A History of Inland Transport and Communication in England

by Edwin A. Pratt

The principle of a manu-motive machine, furnished with wheels, by means of which an individual could propel himself along a road with greater speed and less exertion than in walking, goes back to the very earliest days of human history, evidences of an attempt to adapt such principle having come down to us from the times both of the Egyptians and the Babylonians.

In the last quarter of the eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth, various contrivances were introduced in our own country under such names as "the velocipede," "the dandy horse," "the hobby horse," "the wooden horse," and the particular form of bicycle known as "the bone-shaker." The last-mentioned became, in spite of its drawbacks, a craze in the late '60's; but it was the substitution of indiarubber for iron tires, and the production, in 1885, by J. K. Starley, of the modern rear-driven "safety," that established the practical utility of the bicycle. A succession of improvements followed, including pneumatic tires, free wheels, two-speed and three-speed gears, the adaptation of the bicycle to the use of ladies, and the supplementing of the bicycle by tricycles, sociables, tandems and the motor-cycle.

Cycles have been well defined as "the poor man's carriage"; but they are to-day favoured by every class of the community. Thanks, more especially, to the numerous local cycling clubs and the great touring clubs, of which the latter count their members by tens of thousands, cycles have materially developed the taste for travel; they have led to indulgence in outings or pleasure trips at home and abroad to an extent previously unknown; they have vastly increased the means of communication; they have exercised a powerful influence on our general social conditions, and they have become, in a variety of ways, and with different modifications of the bicycle or the tricycle principle, an important auxiliary to the despatch of business.

Cycling has thus attained to a place of recognised usefulness in the professions, in trade, in country life, in the Post Office and even in the Army. It is no longer a hobby, a craze or exclusively a source of recreation. The cycle has definitely and permanently established its position as one of the most popular of "carriages," and, in doing so, it has itself led to the creation of a very considerable industry.

By 1895 the demand for cycles had become so great that it was then impossible for the manufacturers to meet all requirements. Over-speculation and over-production, accompanied by severe foreign competition, followed, and for a time the position of the home industry was very unsatisfactory. It has since re-established itself on sounder lines and now constitutes an enterprise of considerable local importance in various parts of the country, including Coventry, Birmingham, Nottingham and Wolverhampton.

Public prejudice and State policy were factors in the arrested development, in this country, of the application of mechanical power to road vehicles, so that while such application has its ancient history equally with the bicycle, the actual expansion thereof—on such lines that it has now become the dominating feature in road transport generally—has been brought about in quite recent times.

When, in the early years of the nineteenth century, general attention was attracted to the possibilities and prospects of using locomotives on the railway in place either of horses or of stationary engines, further projects were mooted for employing steam-propelled vehicles on ordinary roads. Trade expansion and the inefficiency of existing road-transport conditions combined to strengthen these proposals, and from about 1827 to 1835 or 1840 much enterprise was shown in the construction of steam-carriages, and more especially steam-coaches and steam-omnibuses of which various regular services, in London or in the country, were run with, at first, considerable success. The vehicles in question were designed mainly for the conveyance of passengers, and some of them attained a speed of over twenty miles an hour. There were even those who anticipated that steam-carriages on roads would be successful rivals of the locomotive on rails. Alexander Gordon, civil engineer, and an ardent supporter of steam-driven road vehicles as against railways, wrote in "An Historical and Practical Treatise upon Elemental Locomotion by means of Steam Carriages on Common Roads" (1832):—

"It will be found that, with the exception of the Liverpool and Manchester line, and of those lines formed solely for the purpose of conveying heavy materials on a descending road, railways are, at least, of very questionable advantage where there is the possibility of having a good turnpike road and steam carriages.... Rail-roads have a very formidable rival in steam communication upon the common road, and the latter is of vastly greater advantage than the former."

Opposition, however, to steam-driven road coaches was hardly less vigorous than the opposition offered to the rail locomotive itself. Not only were obstructions constantly placed on the roads to prevent the steam-coaches from passing, but country squires, horse-coach proprietors, post-horse owners and representatives of the turnpike road interests combined to show the most active hostility to the new form of locomotion. The turnpike road trustees sought to make the running of the steam-coaches impossible by imposing prohibitive tolls on them. It was shown in evidence before a Parliamentary Committee that where on the road between Liverpool and Prescot horse-coaches would pay a 4s. toll, the steam-coach was charged £2 8s., while on other roads the tolls in the case of the latter were equally extortionate.

There were pioneers in those days who devoted time, toil and fortune to attempts to establish steam locomotion on the roads, only, one after the other, to retire from the contest discomfited and impoverished.