Horses Past and Present

by Sir Walter Gilbey

In regard to the disappearance of horses of the useful stamp for harness and saddle it is not necessary to require evidence for the reasons. When we remember how enormous was the network of coach route that spread all over the kingdom in pre-railway days; and consider how vast were the studs necessary to horse the mail and passenger coaches, to say nothing of the post-chaises preferred by people of means; and when we think that the road-coach survives now only in a few out-of-the-way corners of the country, and is regarded as an interesting relic of by-gone days where it does exist, we can form perhaps a vague idea of the extent of the change. About the year 1830 upwards of 1,040 coaches were running daily out of London alone.

We need not, thanks to “Nimrod” and other chroniclers of the coaching age, remain content with a vague idea of the number of horses then in use on the roads. It is easy to take a single route and reckon up the stud required to work a coach running thereon. The usual “stage” for a team was from eight to ten miles, and making due provision for rests, accidents, &c., the proprietors estimated the needs of a coach at one horse per mile “one way.” Therefore a coach running from London to York, 200 miles, and back, required about 200 horses; from London to Edinburgh, 400 miles, and back, about 400 horses; from London to Exeter, 175 miles, and back, about 175 horses.

On roads where the passenger traffic was heavy, coaches were numerous: as many as twenty-five ran daily in the summer during the ’thirties from London to Brighton. The distance by road is about sixty miles, whence it would seem that no fewer than 1,500 horses were used by the coach proprietors on that route alone; probably more, as competition was keen and the speed maintained was hard upon horseflesh.

The average working life of a horse in a fast road coach was about four years, according to Nimrod. Hence the coach proprietor found it necessary to renew one fourth of his stud at a cost of from £25 to £45 per head every year. Mr. Chaplin, who owned five “yards” in London in the ’thirties, had upwards of 1,300 horses at work in various coaches on various roads, and would therefore have been obliged to purchase about £11,375 worth of horses every year.

When the railway banished the coach from the highroad, which it did with considerable rapidity, these great coaching studs were necessarily given up, and a market for horses of the most useful stamp disappeared. An eminent proprietor gave the qualities required in a road coach-horse for fast work as follows: “First requisite, action; second, sound legs and feet, with power and breeding equal to the nature and length of the ground he will work upon; third, good wind, without which the first and second qualifications will not avail in very fast work for any length of time. The hunter and racer are good or bad, chiefly in proportion to their powers of respiration; and such is the case with the road-coach horse.”

The practical disappearance from our country of such horses as those used in the mail and ordinary coaches and in post carriages was nothing short of a national calamity. They were horses of the essentially useful stamp, sound, hardy and enduring, just such animals as are indispensable for cavalry, artillery, and transport work on a campaign. And though the full importance of the loss which had befallen us was evident, the difficulties in the way of retrieving our position as breeders was not less evident. The breeding of horses had ceased to be remunerative, and as a natural consequence men had ceased to breed them, preferring to devote their energies and capital to stock of a stamp for which they could depend upon finding a market. Any horses of the useful class that were produced found their way, if worth having, into the hands of foreigners, as we have seen.

NORFOLK PHENOMENON (Foaled 1824).

In March, 1887, Lord Ribblesdale took the matter up and in a very able speech drew the attention of the House of Lords to the question of the “Horse Supply for Military and Industrial Purposes.” He rendered a tribute to the work that was being done by private persons and by societies and associations, thanks to whose endeavours the breeders of Shire horses and Clydesdales were prospering. The brisk foreign demand for British stock proved its merit, but so long as halfbred horses suitable for remounts and all useful purposes were as scarce as they were, while we were importing horses to the value of over a quarter of a million sterling annually, including harness-horses and match pairs of carriage-horses, we had evidence that we were not breeding high class horses up to the demand for our own daily increasing needs.