Amongst the other old institutions and customs which I have raked up from the dust-heap of time, is the law of Deodand, and I will now, by means of an accident, give a practical insight into the working of it.
As the Holyhead mail was one day galloping down a sharp pitch in the road at Shenley, three boys on their way to school, as was a not uncommon practice with boys in those days, tried which of them could run across the road nearest to the horses' heads of the coach. Two of them got across in time and escaped without harm, but the third, being foolhardy, tried to return; the lamentable result of which was that the near side leading bar struck him and knocked him down, causing the mail to run over him, and he was killed on the spot.
A coroner's inquest was held, before which the coachman had to appear, but no blame was attached to him, although a deodand of one sovereign was levied on the coach.
The law appears to have worked hardly in this case. If any one was to blame, it must have been the coachman, and it was rather rough on the proprietors to fine them indirectly for an accident over which they could have no control.
There was a coach from Cambridge to London, called the "Star," what was called an up and down coach; that is, leaving Cambridge in the morning, and returning again in the evening, from the "Belle Sauvage," Ludgate Hill, which was driven by Joe Walton, a very steady, good coachman, but which, nevertheless, met with a very serious and expensive accident.
Sir St. Vincent Cotton, well known afterwards on the Brighton road, whenever he travelled by the "Star," was allowed by Mr. Nelson, the London proprietor, to waggon it, and it was considered a great piece of condescension on the part of old Joe to give up the ribbons to anyone; but the baronet was a first-rate amateur, and a liberal tipper, so he waived the etiquette. On one of these occasions the "Star" was a little behind time, and St. Vincent was making it up by springing the team a little too freely, which set the coach on the rock, and old Joe becoming nervous, seized hold of the near side reins and thus threw her over. Calloway, the jockey, who was on the coach, had his leg broken, and the accident altogether cost the proprietors nearly two thousand pounds. Sir St. Vincent was unable to assist them much, as he was hard-up at the time.
Probably the fact of the coach being driven by an amateur was not without its effect upon the costs, as, whether he was to blame or not, a jury would not be unlikely to arrive at the conclusion that he was the wrong man in the wrong place.
And now I will wind up this formidable chapter of accidents with one which indicates that the palmy days were passing away, and as it is always somewhat painful to witness the decay of anything one has been fond of, I will draw the veil over the decadence of a system which arrived nearer to perfection than any other road travelling that was ever seen in the world. Sufficient to say that my own experience on a journey during that winter on the Holyhead mail quite confirms the description given of the state of the horses and harness.
I was on the box of the mail one night in the month of January in that winter, when I saw the old short Tommy, which had lain so long on the shelf, reproduced, to enable time to be kept, and in one place there lay by the side of the road the carcase of a horse which had fallen in the up mail. Perhaps it was not very much to be wondered at that the proprietors should be unwilling to go to the expense of buying fresh horses at such a time, but they carried their prudence so far that it partook of cruelty.
The mail coach minute of the General Post-Office says: "Collision between the Holyhead mail coach and the Manchester mail coach, 29 June, 1838, at Dirty House Hill, between Weedon and Foster's Booth."