DIFFERENCE BETWEEN STAGE AND MAIL COACH.
In the early days of the century, though the actual rate of travel was about eight miles an hour by the ordinary stage coach, much time was occupied over the journey. There appears to have been no such thing as a “time bill.” The coachman would go out of his way to set down or pick up a passenger: he would wait to oblige a friend if desired, and “Nimrod” in his famous article on “The Road” cites, as an example of the leisurely fashion prevalent, the civility of “Billy” Williams, who drove the Shrewsbury-Chester coach in his school days, and took twelve hours to cover the forty miles, Two hours were allowed for dinner at Wrexham, but this obliging coachman would come into the parlour and say, “The coach is ready, gentlemen, but don’t let me disturb you if you wish for another bottle.”
Very different was the case with the Royal Mail: every second was economised: at some places horses were changed within the space of a minute, and so jealously punctual were the coachmen that the village people set their clocks by the mail as it sped along the street. The Royal Mail paid no tolls, and if a turnpike keeper had not his gate open ready for its passage he was fined 40s. The passing of the London coach was the event of the day in quiet villages during the coaching age, as the guard performed the functions now discharged by the newspaper and telegraph wire. “The grandest chapter in our experience,” says a regular traveller during the stirring times of 1805-1815, “was on those occasions when we went down from London with news of a victory.”
THE “GOLDEN AGE” OF COACHING.
The adoption of Macadam’s system of road-making gave birth to the brief “golden age” of coaching. John Macadam, an Ayrshire man, born in 1756, had devoted many years to the subject of road improvement, and between the years 1798 and 1814 travelled over some 30,000 miles of highway in Great Britain, His method of spreading small broken fragments of hard stone, none ever six ounces in weight, stamped or rolled into a compact crust, was finally approved in 1818, and “macadamised” roads were rapidly made all over the kingdom. The inventor was awarded a grant of £10,000, and in 1827 he was appointed Surveyor-General of Roads. He died in 1836, when fast coaching was at the zenith of its prosperity.
The portrait of which a reproduction is here given is believed to be the only one in existence. It was painted by Raymond, about the year 1835, and was given by Mr. Macadam’s widow to Mr. Allen of Hoddesdon, Essex, who for several years had made road-mending tools and appliances to the great road-maker’s patterns. The portrait was bequeathed to Mr. Allen’s granddaughter, by whom it was sold in 1902, to the present owner, Major McAdam.
JOHN LOUDON MACADAM.
(From a painting in the possession of his great-grandson, Major J. J. L. McAdam, of Sherborne, Dorset.)