Coaching, with Anecdotes of the Road

by Lord William Pitt Lennox

Again, on the 23rd, as the Mail from Barnstaple to Bristol had changed horses at Wivelscombe, and the coachman was about to mount the box, some noise in the street caused the horses to move down the hill. The coachman used every effort to stop them, till he was knocked down. They proceeded to the bottom of the hill, and in turning a corner the coach upset. Of three outside passengers two were thrown with great violence over a wall, one of them receiving a severe contusion in the head, and the latter having an arm broken. The third was killed. An inside passenger had an arm fractured.

In March, 1830, as the Manchester and Huddersfield Mail was returning from the former to the latter place, the horses broke out into a gallop in coming down the hill near Thornton Lodge, and became unmanageable. On arriving at Longroyd Bridge, the mail came violently in contact with the curbstone and the parapet, and the coachman and three outside passengers were precipitated over the parapet on the rocks and gravel below, a fall of eight or nine yards. The horses then broke the pole and proceeded with it at a furious rate to Huddersfield, in the streets of which two of them fell from exhaustion, and, being entangled in the harness, a stop was put to the career of the other two. Of the three passengers, one was found senseless, and died immediately; another had a leg broken; the coachman was much injured; the third passenger, though his fall was four feet lower than that of his companions in misfortune, sustained scarcely any injury. Two other passengers and the guard were providentially thrown upon the road, and were but slightly hurt.

In the month of September, 1836, three fatal coach accidents occurred. On the 10th, as the Peveril, Manchester, and London night coach was on its way to London, and about five miles beyond Bedford, the pole-chain got loose and one of the horses began kicking and plunging, and almost immediately the end of the pole attached to the coach became unfastened. The weight of the coach pressed upon the horses (the coach then being at the brow of a hill), and they had no power of resistance. The coachman kept the horses in the road till they reached the bottom of the hill, when the near wheels ran upon the grass, which was not more than four or five inches higher than the road, and caused the coach to overturn on the off side into the road. One gentleman attempted to jump off; he fell upon his face, and the coach fell upon him, and on the coachman. They remained nearly a quarter of an hour in that position, and when extricated the passenger was quite dead, and the coachman severely injured, one shoulder being dislocated, and his head and body much cut and injured. Of the male passengers four had their shoulders dislocated.

In the month of February, 1807, as the Liverpool mail coach was changing horses at the inn at Monk's Heath, between Congleton and Newcastle-under-Lyme, the horses which had performed the stage from Congleton having just been taken off, and separated, hearing Sir Peter Warberton's foxhounds in full cry, immediately started after them with their harness on, and kept up the chase to the last. One of them, a blood mare, kept the track with the whipper-in, and gallantly followed him for about two hours, over every leap he took, until the fox, who was a cowardly rogue, had led them round in a ring fence, and ran to ground. The sportsmen who witnessed the feats of this gallant animal were Sir Harry Mainwaring, Messrs. Cholmondeley, Layford Brooke, Edwin Corbett, Davenport, Townshend, Pickford, &c. These spirited horses were led back to the inn at Monk's Heath, and performed their stage back to Congleton the same evening, apparently in higher spirits for having had a gallop with the hounds.

Mail robberies, though not so prevalent as in former years, existed as late as the year 1839; for in the month of June, at the Worship Street office, information was given of a daring attempt to rob the mail between Enfield and Edmonton. In October of the same year a box containing five thousand pounds in notes and gold was stolen from the Manchester and Staffordshire coach.

An extraordinary accident occurred in the same month, when a coach was burnt on the railway. As the "Regulator" coach, from Bristol to London, was proceeding on one of the uptrains to London, having a quantity of luggage on the top, owing to the large quantity of sparks which issued from the chimney, the luggage took fire, a fact which was only discovered by the coachman (who happened, fortunately, to have remained inside) seeing sparks of fire falling from the top of the coach by the window. The coachman, at the hazard of his life (the train going at the rate of forty miles an hour at the time), got out and clambered on the roof, and by great exertions removed the luggage from the roof, and thereby saved the greater part; but the brisk current of air created by the rapid speed at which the coach was progressing rendered all attempts to extinguish the flame unavailable until the roof was destroyed, when, the embers falling inside, the guard, who had come to the coachman's assistance, succeeded in putting out the fire.

In 1832 Mr. Babbage, in his work on the "Economy of Manufactures," suggested a new plan of conveying the mail. The immense revenue of the Post Office would afford means of speedier conveyance. The letter-bags do not ordinarily weigh a hundred pounds, and were then conveyed in bulky machines of many thousand times the weight, drawn by four horses, and delayed by passengers. Mr. Babbage proposed the erection of pillars along each line of road, these pillars to be connected by inclined wires or iron rods, along which the letters inclosed in cylinders attached to the rods by rings are to slide; persons stationed on these columns were to forward the cylinders from each point, after having extracted the contents belonging to their own station. In this manner it was calculated that a letter might be sent (from pillar to post) to the furthest limits of the land in the course of a very small portion of time; from London to York, probably, in an hour or two. In the absence of pillars, and in the interior districts, it was suggested that church-steeples, properly selected, might answer the purpose, and in London the churches might be used for the circulation of the twopenny post. The introduction of the rail and the telegraph has completely remedied the evil Mr. Babbage complained of.

In May, 1830, much attention was excited in the neighbourhood of Portland Place by the appearance of a steam-carriage, which made its way through a crowded passage, without any perceptible impulse. There was neither smoke nor noise; there was no external force nor apparent directing agent; the carriage seemed to move by its own volition, passing by horses without giving them the least alarm. Five gentlemen and a lady formed the passengers. One gentleman directed the moving principle, and another appeared to sit unconcerned behind, but his object was ascertained to be the care of the fuel and water. The carriage was lightly and conveniently built, not larger nor heavier than a phaeton. It went without the least vibration, and preserved a balance in the most complicated movements. The pace was varied from five to twelve miles an hour, according to pleasure.

Coaching is still the only means of conveyance in many parts of the Australian colonies, and in certain districts where the roads are bad, or owing to the nature of the country, it is often attended with considerable danger. The following account of an accident which lately occurred in Tasmania, taken from the "Hobart Town Mercury," will probably be interesting to many who have travelled by coach in days gone by.

"An extraordinary accident happened to the Falmouth mail-coach on the 10th instant, and the passengers experienced an escape from an awful death, which seems little short of miraculous. After leaving the little township of Cullenswood, the coach enters St. Mary's Pass, noted both for its extreme beauty and for the danger with which the journey through it is sometimes attended. About four hundred yards from the mouth of the pass on entering, the road is not more than twelve feet wide. A lofty wall of rock bounds the road on one side, and on the other is a precipice plunging almost sheer down to a depth of between one hundred and fifty and two hundred feet.