waggons which moved “easily without jolting men’s bodies or hurrying
them along as the running coaches do.” The long waggon was drawn by
four or five horses and carried from twenty to twenty-five passengers.
He proposed that there should be one stage per week from London to
each shire town in England; that these should use the same team of
horses for the whole journey, that their speed should not exceed thirty
miles a day in summer and 25 in winter, and that they should halt at
different inns on each journey to support the innkeeping business. If
these proposals were carried out, the writer thought stage coaches
would “do little or no harm.”
John Cressel’s pamphlet was answered by another from the pen of a
barrister, who showed up the futility of his arguments and deductions,
but did not find great fault with his facts and figures.
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY HIGH ROADS.
It is commonly believed that the introduction of stage coaches produced
the first legislative endeavour to improve the country roads; this is
not the case: nor had the sufferings of travellers by “long waggon” any
influence upon legislators if comparison of dates be a reliable test;
for it was not until 1622 that any attempt was made to save the roads.
In that year James I. issued a Proclamation in which it was stated that
inasmuch as the highways were ploughed up by “unreasonable carriages,”
and the bridges shaken, the use of four-wheeled carts for carrying
goods and agricultural produce was forbidden, carts with two wheels
only being allowed.
In 1629 Charles I. issued a Proclamation confirming that of his father,
and furthermore forbidding common carriers and others to convey more
than twenty hundredweight in the two-wheeled vehicles which were
lawful, and also forbidding the use of more than five horses at once;
the avowed object being to prevent destruction of the road.
We may fairly reason from the terms of this Proclamation that it was
recognised that on occasion five horses might be required to draw one
ton along the roads; and from this we can form our own idea of the
condition to which traffic and rains might reduce the highways.
In 1661 the restrictions on cart traffic were modified by Charles
II.’s Proclamation, which permitted carts and waggons with four
wheels, and drawn by ten or more horses, to carry sixty or seventy
hundredweight, and forbade more than five horses to be harnessed to
any four-wheeled cart unless the team went in pairs. The orders issued
thus by Proclamation were made law by two Acts of Charles II. in 1670;
the second of which forbade the use of more than eight horses or oxen
unless harnessed two abreast.
In 1663 the first turnpike gate was erected; this novelty was put on
the Great North Road to collect tolls for repair of the highway in
Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Huntingdon, where in places it had
become “ruinous and almost impassable.” The turnpike was so unpopular
that for nearly a century no gate was erected between Glasgow and
Grantham.
Nothing more clearly proves the badness of the roads in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, than the number of patents
granted to inventors for devices calculated to prevent carriages from
over-turning. The first invention towards this end was patented in
1684, and between that date and 1792 nine more patents were granted for
devices to prevent upsetting, or to cause the body of the vehicle to
remain erect though the wheels turned over.
Few thought it worth trying to discover a method of improving the roads
which caused accidents. In 1619, one John Shotbolt took out a patent
for “strong engines for making and repairing of roads”; another was
issued in 1699 to Nathaniel Bard, who also protected “an engine for
levelling and preserving roads and highways”; and in the same year
Edward Heming was granted a patent for a method of repairing highways
“so as to throw all the rising ridges into the ruts.” History omits
to tell us what measure of success rewarded these inventions: if the
Patent Specification files form any guide to an opinion, inventors gave
up in despair trying to devise means of keeping the roads in order,
for not until 1763 does another ingenious person appear with a remedy
thought worthy of letters patent.
Repairs to the highways were effected by forced labour when their
condition made improvement absolutely necessary. Thus, in 1695,
surveyors were appointed by Act of Parliament to require persons to
work on the road between London and Harwich, which in places had become
almost impassable. Labourers were to be paid at local rates of hire,
were not to be called upon to travel more than four miles from home,
nor to work more than two days in the week: nor were they liable to be
summoned for road-mending during seed, hay and harvest-time. This Act
also revised the system of tolls on vehicles: any stage, hackney, or
other coach and any calash or chariot was to pay 6d. toll; a cart 8d.
and a waggon 1s.
The Company of Coach and Coach Harness Makers was founded in 1677
by Charles II. The foundation of the company shows that the trade
of coach-building was by this time large and important, while the
interest taken by the King must have given an impetus to the business.
We have evidence that coaches of English build were appreciated on
the Continent in an old “List of the Names of all the Commodities
of English Product and Manufacture that was Exported to France from
England during what may be called the Interval of Peace from Christmas,
1698, to Christmas, 1702.” The list includes both coaches and harness
for coaches.
In this connection it is to be observed that by the terms of its
charter the Coachmakers’ Company was empowered to seek out and destroy
bad work wherever they might find such. Under these conditions it is
not surprising that English workmanship became famous.
Hyde Park, as Pepys and other writers show us, was the best place
in London to see the coaches of the gentry. In an undated petition,
submitted by “a great number of licensed hackney coachmen,” there is
reference to the “four hundred licensed coachmen in Hyde Park,” from
which it might be inferred that these formed a body of license-holders
distinct from the four hundred licensed by Charles II. in 1663.
HACKNEY CABS AS A SOURCE OF REVENUE.
In 1694, when the Parliament was hard pressed for money to carry on
the French war, the London cabs or hackney coaches were more heavily
taxed under a new system of licenses; the number licensed to ply for
hire was raised from 400 to 700, and for each license, which held good
for twenty-one years, the sum of £50 was to be paid down, while £4 per
annum was to be paid as “rent.” All stage coaches in England and Wales
were to pay a tax of £8 a year. This Act confirmed the old tariff of
fares for hackney coaches in London (_see_ p. 42), and the prohibition
against plying on Sundays, which had been in force since 1662, was
partially withdrawn. The new Act allowed 175 cabs to ply for hire on
Sundays; the Commissioners were enjoined to arrange matters so that the
700 licensed cabmen should be employed in turn on Sunday.
This Act caused great discontent among the original 400 licensed
coachmen, as it made them equally liable with the additional 300
licensees to the £50 impost; their grievances found vent in a petition,
wherein they prayed that they, the Original Four Hundred, might be
“incorporated” (presumably as a guild or company), and that all stage
coaches running between London and places thirty miles therefrom might
be suppressed.
The Act of 1693 compelled the hackney coachman to carry a fare ten
miles out of London if required, and doubtless the uncertainty of
finding a “fare” to bring back was partly owing to the short stages,
which ran on every road.
The five Commissioners who were appointed to carry out the provisions
of this law discharged their duties with no greater integrity than
their predecessors. Yet another Petition from the 700 hackney coachmen
refers incidentally to the circumstance that in 1694 three of the five
were dismissed for accepting bribes from tradesmen who wanted licenses;
the petition also prays for better regulations to control the “many
hundred coaches and horses let for hire without license, likewise
shaises, hackney chairs and short stages.”
The “shaise” or chaise was evidently a vehicle of a different type
from the hackney coach. The post-chaise for hire was introduced into
England about this time from France by John, a son of Mr. Jethro
Tull, the famous agriculturist who in 1733 published a work, entitled
“Horse Hoeing Husbandry,” which attracted great attention and laid the
foundation of the use of implements in farming and improvements in
methods of cultivation. In 1740 John Tull was granted a patent for a
sedan chair fixed on a wheel carriage for horse draught.
MANNERS OF THE CABMAN.
The licensed coachmen had good grounds for complaint, as we learn
from an edict issued in 1692 by the Lord Mayor and Aldermen that the
law was systematically evaded; in that year only 160 hackney coachmen
applied for licenses and the number plying in the streets was about one
thousand. The men were a turbulent set; several, we read, were indicted
for “standing of their coaches [in the streets] as a common nuisance,
for assaulting constables and tradesmen who attempt to remove them from
before their shops.” There were no side walks for foot-passengers in
those days, and thus the standing coach might be so placed as to block
the entrance to a shop.
Mons. Misson has the following passage concerning the hackney coachman;
it is interesting as an illustration of contemporary manners:—
“If a coachman has a dispute about his fare with a gentleman that has
hired him, and the gentleman offers to fight him to decide the quarrel,
the coachman consents with all his heart. The gentleman pulls off his
sword, lays it in some shop with his cane, gloves and cravat, and boxes
in the manner I have described. If the coachman is soundly drubbed,
which happens almost always, that goes for payment, but if he is the
_beator_ the _beatee_ must pay the money about which they quarrelled.
I once saw the late Duke of Grafton at fisticuffs in the open street,
the widest part of the Strand, with such a fellow whom he lamm’d most
horribly.”
The same author says that the London squares are enclosed with railings
to keep the coaches from crossing them.
CAB DRIVING A LUCRATIVE OCCUPATION.
It has been remarked on a previous page that the hackney coachman
drove a thriving business; how profitable it was we may learn from
two petitions which were evoked by Queen Anne’s Act of 1710, which
increased the number of licenses to 800 on payment of 5s. a week, such
licenses to hold good for thirty-two years. Seven hundred coaches were
more than profitable employment could be found for, if we might believe
the inevitable petition put in against this Act; but nevertheless the
new 800 licensees joined in petitioning that their licenses “may again
be made assets” as under the Act of 1694. “In consideration of which,
notwithstanding the rent of 5s. per week, we most humbly offer to raise
£16,000 as a fine of £20 on each license for the use of His Majesty
King George.”
That there was money to be made in the business is shown even more
clearly by a petition submitted by James, Lord Mordington and others
about this time. The petitioners offer to “farm the 800 hackney
coaches which are now thought necessary” at £6 per license for 21
years; they were also prepared to pay £2,000 a year during that period,
on which the King might raise a sum of £20,000; to pay £500 a year
to the orphans of the City of London; and also to raise and equip a
regiment of foot at a cost of £3,000!
The Act of 1710, it should be observed, altogether removed the
prohibition against plying on Sunday. It licensed 200 hackney chairs
and fixed the chair tariff at two-thirds of that in force for the
coach (1s. for one and a half miles, and 1s. 6d. for two miles). An
injunction to the Commissioners to fix at the Royal Exchange a table of
distances must have been appreciated by the users of hackney coaches
in London. It also repeated the injunction to use horses of fourteen
hands at least; which repetition seems to have been very necessary, as
Misson remarks that the regulation at the time of his visit was “but
ill obeyed.”
It was about this time that a curious system of wig stealing was
adopted by the London thieves. We read in the _Weekly Journal_ of March
30, 1713, that:—
“The thieves have got such a villainous way now of robbing gentlemen,
that they cut holes through the backs of hackney carriages, and take
away their wigs or the fine headdresses of gentlewomen.”
The writer counsels persons travelling alone in a hackney coach to sit
on the front seat to baffle the thieves.
In vol. 3 of the _Carriage Builders’ and Harness Makers’ Art Journal_
(1863) was published an advertisement from an old newspaper; this
was thought by the contributor who discovered it to be the first
advertisement of the practical application of springs to coaches; it
refers to a patent granted for fourteen years to Mr. John Green in
1691:—
“All the nobility and gentry may have the carriages of their coaches
made new or the old ones altered, after this new invention, at
reasonable rates; and hackney and stage coachmen may have licenses from
the Patentees, _Mr. John Green_ and _Mr. William Dockwra_, his partner,
at the rate of 12_d._ per week, to drive the roads and streets, some of
which having this week began, and may be known from the common coaches
by the words Patent Coach being over both doors in carved letters.
These coaches are so hung as to render them easier for the passenger
and less labour to the horses, the gentleman’s coaches turning in
narrow streets and lanes in as little or less room than any French
carriage with crane neck, and not one third part of the charge. The
manner of the coachman’s sitting is more convenient, and the motion
like that of a sedan, being free from the tossing and jolting to which
other coaches are liable over rough and broken roads, pavements or
kennels. These great Conveniences (besides others) are invitation
sufficient for all persons that love their own ease and would save
their horses draught, to use these sort of carriages and no other,
since these carriages need no alteration.”
This advertisement is the more noteworthy as it clearly refers to some
kind of turning head; however valuable the improvements thus offered,
the springs at least do not appear to have been appreciated, for their
use did not become general till the latter half of the eighteenth
century.
COACHES AND ROADS IN QUEEN ANNE’S TIME.
From the advertisements in old newspapers we obtain some particulars
of the speed made by stage coaches in the early part of the eighteenth
century. In 1703, when the roads were good, the coach from London to
Portsmouth did the journey, about ninety miles, in fourteen hours.
In 1706, the York coach left London on Monday, Wednesday and Friday,
performing the 200 mile journey in four days; each passenger was
allowed 14 lbs. of luggage and overweight was charged for at 3d. per
lb. In winter the cross-roads were execrable, as appears from the
_Annals of Queen Anne_ (London, 1704). In December, 1703, the King
of Spain slept at Petworth in Sussex, on his way from Portsmouth
to Windsor, and Prince George of Denmark went to meet him there:
concerning the journey one of the Prince’s attendants writes:—
“We set out at six o’clock in the morning to go to Petworth, and did
not get out of the coaches (save only when we were overturned or stuck
fast in the mire) til we arrived at our journey’s end. “’Twas hard
service for the prince to sit fourteen hours in the coach that day
without eating anything and passing through the worst ways that I ever
saw in my life; we were thrown but once indeed in going, but both our
coach, which was the leading, and his highnesse’s body-coach would have
suffered very often if the nimble boors of Sussex had not frequently
poised it or supported it with their shoulders from Godalmin almost to
Petworth; and the nearer we approached to the Duke’s house the more
unaccessible it seemed to be. The last nine miles of the way cost us
six hours time to conquer them, and indeed we had never done it if our
good master had not several times lent us a pair of horses out of his
own coach, whereby we were enabled to trace out the way for him.”
COACHING IN GEORGE I.’S AND GEORGE II.’S REIGNS.
Markland,[16] referring to the above passage, states on the authority
of a correspondent that in 1748 persons travelling from Petworth to
Guildford were obliged to make for the nearest point of the great road
from Portsmouth to London; plainly indicating that the main arteries of
traffic were much superior to the cross-roads.
[16] _Remarks on the Early Use of Carriages in England._
Dean Swift, writing to Pope on August 22, 1726, refers to the
“closeness and confinement of the uneasy coach.” At this period there
was still considerable prejudice against the use of carriages by men
who were physically able to ride, as appears from a letter written by
Swift to his friend Mr. Gay, on September 10, 1731:—
“If your ramble was on horseback I am glad of it on account of your
health; but I know your arts of patching up a journey between stage
coaches and your friends’ coaches; for you are as arrant a cockney as
any hosier in Cheapside ... you love twelve-penny coaches too well,
considering that the interest of a whole thousand pounds brings you but
half-a-crown a day ... a coach and six horses is all the exercise you
can bear.”
The reference to Mr. Gay’s income indicates that the saddle was a much
cheaper means of travelling than the coach. Six horses seem to have
been the number used in private coaches during the first half of the
eighteenth century, if we may judge by the frequency with which Swift
refers to “to coach and six.”
An agreement made in 1718 between a Mr. Vanden Bampde and Charles
Hodges, a job-master, is worth noticing. Under this contract Hodges
undertook to maintain for Mr. Bampde “a coach, chariot, and harness
neat and clean, and in all manner of repair at his own charge, not
including the wheels.” If the coachman should break the glass when
the carriage was empty, Hodges was to make good the damage. He was
to supply at a charge of 5s. 6d. a day, a pair of “good, strong,
serviceable, handsome well-matched horses of value between £50 and
£60”; also a “good, sober, honest, creditable coachman,” who, with the
horses, should attend as Mr. Bampde or his lady might require in London
or Westminster. If Mr. Bampde went into the country Hodges was to find
him one or more pairs of horses at half-a-crown per pair per day extra.
DEAN SWIFT ON COACHES AND DRIVERS.
The hackney coachmen appear to have been quite as independent and
offensive a class in Swift’s time as they were in Pepys’. Writing from
Dublin on July 8, 1733, he compares the advantages of residence in that
city with residence in London, and gives prominence to the following
items:—
“I am one of the governors of all the hackney coaches, carts and
carriages round this town; who dare not insult me like your rascally
waggoners or coachmen, but give me the way.”
It may be observed here that there was still plenty of work for the
wherrymen on the Thames in the middle of the eighteenth century. Swift
writes on April 16, 1760, praying Mr. Warburton to leave London and pay
him a visit at Twickenham, and by way of inducement he adds: “If the
press be to take up any part of your time, the sheets may be brought
you hourly thither by my waterman.”
The Dean’s _Humorous Advice to Servants_ contains some sarcastic
observations addressed to the coachman, which shed light upon what we
must suppose was the usual character of that servant. He is advised
that “you are strictly bound to nothing but to step into the box and
carry your lord and lady;” and he is enjoined to take every opportunity
of drinking. The following passage shows how wheels of carriages
suffered from the battering on the roads:—
“Take care that your wheels be good; and get a new set bought as often
as you can whether you are allowed the old as your perquisite or not;
in one case it will turn to your honest profit and on the other it will
be a just punishment on your master’s covetousness, and probably the
coach-maker will consider you too.”
ROADS IN THE 18TH CENTURY.
Every author of the time has something to say about the roads. Daniel
Bourn[17] says:—
“So late as thirty or forty years ago [_i.e._, 1723-33] the roads of
England were in a most deplorable condition. Those that were narrow
were narrow indeed, often to that degree that the stocks of the wheels
bore hard against the bank on each side, and in many places they were
worn below the level of the neighbouring surface, many feet, nay, yards
perpendicular; and a wide-spreading, brushy hedge intermixed with
old half-decayed trees and stubbs hanging over the traveller’s head
intercepting the benign influence of the heavens from his path, and
the beauties of the circumjacent country from his view, made it look
more like the retreat of wild beasts and reptiles than the footsteps
of man. In other parts where the road was wide, it might be, and often
was too much so, and exhibited a scene of a different aspect. Here the
wheel-carriage had worn a diversity of tracks which wore either deep,
or rough and stony, or high or low as Mother Nature had placed the
materials upon the face of the ground; the space between these were
frequently furzy hillocks of thorny brakes, through or among which the
equestrian traveller picked out his entangled and uncouth steps.
“To these horrible, stony, deep, miry, uncomfortable, dreary roads the
narrow-wheel waggon seems to be best adapted, and these were frequently
drawn by seven, eight, or even ten horses, that with great difficulty
and hazard dragged after them twenty-five or thirty hundredweight,
seldom more.”
[17] _Treatise of Wheeled Carriages_, London, 1763.
Bourn’s reference to the “narrow-wheel waggon” touches a matter which
formed the subject of hot debate for generations. It was urged that
the narrow wheels of waggons were largely the means of cutting up the
roads, and no doubt these did contribute to the general condition
of rut and ridge that characterised them. This view was adopted by
Parliament, and to encourage the use of wide wheels a system of
turnpike tolls was adopted which treated the wide tire far more
leniently than the narrow; anything under 9 inches in width being
considered narrow.
[Illustration: MR. DANIEL BOURN’S ROLLER WHEEL WAGGON, A.D. 1763.]
Bourn was a warm advocate for wide wheels, and the book from which
the above passage is taken describes an improved waggon invented by
himself; the drawing is from the inventor’s work. The wheels of this
vehicle resemble small garden rollers; they are 2 feet high and 16
inches wide. Each is attached independently to the body of the waggon
and the fore wheels being placed side by side in the centre, while the
hind wheels are set wide apart, the waggon is practically designed to
fulfil the functions of a road-roller.[18] It does not appear that
Bourn’s invention obtained any general acceptance, which is perhaps not
very surprising.
[18] In the _St. James’s Chronicle_ of December 30, 1772, a
correspondent “observes with particular pleasure the good effects of
the rolling machine on the turnpike road to Stony Stratford. For this
important improvement Mr. Sharp is responsible.” The writer proceeds
to describe with the exactness and appreciation due to so useful an
invention, the first patent of the familiar road-roller.
SPEED OF THE 18TH CENTURY STAGE COACH.
In 1742, the Oxford coach, leaving London at seven in the morning,
reached High Wycombe (about forty miles) at five in the evening,
remained there the night, and concluded the journey on the following
day. The Birmingham coach made its journey at about the same pace,
forty miles per day, resting half a day at Oxford. Night travel
does not seem to have been at all usual. Apart from the badness of
the roads, the audacity of highwaymen was a sufficient reason for
refraining from journeys by night.