he was a prudent man he had no difficulty in making money at express speed. One guard, it is recorded, was so earnest a fishmonger that he used the Post Office bags to carry his fish in, greatly to the disgust of the clerks, who found themselves smothered in scales and surrounded by a decidedly ancient, as well as fishlike, smell. They complained to the Postmaster-General, who reprimanded the delinquent, and with a quite unintentional pun observed that the “sole” reasons of his not being dismissed were his good character and long service.
The guard of the Southampton Mail had long been suspected of smuggling, and at last the Customs officers at that port, determined to search the mail. They accordingly attempted to stop it one evening, but the guard himself levelled his blunderbuss at them, swearing he would blow out the brains of the man who should lay a hand upon the horses or seek to search “His Majesty’s Royal Mail,” and so he got off, with the hind boot stuffed to bursting with excisable but unexcised goods in the nature of spirits and tobacco. A long correspondence between the Postmaster-General and the Commissioners of Customs arose out of this incident, each official jealous of his own Department’s rights as only Government officers can be; but the Postmaster-General, although declaring himself an enemy to smuggling, was indignant at the idea of the mail being searched and possibly detained; and although warning the guard, approved his conduct. It needs no great imaginative powers to picture that guard embarking upon a colossal smuggling scheme after finding himself thus secured from being searched.
Although the mail-guards were as a body a brave and devoted class of men, determined to do their duty and to carry his Majesty’s mails in the face of all difficulties of snowstorms, winds, and floods, yet they gave Thomas Hasker, Chief Superintendent of Mail-coaches, a good deal of trouble. They numbered 268, and he exercised the supreme control of them. Complaints continually reached him from one quarter or another of the mails being late, of the guards being impertinent, and of the hind-boot, sacred to the mail-bags, being used by the guards as a receptacle for things quite unauthorised and unofficial. To stop some of these practices he was obliged to issue this notice, which reads somewhat curiously nowadays: “In consequence of several of the mail-guards having been detected in carrying meat and vegetables in the mail-box, to the amount of 150 pounds weight at a time, the superintendents are desired to take opportunities to meet the coaches in their district, at places where they are least expected, and to search the boxes, to remedy this evil, which is carried to too great a length. The superintendents will please to observe that Mr. Hasker does not wish to be too hard on the guards. Such a thing as a joint of meat, or a couple of fowls, or any other article for their own families, in moderation, he does not wish to deter them from the privilege of carrying.”
Loading the roof with heavy or bulky articles was a thing he could not allow as a usual thing. “Such a thing as a turtle tied on the roof, directed to any gentleman once or twice a year, might pass unnoticed, but for a constancy cannot be suffered.”
In one respect the lot of a mail-guard did not compare favourably with that of his plebeian brethren on the stage-coaches. He rode throughout the night in a solitary position on the little seat on the hind-boot called the “dicky,” with the two outsides on the front part of the roof facing away from him. It was a rule for many years strictly enforced that the outside passengers of a mail-coach should be limited to three: one on the box-seat beside the coachman, and the other two with their backs to the guard, as described. It had its origin in the fear that, if more were allowed, it would be an easy matter for desperadoes to overpower coachman and guard, and to rob the mail. For the same reason, the only means of access to the hind-boot, in which the mails were stowed away in those early days, before the expansion of mail-matter caused the roof to be piled up with great sacks of letters and packets, was by a trap-door at the top, carefully locked, and on which the guard had his feet placed during the whole of the journey. Any infraction of the rule against allowing a passenger on the hind part of the coach was sure to bring instant dismissal, and for permitting an extra passenger on the roof the guard was fined £5.