CHAPTER IV.
CARRIAGES FROM 1790 TO 1876.
Mr Felton’s Opinions—Proper Strength of Carriages—Method of Construction—Usual Width of Coaches—The Perch—Great Height of Wheels in 1790—The Lord Chancellor’s Coach—The Landau—Phaetons of 1790—Two Wheeled Vehicles—Taxation on Carriages—Advance of the Trade—Invention of Elliptical Springs—Carriages of Napoleon Buonaparte—Number of Vehicles Paying Taxes—The Curricle.—Introduction of Undersprings—Mr S. Hobson’s Improvements—The Briska and the Stanhope—The Tilbury and Dog-Cart—Commercial Travellers’ Gigs—Travelling Carriages—The Pony Phaeton and the Droitska—The Cab Phaeton and the Victoria—Dress Carriages—Coronation Procession in 1838—Improvement of the Landau—Introduction of the Brougham—Waggonnettes—Exhibitions of Carriages—Numbers of Carriages in 1874.
“In the year 1790,” according to a very competent judge, a coachbuilder then alive, Mr Felton, “the art of Coachbuilding had been in a gradual state of improvement for half a century past, and had now arrived to a very high degree of perfection, with respect both to the beauty, strength, and elegance of our English carriages.” “The superior excellence, too, of English workmanship has not only been the occasion of a very great increase in their number in this country, but the exportation of them to foreign nations is become a profitable and considerable branch of British commerce.”
These statements might have been made again and again for many years after this date. Our carriages, as I will endeavour to show, have continued to improve; but no longer, I regret to have to say, are they exported in large numbers. The cost has so much increased, from the date of 1790, that foreign nations prefer to deal with manufacturers who can give them a vehicle which, to the eye, appears as good as our own, and in colours and finish is more to their taste, whilst the price is from 10 to 30 per cent. less than the British carriage.
Although I shall have occasion to treat this part of our subject in the last lecture more fully, I will here guard against misconception, by pointing out the example set us by our energetic brothers in the United States, who have secured a very large market for their carriages, even in English colonies, by building good and light vehicles at a moderate price. In confirmation of the statement of Mr Felton in 1790, we find that English carriages had been exported to the North American and West Indian Colonies as early as 1740.