A History of Inland Transport and Communication in England

by Edwin A. Pratt

"The heavy expense which is proved by experience to be unavailable in keeping the railways and engines in repair, where great speed is the object, will in numerous cases soon make it evident that no dividends can be paid to the shareholders, and the cheaper method of using horse-power will be adopted....

"The attaining of the speed of 25 or 30 miles an hour, at such an enormous expense, cannot be justified on any principle of national utility. The usefulness of communication, in a national point of view, consists principally in rendering the conveyance of all the productions of the soil and of industry as cheap as possible.... But a speed of 10 miles an hour would have accomplished all these purposes, and have been of great benefit to travellers, while it could have been attained at from one half to one third of the expense which has been incurred by the system that has been acted upon. It is no doubt true that travelling at the rate of 25 or 30 miles an hour is very convenient, but how it can be made to act so as to contribute very much to the benefit of the country at large it is not easy to discover. Economy of time in an industrious country is unquestionably of immense importance, but after the means of moving at the rate of ten miles an hour is universally established there seems to be no very great advantage to be derived from going faster."

It is true that an acceleration had been effected in the rates of speed attainable on improved roads, under the stimulus of mail and "flying" coaches. But these results had only been secured with consequences for the unfortunate horses which no one possessed of a spark of humanity could fail to deplore. Several coach proprietors, each owning between 300 and 400 horses, informed a House of Commons Select Committee in 1819 that those of their horses which worked within fifty miles of London lasted only three or four years, in which period the entire stock had to be renewed. Mr Horne, of Charing Cross, who kept 400 horses, said he bought 150 every year. On some roads, it was affirmed, the mortality of the horses, due in part to the bad state of the roads and in part to the accelerated speed, was so great that the average coach-horse lasted only two years. On certain roads around London it was necessary to have six horses attached to a coach in order to drag it through the two feet or so of mud which, in wet weather, was to be found on such roads as the one across Hounslow Heath.

In accounting for an increased demand for coach-horses in 1821, a paragraph from the "Yorkshire Gazette," quoted by the "Morning Chronicle" of December 27 in that year, declared that it arose out of the new regulations of the Post Office, which caused the death of two horses, on an average, in every three journeys of 200 miles. "The Highflyer of this city," the paragraph continued, "lately lost two horses, and it has cost the Manchester and Liverpool coaches seventeen horses since they commenced to cope with the mail and run ten miles an hour in place of seven or eight.... Several horses, in endeavouring to keep time, according to the new Post Office regulations, have had their legs snapped in two on the road, while others have dropped dead from the effort of a ruptured blood-vessel or a heart broken in efforts to obey the whip."

On one of the southern roads a coach was put on which was run at the rate of twelve miles an hour; but seven horses died in three weeks, and the pace was then reduced to ten miles an hour. An average speed even of six and a half miles an hour was declared to be scarcely possible on some of the roads. "It tore the horses' hearts out."

One cannot wonder that, when the fact of trains on the Liverpool and Manchester Railway doing an average of fifteen miles an hour with the greatest ease, and attaining to double that speed when necessary, became known, humanitarian considerations were, in themselves, sufficient to win preference for rail over road transport.

There was also a practical as well as a humanitarian side to this appalling death-rate among the coach-horses. Thomas Gray, in the course of his "Observations on a General Iron Rail-way," showed that, reckoning the number of coach and postchaise horses at no more than 100,000, and allowing for renewal of stock every four years, keep and interest on capital expenditure, the outlay would amount in twelve years to £34,700,000; while a like calculation, for the same period, in regard to the 500,000 waggon, coach, and postchaise horses employed on the main turnpike roads of the country, gave a total of no less than £173,500,000.

While, again, fair-weather travellers may have enjoyed the scenery and the poetry of motion when seated on the top of a coach going across country in the summer-time, there were possibilities of great discomforts and dangers having to be faced, as well. Accidents were so frequent that it was usual for the coaches to carry a box of carpenters' tools, supplemented in the winter by a snow shovel. Sometimes the coaches stuck in the mire; sometimes they upset. They passed through flooded roads, they were detained by fog, they got snowed up, or their passengers might run terrible risks from frost. On the arrival of the Bath coach at Chippenham one morning in the month of March, 1812, it was found that two passengers had been frozen to death on their seats, and that a third was dying. In the winter of 1814 there was a prolonged fog, followed by a severe snow-storm which lasted forty-eight hours. In one day thirty-three mail-coaches due at the General Post Office failed to arrive. At Christmas, 1836, there was a snow-storm which lasted nearly a week. On December 26 the Exeter mail had to be dug out of the snow five times. The following day fourteen mail-coaches were abandoned on different roads.

So, in proportion as the railways spread, the coaching traffic declined. In 1839 a London coach proprietor, Mr E. Sherman, of the "Bull and Mouth," told the Select Committee on Turnpike Trusts that the persons then being carried by coach were mostly timid people who did not like to go by railway, though every day it was found that the timidity was lessening, and that many individuals who formerly would not have travelled by train for any consideration were doing so in preference to going by coach.

The severity of the railway competition with the coaches was, indeed, beyond all question; but the coach proprietors considered that their difficulty in facing it was rendered much worse by the heavy taxation on their enterprise.