One of the Wards—I think it was Harry—used to drive me on the “Quicksilver” Exeter Mail, on which I acted as guard for a short period.
I don’t know that I notice very much change in the manners and habits of people from what they were in my younger days. As regards my Post Office work, however, the change has been most wonderful, and at Christmas time the Mails despatched by me from Paddington to places on the Great Western Line have grown to be a hundredfold of the quantity we used to carry by coach.
M. J. Nobbs
OTHER COACHING INCIDENTS.
COACHES IN SNOW-STORMS.
The great snow-storm of Christmas, 1836, was long remembered as one of the most severe on record, and Mr. Nobbs’ coach was only one of many that had to be abandoned owing to the depth of the snow-drifts. All over England, and in Scotland as well, most of the roads were rendered impassable. Some coaches, after proceeding for miles on their journey, were forced to return; thus the Brighton Mail from London had to put back after getting as far as Crawley, and the Dover Mail got no further than Gravesend. Other coaches were upset, and some were completely lost, having been abandoned, and afterwards buried in the snow-wreaths. Near Chatham the snow lay to a depth of 30 or 40 feet, and on some of the roads in the Midlands, after cuttings had been made, the snow was banked to the height of 50 feet. A full account of this and other memorable snowstorms will be found in Mr. Wilson Hyde’s most interesting book, “The Royal Mail.”
History repeats itself, and more than fifty years after that 1836 storm we again find Mail Coaches blocked by the snow on the Brighton road. The severe snow-storm of the 9th and 10th of March last taxed the resources of the Post Office in the South and West of England to the utmost. For several days Plymouth was virtually without any service of Mails, and one after another came an apparently endless series of telegrams to headquarters in London, bearing dismal tidings of trains buried in mammoth drifts, cuttings blocked with snow, and portentous “accumulations” of parcel receptacles at places quite unprepared to bear so large a share of the Post Office burden. The trials and triumphs of that stirring time have, however, already found a capable chronicler—as readers of the St. Martin’s-le-Grand Magazine will shortly discover. All we would refer to here is the fact that the up and down Brighton Parcel Coaches were both blocked by snow at Handcross Hill, about four miles from Crawley—one at the top of the hill and the other at the bottom. The resources of civilisation in 1891, however, afforded a means of overcoming the difficulty which was not open to our fathers and grand-fathers in 1836. An experienced officer (Mr. W. Roberts) went down from London by train and superintended the digging out of the coaches. This done, he had both vehicles taken to Crawley, where the parcel baskets were transferred to the railway. In 1836 those parcels would probably not have reached their destination under a week or ten days.
BRIDGE DISASTER TO COACH.
Mr. Nobbs’ graphic account of the Lugg Bridge accident recalls the more calamitous one which befell the Glasgow and Carlisle coach on the 25th October, 1801. The circumstances were alike in both cases, but the results of the earlier disaster were much more grave. The bridge was one spanning the river Evan, between Elvanfoot and Beattock; it had collapsed under stress of a flood following a sudden thaw, and at about ten o’clock at night the coach plunged into the rocky bed of the stream. Two outside passengers were killed on the spot, and the coachman sustained such injuries that he died some days afterwards. The inside passengers, a lady and three gentlemen, and the guard, escaped with injuries more or less severe. Three of the horses were killed, and the coach was smashed to pieces.