One of the more serious among coach accidents was that which befell the London and Dorking stage, in April 1826. It was one of those coaches that did not carry a guard. It left the “Elephant and Castle” at nine o’clock in the morning, full inside and out, and arrived safely at Ewell, where Joseph Walker, who was both coachman and proprietor, alighted for the purpose of getting a parcel from the hind boot. He gave the reins to a boy who sat on the box, and all would have been well had it not been for the thoughtless act of the boy himself, who cracked the whip, and set the horses off at full speed. They dashed down the awkwardly curving road by the church and into a line of wooden railings, which were torn down for a length of twelve yards. Coming then to some immovable obstacle, the coach was violently upset, and the whole of the passengers hurled from the roof. All were seriously injured, and one was killed. This unfortunate person was a woman, who fell upon some spiked iron railings, “which,” says the contemporary account, “entered her breast and neck. She was dreadfully mutilated, none of her features being distinguishable. She lingered until the following day, when she expired in the greatest agony.” The gravestone of this unfortunate person is still to be seen in the leafy churchyard of Ewell, inscribed to the memory of “Catherine, wife of James Bailey, who, in consequence of the overturning of the Dorking Coach, April 1826, met with her death in the 22nd year of her age.”
A MIDNIGHT DISASTER ON A CROSS ROAD: FIVE MILES TO THE NEAREST VILLAGE. After C. B. Newhouse.
1827. December.—The up Salisbury coach was driven, in the fog prevailing at the time, into a pond called the “King’s Water,” at East Bedfont, on Hounslow Heath. An outside passenger, a Mr. Lockhart Wainwright, of the Light Dragoons, was killed on the spot, by falling in the water. The pond was only two feet deep, but it had a further depth of two feet of mud, and it was thought that the unfortunate passenger was smothered in it. The four women inside the coach had a narrow escape of being drowned, but were rescued, and the coach righted, by a crowd of about a hundred persons, chiefly soldiers from the neighbouring barracks, who had assembled.
1832. February 19th.—Mr. Fleet, coachman and part-proprietor of the Brighton and Tunbridge Wells coach, killed by the overturn of his conveyance.
1832. October 30th.—Brighton Mail upset at Reigate. Coachman killed on the spot. The three outsides suffered fractured ribs and minor injuries.
In 1833 the Marquis of Worcester, a shining light of the road in those days, began that connection with the Brighton Road which afterwards produced the “Duke of Beaufort” coach, made famous by the coloured prints after Lambert and Shayer. He was passionately fond of driving, and was so very often allowed by the complaisant professional coachmen to “take the ribbons” that he at last fell into the habit of taking them almost as a matter of right. Of course, the jarveys who had relinquished the reins to him were always well remembered for their so doing; but there were those to whom money was not everything, and in whose minds the sporting instinct was less developed than a wholesome and ever-present fear of the penalties to which coachmen were liable if they permitted other persons to drive. There could have been no objection on the score of coachmanship, for the Marquis was an able whip; but the fact remained that he could not get the reins when he wanted them, and so in revenge set up two coaches on the Brighton Road, in alliance with a Jew named Israel Alexander. A paltry fellow, this Marquis, afterwards seventh Duke of Beaufort, to enter into competition with professional coachmen in order to satisfy a childish spite; not, at any rate, the high-souled sportsman that toadies would have one believe.
THE “BEAUFORT” BRIGHTON COACH. After W. J. Shayer.
The coaches put on the road by this alliance were the “Wonder” and the “Quicksilver,” both with intent to run Goodman, the proprietor of the “Times” coaches, off the route. The coachmen who tooled these new conveyances were, of course, always to give up the reins when my lord thought proper to drive, and so the revenge was complete. But the “Quicksilver,” a fast coach timed to do the 52 miles in 4¾ hours, had not been long on the road before it met with a very serious accident, being overturned when leaving Brighton on the evening of July 15th. A booking-clerk, one John Snow, the son of a coachman, and himself a sucking Jehu, was driving, and upset the coach by the New Steyne, with the result that the passengers were thrown into the gardens of the Steyne, or hung upon the spikes of the railings in very painful and ridiculous postures. Goodman had the satisfaction of presently learning that the bad-blooded sportsman and his partner lost some very heavy sums in compensation awards.