The adoption of springs was certainly gradual. It is probably right to assume that wealthy men led the way by having coaches built on springs or altering their vehicles. It is impossible to draw a hard and fast line between the period of the coach without and the coach with springs. The illustrations show that travelling carriages on springs and braces were built in 1750. These drawings prove that, clumsy though the public conveyances were, private carriages were both tolerably light and comfortable. The “whip springs” to which the braces are attached were in general use ten years later.
A curious error arose from the application of springs to public conveyances, according to Dr. Lovell Edgeworth. Their introduction, it must be premised, led to the accommodation of passengers and loading of baggage on top of the stage coach, and coachmen, finding the vehicle drew more easily, attributed the fact, not to the springs, but to the increased height and reduced length of the load.[20]
[20] Abolition of the basket on the hind axle would have materially reduced the length of the load.
In the belief that a high and short load possessed some mysterious property which made it easier to draw than a low long one, builders vied with each other in building lofty vehicles. “Hence in all probability,” says the authority we are quoting, “arose the preposterous elevation of public carriages.”
OUTSIDE PASSENGERS.
Dr. Lovell Edgeworth gives us to understand that the practice of carrying passengers on the roof of the coach followed the application of springs to stage coaches; and in view of the belief noticed above this seems exceedingly probable. The practice had clearly been in vogue for some years when the Annual Register published the following paragraph:—
“September 7 (1770).—It were greatly to be wished the stage coaches were put under some regulations as to the numbers of persons and quantity of baggage. Thirty-four persons were in and about the Hertford coach this day when it broke down by one of the braces giving way.”
In 1775, we learn from the same publication, stage coaches generally carried eight persons inside and often ten outside passengers. On another page appears the statement that “there are now of these vehicles [stage coaches], flies, machines and diligences upwards of 400, and of other wheeled carriages 17,000.”
In 1785 was passed George III.’s Act, which forbade the conveyance of more than six persons on the roof of any coach and more than two on the box. This Act was superseded in 1790 by another which permitted only one person to travel on the box and only four on the roof of any coach drawn by three or more horses. A coach drawn by less than three horses might carry one passenger on the box and three on the roof, but such vehicles might not ply more than twenty-five miles from the London Post Office.
The first “long coaches” (i.e. long-stage vehicles) and those called diligences were superseded by what were called the “old heavies,” carrying six inside passengers and twelve out.[21]