[8]

Passengers are to-day regularly conveyed between London and Edinburgh by train in eight and a quarter hours.

[9]

The journey between Birmingham and London can now be done by train in two hours.

[10]

The fares by the stage coaches generally worked out at 2½d. to 3d. a mile outside, and 4d. to 5d. a mile inside; and those by mail-coach at 4d. to 5d. a mile outside, and 8d. to 10d. a mile inside. An outside place on the Edinburgh mail-coach cost about 7½ guineas, and an inside place 11½ guineas, exclusive of tips to coachmen and guards at every stage, and meals and refreshments en route. C. G. Harper, in "The Great North Road," estimates that the total cost of a journey from London to Edinburgh by mail-coach was, for an outside traveller, 11 guineas, and for an inside traveller 15 guineas.

[11]

By an Act of Parliament passed in 1710 the number of sedan chairs allowed to ply for hire in London was fixed at 200, but the limit was raised in the following year to 300. This was, of course, independent of the private sedan chairs, of which every mansion had at least one.

[12]

So numerous were—or had been—the Thames watermen and lightermen that, according to Stow, they could at any time have furnished 20,000 men for the fleet.