JOHN BUNYAN'S MEETING HOUSE, BANKSIDE
From the Borough alone, without counting the vehicles which passed through to or from the City, there were sent out, every week, one hundred and forty-three stage coaches: one hundred and twenty-one waggons: and one hundred and ninety-six carts and caravans. And, of course, the same number came back every week. There was a continual succession of departures and arrivals; all day long, one after the other, the stage coaches came galloping up each to its own inn; while they were still far away the people of the inn knew when their own coach was coming by the tune played on the guard's bugle: the High Street, in fact, was like a railway terminus, where trains are arriving and leaving all day long.
The Old Town Hall, Southwark
I am quite sure that we have no idea at all of the life and animation at a London inn when the stages were started and when they arrived. With as much method, and as quickly as the railway porters clear out the luggage and get rid of the train, the horses were taken out: the passengers got down: the coachman looked inside for his perquisites in the shape of anything forgotten and left behind: the luggage was laid out: the porters seized it and carried it off to the hackney coach outside: the passengers followed their luggage: and the courtyard was ready for the next coach. Outside the courtyard there hung about, all day long, whole companies of thieves waiting for the chance of carrying off something unconsidered or forgotten. Generally, they stood in with the stable boys and the porters, who, for a trifle, were good enough to shut their eyes. If a trunk was seen to lie unclaimed, one of them came bustling in. 'Give us a hand, Jack,' he cried to one of the porters, as if he had been ordered to call for and bring away that trunk. A confederate or two stood at the door to trip up a pursuer or a proprietor, if there was one, and in a moment man and box would be lost to sight in a neighbouring court. Pickpockets as well abounded about the courtyards: outside were houses filled with disorderly folk of all kinds waiting to entrap and to tempt and to rob the country bumpkin. There was the couple ready with the confidence trick: the generous and hospitable gentleman to welcome the country lad: there was the lady of the ready smile: and the taverns with the doors open to all. The numbers of coaches and waggons I have given refer to Southwark alone, and to the conveyances which belonged to the inns up and down in the High Street. But a great many more came across the bridge from the City daily. Now, if we are considering the traffic and animation of the roads leading to the City, remember that the High Street, Borough, was only one of many main lines of traffic. There were, besides, the roads to the North: to the Eastern counties: to the Midlands: to the West: and to the Northwest. Day and night the roads all round London were thronged with these coaches, carts, caravans, and waggons: but these vehicles were for ordinary folk only: for tradesmen, attorneys, clergymen, farmers, riders (that is, commercial travellers) and servants: a nobleman or a country gentleman scorned to travel in a public conveyance: he came up to London, if not in his own coach, then in a post-chaise, of which there were thousands on the road. Add to these the horsemen, of whom there were an immense number riding from place to place: add, further, the long droves of cattle, sheep and pigs: the cattle, however, to save their feet and to keep them in condition, were mostly taken along 'drives' by the roadside, where the ground was soft. One of these can still be seen on the other side of Hampstead. Pedestrians there were also by thousands: soldiers: sailors: gipsies: strolling actors: tinkers and tramps—the land was full of tramps: in a word the roads near London were crowded and animated and full of adventure, character, incident, and picturesqueness: indeed, the dismal and deserted condition of the modern road makes it difficult for us to realise the crowds and the life of the road in the eighteenth century.
