MAIL-COACH HALFPENNY ISSUED BY WILLIAM WATERHOUSE.

William James Chaplin—to give him his full baptismal name—was born at Rochester in 1787, the son of William Chaplin, at that time a coachman and proprietor in a small way of business on the Dover Road. Shortly after that date it would appear that the elder Chaplin extended his operations, and became a coach-master on a considerable scale on some of the main roads leading out of London. However that may have been, certain it is that his son was a practical coachman, and thoroughly versed in every detail of driving and stabling, as well as buying horses. To this intimate acquaintance with the conduct of a coach and of a coaching business, as greatly as to his own native shrewdness, he owed the extraordinary success that attended him. His centre of operations was at the “Swan with Two Necks,” in Lad Lane, where he succeeded William Waterhouse, who had been established there as a mail-contractor since 1792. He it was who, perhaps in imitation of the Mail-coach Halfpenny dedicated to Palmer, issued the curious copper token pictured here. It is quite in accord with the general fragmentary character of the records of these not so remote times that nothing survives by which we may state the year when Chaplin succeeded Waterhouse at the “Swan with Two Necks,” but it was probably about 1825. In addition to this yard, he acquired in the course of time those of the “White Horse,” Fetter Lane, and the “Spread Eagle” and “Cross Keys,” Gracechurch Street, together with the “Spread Eagle” West End office, in Regent’s Circus, with the proprietorship of several hotels. Unlike most coach-proprietors, who restricted their operations to one or two roads, Chaplin’s coaches went in all directions, and he owned large stables at Purley on the Brighton Road, at Hounslow on the Western roads, and at Whetstone on the great road to the north. The “Swan with Two Necks,” was, when he acquired it, a yard extremely awkward of approach, being situated in a narrow lane, and inside a low-browed entrance that taxed the ingenuity of the coachmen to pass without accident. Once inside, you were in one of those old courtyards without which no old coaching inn was complete. Three tiers of galleries ran round three sides of the enclosed square, which, from the creepers that were trailed round the old carved wooden posts or depended from the balusters, and from the flower-boxes that decorated the windows, was a very rustic-looking place. Chaplin had not long settled himself here before he constructed underground stables beneath this yard, where some two hundred horses were stalled; but the place remained, otherwise unaltered, until about 1856, when all the buildings were demolished, and he set himself to raise on their site the huge pile of buildings that now fronts partly on to Gresham Street and partly to Aldermanbury. It was one of his last works, and was, of course, undertaken long after the coaching age had become a thing of the past, being, indeed, intended for the headquarters of the carrying business that had in the meantime come into existence. It is of somewhat curious interest to note that, although the great gloomy pile of unadorned brick bears not the slightest resemblance to the ancient coaching inn, yet a courtyard survives, and railway vans manœuvre where of old the mails arrived or set forth.

WILLIAM CHAPLIN.
From the painting by Frederick Newnham.

In 1838, when his coaching business had reached its full height, Chaplin owned or part-owned no fewer than 68 coaches, with 1,800 horses. Twenty-seven mails left London every night, and of these he horsed fourteen on the first stages out of and into town. The annual returns from his business were then put at half a million sterling.

At this critical period he resided at an hotel he owned and managed in the Adelphi, where he worked literally day and night, supervising the general affairs of his vast business, and yet finding time for correcting details. Those coachmen who thought themselves secure from observation in the midst of all these extensive operations wofully deceived themselves. They had to reckon with one to whom every detail was familiar—who had driven coaches himself, and was thoroughly informed in the opportunities that existed in the stables and on the road for cheating an employer. He knew the measure of every corn-box, and was cognisant of the “shouldering” of fares and “swallowing” of passengers that continually went on. For the guards thus to pocket the short fares, not entering them on the way-bill, afterwards sharing them with the coachman, was a practice that went back to the very early days of coaching, and not only lasted as long as coaching itself, but survived in a somewhat, altered form on omnibuses until the introduction, in recent years, of tickets and the bell-punch. It would have been impossible for coach-proprietors to end this practice without raising the wages of their servants, and thus they were obliged, so long as the coachmen and the guards performed their “shouldering” and “swallowing” discreetly, to allow it to continue. The practice was, indeed, a very lucrative one to those chartered peculators, who made a great deal more out of it than they would in the substitution of higher wages and a better code of morals. Like the omnibus-proprietors until recently, coach-masters were content so long as their takings reached a certain average sum, and it was only when they fell below that figure, or when a fare was “shouldered” or a passenger “swallowed” before their very eyes, that trouble began. Chaplin could thus afford to give the toast, as often he did give it, at festive gatherings of coachmen and guards, “Success to ‘shouldering,’ but” (with a peculiar emphasis) “do it well!”—or, in plainer speech, “don’t get found out!”

THE CANTERBURY AND DOVER COACH, 1830. After G. S. Treguar.

Stories with Chaplin for a central figure were, of course, plentiful down the road. Stable-folk told how one of their kind, who had been requisitioning the contents of the corn-bin to an extravagant extent, going to it with sack and lantern one night when all was still, lifting the lid, found Chaplin himself snugly waiting within, who promptly arose in his wrath, and, to the accompaniment of a picturesquely lurid eloquence of which he was an undoubted master, dismissed him instanter. The fame of that exploit must have saved Chaplin much in forage.