CHAPTER X
COACH-PROPRIETORS (continued)

Edward Sherman, who ranked next to Chaplin as the largest coach-proprietor in London, was in many respects unlike his brethren in the trade. He established himself at the “Bull and Mouth,” St. Martin’s-le-Grand, in 1823, in succession to Willans, and came direct from the Stock Exchange, where he had been a broker in alliance with Lewis Levy, a noted figure in those days of Turnpike Trusts. It is perhaps scarcely necessary to add that Levy was a Jew. He was referred to by Lord Ravensworth in the course of a discussion in the House of Lords on Metropolitan Toll-gates in 1857 as “a gentleman of the Hebrew persuasion.” Persuasion, indeed! As well might you describe a born Englishman or Frenchman as born into those nationalities by personal choice and election. Levy was, of course, a Jew by birth, and had no choice in the matter. He was a farmer of turnpike-tolls to the extent of half a million sterling per annum, and a very wealthy man. Levy put Sherman into the coaching business, and he immediately began to make things extremely uncomfortable for the older proprietors, who had up to that time been content with going at eight or nine miles an hour.

When Colonel Hawker took coach from the “Bull and Mouth” in 1812, he found “the ruffians” there “a dissatisfied, grumbling set of fellows, and their turns-out of horses and harness beggarly.” Such was the place under Willans’ rule, but Sherman altered all that. He was anything but a horsy man, and it is therefore remarkable that he should have built up the very extensive business that the “Bull and Mouth” Yard did almost immediately become. He was the pioneer of fast long-distance day coaches, and was the proprietor, at the London end, of the “Shrewsbury Wonder,” which, like all his coaches at that time, was a light yellow and black affair. How long he continued subservient to Levy may be a matter for conjecture, but when he rebuilt the “Bull and Mouth” Hotel, in 1830, he did so from the money of one of the three old and wealthy ladies whom he married in succession. The “Wonder” ran 158 miles in the day, as against the 122 miles to Bristol; but was shortly afterwards eclipsed by the Exeter “Telegraph,” put on the road in 1826 in rivalry with Chaplin’s “Quicksilver” Devonport Mail, by Mrs. Ann Nelson, of the “Bull,” Whitechapel. In this Sherman had only a small share. Entirely his own venture was that supreme achievement, the “Manchester Telegraph” day coach, started in 1833 and running 186 miles in 18 hours, technically in the day by dint of starting at 5 o’clock in the morning and reaching Manchester at 11 p.m. The journey was at last shortened by one hour, when the pace, allowing twenty minutes for dinner at Derby, and stops for changing, worked out at just under twelve miles an hour. The Manchester “Telegraph” day coach must by no means be confounded with the old night coach of that name, which in 1821 started from the “Castle and Falcon” at 2.30 p.m., and arrived at the “Moseley Arms,” Manchester, at 8 o’clock the next evening—29½ hours, not much more than six miles an hour.

The “Telegraph” day coach was built by Waude, and was able to safely perform its astonishingly quick journeys over what is in some places an extremely hilly road by the introduction of the flat springs that, from first being used on this coach, were known as “telegraph springs,” a name they retain to this day. They set the fashion of low-hung coaches, which, in the lowering of the centre of gravity, retained their equilibrium at high rates of speed and when going round abrupt curves. Accidents, very numerous in those years, would have been even more frequent had it not been for this change.

The heated rivalry between Sherman’s “Manchester Telegraph” and Chaplin’s “Manchester Defiance”—continued for some years—was but one phase of a keen competition that raged all round the coaching world for the possession of the Manchester traffic. The “Swan with Two Necks” “Defiance” may be traced back to 1821, and even before that date, if necessary. In that year there was not a coach that went the distance in less than 27 hours, and in this first flight the “Defiance” was included. It set out at 2.30 p.m., and was at the “Bridgewater Arms,” Manchester, at 5.30 the next afternoon. By 1823 it was accelerated by two and a half hours; in 1826 it had become the “Royal Defiance,” in 24 hours. In succeeding years it continued to go at 6.30 and 6.45 p.m., and when the “Telegraph” was started the pace was screwed up to the same as that of the new-comer. An evening rival was the fast “Peveril of the Peak,” running from the “Blossoms” inn, Lawrence Lane, Cheapside; while Robert Nelson, of the “Belle Sauvage,” also had a fast night coach, the Manchester “Red Rover,” at 7 p.m., a very lurid affair on which the guards wore red hats as well as red coats, and the horses red harness and collars as far as he horsed the coach out of London. This did not long remain in his hands. Sherman afterwards obtained it; but Nelson, burning with professional zeal and no little personal pique, immediately put an entirely new coach on the same route to Cottonopolis. The announcement of the “Beehive,” as it was called, is distinctly worth quoting, for it shows at once the keen rivalry between proprietors at this period and the excellent appointments of the later coaches:—

“New Coach from the ‘Beehive’ Coach Office

“Merchants, buyers, and the public in general, visiting London and Manchester, are respectfully informed that a new coach, called the ‘Beehive,’ built expressly, and fitted up with superior accommodation for comfort and safety to any coach in Europe, will leave ‘La Belle Sauvage,’ Ludgate Hill, London, at eight every morning, and arrive in Manchester the following morning, in time for the coaches leaving for Carlisle, Edinburgh, and Glasgow. Passengers travelling to the north will reach Carlisle the following morning, being only one night on the road. The above coach will leave the ‘Beehive’ Coach Office, Market Street, near the Exchange, Manchester, every evening at seven, and arrive in London the following afternoon at three. All small parcels sent by this conveyance will be delivered to the farthest part of London within two hours after the arrival of the coach. In order to insure safety and punctuality, with respectability, no large packages will be taken, or fish of any description carried by this conveyance. The inside of the coach is fitted up with spring cushions and a reading-lamp, lighted with wax, for the accommodation of those who wish to amuse themselves on the road. The inside backs and seats are also fitted up with hair cushions, rendering them more comfortable to passengers than anything hitherto brought out in the annals of coaching, and, to prevent frequent disputes respecting seats, every seat is numbered. Persons booking themselves at either of the above places will receive a card, with a number upon it, thereby doing away with the disagreeables that occur daily in the old style. The route is through Stockport, Macclesfield, Congleton, Newcastle, Wolverhampton, Birmingham, Coventry, Dunchurch, Towcester, Stony Stratford, Brickhill, Dunstable, and St. Albans, being the most level line of country, avoiding the danger of the steep hills through Derbyshire.

“Performed by the public’s obedient servants,
“Robert Nelson, London;
“F. Clare, Stony Stratford;
“Robert Hadley & Co., Manchester.”

Sherman’s rebuilt “Bull and Mouth” inn, or “Queen’s Hotel,” to give it its later name, long remained a feature of St. Martin’s-le-Grand, many years after the last coach had been withdrawn; and the old stables in Bull and Mouth Street, which had not been included in the rebuilding of 1830, remained, a grim and grimy landmark, put to use, as usually the case with the old coach offices, as a receiving office for the Goods Department of one of the great railways. In later years the “Queen’s Hotel” became the property of that very thick-and-thin supporter of and believer in the Tichborne Claimant, Mr. Quartermaine East; but the growth of Post Office business made the site an exceedingly desirable one for an extension, and in 1887 the house was closed and demolished, and in the fulness of time the gigantic block of buildings officially known as “G.P.O. North” arose. Not only were the sites of hotel and stables thus occupied, but even Bull and Mouth Street was stopped up and built over. The still-existing Angel Street, close by, between “G.P.O. North” and “G.P.O. West,” marks where another coaching inn, the “Angel,” once stood.

Robert Nelson, who entered so keenly into rivalry with Sherman over the Manchester business, was one of the three sons of Mrs. Ann Nelson, of the “Bull Inn,” Whitechapel. Not the Bull “Hotel,” for Mrs. Nelson most resolutely set her face against that new-fangled word; and as an “inn” the house was known to the very last. An excellent inn it was—one of the very best. It did not seem strange then, as undoubtedly it would now be, for so high-class a house to be situated in this quarter of London. Whitechapel of that time was vastly different from the disreputable place it is to-day; but the prime reason of so fine an inn as the “Bull” being situated here was that this was the starting-point of many routes into the eastern counties, and, just as railway hotels form a usual adjunct of railway termini, so did Mrs. Nelson possess an excellent hotel business in addition to the important and highly successful coaches that set out from her yard and stables.

The “Bull,” Whitechapel, was sometimes—and with equal, if not better, exactness—known as the “Bull,” Aldgate, for it was numbered 25 in Aldgate High Street. The relentless hand of “improvement” swept it away in 1868, but until that year it presented the picture of a typical old English hostelry, and its coffee-room, resplendent with old polished mahogany fittings, its tables laid with silver, and the walls adorned with numerous specimens of those old coaching prints that are now so rare and prized so greatly by collectors, it wore no uncertain air of that solid and restful comfort the newer and hustling hotels of to-day, furnished and appointed with a distracting showiness, are incapable of giving. Everything at the “Bull” was solid and substantial, from the great heavy mahogany chairs that required the strength of a strong man to move, to the rich old English fare, and the full-bodied port its guests were sure of obtaining.

A peculiar feature of this fine establishment of Mrs. Nelson’s was the room especially reserved for her coachmen and guards, where those worthies supped and dined off the best the house could provide, at something less than cost price. Mention has often been made of the exclusiveness of the commercial-rooms of old, but none of those strictly reserved haunts were so unapproachable as this coachmen’s room at the “Bull.” There they and the guards dined with as much circumstance as the coffee-room guests, drank wine with the appreciation of connoisseurs, and tipped the waiter as freely as any travellers down the road. A round dozen daily gathered round the table of this sanctum, joined sometimes by well-known amateurs of the road like Sir Henry Peyton and the Honourable Thomas Kenyon, but only as distinguished and quite exceptional guests. Once, indeed, Charles Dickens sat at this table. Perhaps he was contemplating a sequence of stories with some such title as “The Coachmen’s Room”; but if so, he never fulfilled the intention. The chairman on this occasion, after sundry flattering remarks, as a tribute to the novelist’s power of describing a coach journey, said, “Mr. Dickens, sir, we knows you knows wot’s wot, but can you, sir, ’andle a vip?” There was no mock modesty about Dickens. He acknowledged that he could describe a journey down the road (doubtless, if we have a correct mental image of the man, he acknowledged that little matter with a truculent suggestion in his manner that he would like to see the man who could do it as well), but he regretted that in the management of the “vip” he was not an expert.