What are known as the "palmy days" of the coaching era began about the year
1820, and lasted until 1836. By 1820 the improvements in road-making of
Telford and McAdam had led to quicker travelling and the running of far
more coaches, at greater speeds, than had previously been the case. By 1836
it was evident that coaching had reached the climax of its popularity, and
could not hope to maintain its position against the competition of the
railways which were spreading so rapidly throughout the land.
Over 3000 coaches were then on the road, and half of these began or ended
their journeys in London. Some 150,000 horses were employed in running
them, and there were about 30,000 coachmen, guards, horse-keepers and
hostlers, while many hundreds of taverns, in town or country, prospered on
the patronage the coaches brought them. From one London tavern alone there
went every day over eighty coaches to destinations in the north. From
another there went fifty-three coaches and fifty-one waggons, chiefly to
the west of England. Altogether coaches or waggons were going from over one
hundred taverns in the City or in the Borough.
Big interests grew up in connection with the coaching enterprise. William
Chaplin, who owned five yards in London, had, at one time, nearly 2000
horses, besides many coaches. Out of twenty-seven mail-coaches leaving
London every night he "horsed" fourteen. He is said to have made a fortune
of half a million of money out of the business; but when he began to
realise what the locomotive would do he took his coaches off the road,
disposed of his stock before the railways had depreciated it, joined with
Benjamin Horne, of the "Golden Cross," Charing Cross, who had himself had a
large stock of horses, and founded the carrying firm of {326}Chaplin and
Horne, which became exclusive agents for the London and Birmingham Railway.
When the London and South-Western Railway Company found themselves faced
with serious difficulties he devoted alike his means, his experience and
his energies to helping them out of their trouble, rendering services so
invaluable to the company that he soon became deputy chairman of the line,
and was raised to the chairmanship in 1842. Another coach proprietor,
Sherman, who had had a large number of coaches running between London and
Birmingham, threw in his lot with the Great Western Railway as soon as it
was opened, and did much of the London carrying business in connection with
that line.
Other coach proprietors there were who, less far-sighted, or less
fortunate, held on to their old enterprises, influenced, it may be, by the
views of such authorities as Sir Henry Parnell, who, in the second edition
of his "Treatise on Roads" (1838), declared in reference to railways:--
"The experience which has been gained from those already completed, and
from the enormous expense incurred on those which are in progress, has led
to a general opinion that there is little probability of more than a few of
these works affording any ultimate return for the money expended upon them.
"The heavy expense which is proved by experience to be unavailable in
keeping the railways and engines in repair, where great speed is the
object, will in numerous cases soon make it evident that no dividends can
be paid to the shareholders, and the cheaper method of using horse-power
will be adopted....
"The attaining of the speed of 25 or 30 miles an hour, at such an enormous
expense, cannot be justified on any principle of national utility. The
usefulness of communication, in a national point of view, consists
principally in rendering the conveyance of all the productions of the soil
and of industry as cheap as possible.... But a speed of 10 miles an hour
would have accomplished all these purposes, and have been of great benefit
to travellers, while it could have been attained at from one half to one
third of the expense which has been incurred by the system that has been
acted upon. It is no doubt true that travelling at the rate of 25 or 30
miles an hour is very convenient, but how it can be made to act so as
{327}to contribute very much to the benefit of the country at large it is
not easy to discover. Economy of time in an industrious country is
unquestionably of immense importance, but after the means of moving at the
rate of ten miles an hour is universally established there seems to be no
very great advantage to be derived from going faster."
It is true that an acceleration had been effected in the rates of speed
attainable on improved roads, under the stimulus of mail and "flying"
coaches. But these results had only been secured with consequences for the
unfortunate horses which no one possessed of a spark of humanity could fail
to deplore. Several coach proprietors, each owning between 300 and 400
horses, informed a House of Commons Select Committee in 1819 that those of
their horses which worked within fifty miles of London lasted only three or
four years, in which period the entire stock had to be renewed. Mr Horne,
of Charing Cross, who kept 400 horses, said he bought 150 every year. On
some roads, it was affirmed, the mortality of the horses, due in part to
the bad state of the roads and in part to the accelerated speed, was so
great that the average coach-horse lasted only two years. On certain roads
around London it was necessary to have six horses attached to a coach in
order to drag it through the two feet or so of mud which, in wet weather,
was to be found on such roads as the one across Hounslow Heath.
In accounting for an increased demand for coach-horses in 1821, a paragraph
from the "Yorkshire Gazette," quoted by the "Morning Chronicle" of December
27 in that year, declared that it arose out of the new regulations of the
Post Office, which caused the death of two horses, on an average, in every
three journeys of 200 miles. "The Highflyer of this city," the paragraph
continued, "lately lost two horses, and it has cost the Manchester and
Liverpool coaches seventeen horses since they commenced to cope with the
mail and run ten miles an hour in place of seven or eight.... Several
horses, in endeavouring to keep time, according to the new Post Office
regulations, have had their legs snapped in two on the road, while others
have dropped dead from the effort of a ruptured blood-vessel or a heart
broken in efforts to obey the whip."
On one of the southern roads a coach was put on which {328}was run at the
rate of twelve miles an hour; but seven horses died in three weeks, and the
pace was then reduced to ten miles an hour. An average speed even of six
and a half miles an hour was declared to be scarcely possible on some of
the roads. "It tore the horses' hearts out."
One cannot wonder that, when the fact of trains on the Liverpool and
Manchester Railway doing an average of fifteen miles an hour with the
greatest ease, and attaining to double that speed when necessary, became
known, humanitarian considerations were, in themselves, sufficient to win
preference for rail over road transport.
There was also a practical as well as a humanitarian side to this appalling
death-rate among the coach-horses. Thomas Gray, in the course of his
"Observations on a General Iron Rail-way," showed that, reckoning the
number of coach and postchaise horses at no more than 100,000, and allowing
for renewal of stock every four years, keep and interest on capital
expenditure, the outlay would amount in twelve years to £34,700,000; while
a like calculation, for the same period, in regard to the 500,000 waggon,
coach, and postchaise horses employed on the main turnpike roads of the
country, gave a total of no less than £173,500,000.
While, again, fair-weather travellers may have enjoyed the scenery and the
poetry of motion when seated on the top of a coach going across country in
the summer-time, there were possibilities of great discomforts and dangers
having to be faced, as well. Accidents were so frequent that it was usual
for the coaches to carry a box of carpenters' tools, supplemented in the
winter by a snow shovel. Sometimes the coaches stuck in the mire; sometimes
they upset. They passed through flooded roads, they were detained by fog,
they got snowed up, or their passengers might run terrible risks from
frost. On the arrival of the Bath coach at Chippenham one morning in the
month of March, 1812, it was found that two passengers had been frozen to
death on their seats, and that a third was dying. In the winter of 1814
there was a prolonged fog, followed by a severe snow-storm which lasted
forty-eight hours. In one day thirty-three mail-coaches due at the General
Post Office failed to arrive. At Christmas, 1836, there was a snow-storm
which lasted nearly a week. On December 26 the Exeter mail had to be dug
out of the {329}snow five times. The following day fourteen mail-coaches
were abandoned on different roads.
So, in proportion as the railways spread, the coaching traffic declined. In
1839 a London coach proprietor, Mr E. Sherman, of the "Bull and Mouth,"
told the Select Committee on Turnpike Trusts that the persons then being
carried by coach were mostly timid people who did not like to go by
railway, though every day it was found that the timidity was lessening, and
that many individuals who formerly would not have travelled by train for
any consideration were doing so in preference to going by coach.
The severity of the railway competition with the coaches was, indeed,
beyond all question; but the coach proprietors considered that their
difficulty in facing it was rendered much worse by the heavy taxation on
their enterprise.
The earliest stage-coaches, patronised mostly by the poorer class of
travellers, were not taxed at all; but when the "flying coaches" and the
"handsome machines with steel springs for the ease of passengers and the
conveniency of the country" were put on the road and attracted passengers
of a better class, the owners of private conveyances began to complain of
the unfairness of their being taxed while the owners of public coaches were
not. Wanting more money to meet the heavy expenditure on the American war,
North met the complaints of the private-carriage owners by putting a tax on
the stage-coaches; and the precedent thus established, in or about the year
1780, was followed by later Chancellors of the Exchequer, the taxation
being subsequently extended alike to every class of vehicles used for coach
traffic and, in 1832, to all classes of railway passengers.
In 1837 a Select Committee appointed to inquire into the taxation of
internal communication reported that the taxes then in force in respect to
land travelling by animal power were as follows:--