“On Wednesday 29,” runs a notice of this, “at seven in the morning was decided at Newmarket a remarkable wager for 1000 guineas, laid by Theobald Taaff, Esq., against the E. of March and Lord Eglington, who were to provide a four-wheel carriage with a man in it to be drawn by four horses 19 miles in an hour; which was performed in 53 minutes and 27 seconds. The pole was small but lapp’d with fine wire; the perch had a plate underneath, two cords went on each side from the back carriage to the fore carriage, fastened to springs: the harness was of thin leather covered with silk; the seat, for the man to sit on, was of leather straps and covered with velvet; the axles of the wheel were brass, and had tins of oil to drop slowly for an hour. The breechens for the horses were whale-bone; the bars were small wood, straightened with steel-springs, as were most parts of the carriage, but all so light that a man could carry the whole with the harness.” Then followed the names of each of the four horses—all had riders—and “lord March’s groom sat in the carriage. Two or three other carriages had been made before, but disapproved; and several horses killed in trials—to the expence of 6 or 700l.”
Now such a carriage—there is a print of it by Bodger—was, of course, little more than a freak. It was a mere skeleton, fragile and entirely useless as a mode of conveyance over the ordinary roads. But the knowledge of those nineteen miles covered easily within the hour must have set people thinking. Such a speed was almost incredible to those accustomed to five or six miles an hour. The carriage itself was the work of Mr. J. Wright, a coachmaker in Longacre, already becoming the home of his brother tradesmen, and it was doubtless exhibited in London. It showed what could be done, and must have opened out agreeable vistas. Twenty miles an hour was something to aim for, and with the war with France concluded, people were able and willing to give rather more attention to the peaceful arts. Amongst other things they showed a desire for strange vehicles. I have mentioned the rolling-carts; there were far queerer carriages, as we shall see, used by the gentry.
The next curiosity I may speak of was seen in the streets of London during the following year.
“An odd machine, like an English waggon, drawn by 10 horses, after the Danish manner, belonging to Baron Rosencrantz, the new Danish envoy, came to his house in Cleveland Row, St. James’s, from Harwich; a coachman drove it and a postilion rode upon the 4th horse.”
It suggests rather a primitive type of coach, possibly innocent of springs. What the Baron suffered during his journey through East Anglia must be left to the imagination.
Eight years later, on August 30th, 1758, another strange carriage was seen.
“This day a remarkable carriage set out from Aldersgate-street for Birmingham, from which it arrived on Thursday last full of passengers and baggage, without using coomb, or any oily, unctuous, or other liquid matter whatever, to the wheels or axles, its construction being such as to render all such helps useless. The inventor has caused to be engraved on the boxes of the wheels, these words, Friction Annihilated, and is very positive that the carriage will continue to go as long and as easy, if not longer and easier, without greasing, than any of the ordinary stage-carriages will do with it: This invention, if really answerable in practice, is perhaps the must useful improvement in mechanicks that this century has produced.”
“The Carriage Match”
(From a Print by Bodger)