MOTOR MAILS
In my first chapter I made a point of the fact that at the moment when
travelling by mail coach had reached its highest point of excellence the
coming of the railway gave the death-blow to the whole system. The
long-distance traffic of this country was in the course of a few years
diverted from the main roads, and for thirty years these thoroughfares,
save for the local traffic between neighbouring places, were silent and
unused. Nowhere was this revolution more noticeable than in the district
round London. The Great North Road was perhaps the busiest of all the
coach routes, and in 1832 no fewer than between fifty and sixty coaches,
twenty of them mail coaches, ran on this road alone. At Barnet, the
first stage out of London, the double trips resulted in a coach passing
through the town in one direction or the other every quarter of an hour.
The coaching inn with its courtyard and fine stabling fell from its high
estate, and a younger generation marvelled at the number of
public-houses on a road with little or no traffic. They wondered, too,
at the fine wide thoroughfares running through the country towns. Where
was the traffic? Why the extravagance of space?
I suppose that as late as the year 1870 the life of the road appeared
dead beyond recall, and nothing seemed more unlikely than that the
coaching inn would come into favour again. The whole tendency of the
time seemed to be to develop the traffic on the railway. Even walking
appeared to be in danger of becoming a lost art.
Then in the early seventies began a little stream of bicycles along the
forsaken highways: the stream grew and grew: tricycles came in, then
safety bicycles, and ladies took to the wheel. Wayside inns began to
find their use once more, and the road was alive again. Then arrived the
motor, and we have now the astonishing result that on many routes out of
London the quieter and least dangerous thoroughfare for foot passengers
to cross is the railway.
But I am anticipating. I want to tell the story of the return of the
Post Office to the road, and to draw an interesting parallel between the
traffic of a hundred years ago and that of to-day. The first of John
Palmer's mail coaches began to run in 1784, and the system lasted nearly
sixty years. The determining cause which induced the Post Office to take
to the road again was the introduction of the Parcel Post. The railway
company receives 55 per cent. of the stamp value of every parcel, and as
the collecting, sorting, and distributing expenses are heavy, the cost
of transmitting parcels in this manner is considerable. The Post Office
naturally dislikes to hand over to the railway companies postage which
it can economically retain in its own hands, and it was to avoid the
railway charges that road services, extending to places not exceeding
fifty miles or thereabouts from London, were instituted. On the 1st June
1887, the revival of the road began for the Post Office, and a parcel
mail coach service was started between London and Brighton. This was the
Jubilee year, and the running of the new service attracted a great deal
of public attention. In a short time there were coaches running from
London Bridge to Tunbridge Wells and Chatham, and from Mount Pleasant to
Watford, Colchester, Hertford, Ware with branches. There was a coach to
Bedford with a branch to Cambridge, another from Paddington to Oxford
_via_ Reading, and yet others to Windsor and Guildford with services to
Epsom and Leatherhead. These coaches, drawn by three or four horses,
were in charge of guards who carried arms; and for more than ten years
the resemblance between the old and the modern mail service was
striking. The difference, and of course a very notable one, was that the
modern coach carried no passengers. But it carried with it all the
prestige of “His Majesty's Service,” and it maintained all the old
traditions of speed and punctuality—so much so that the villagers on the
route set their clocks when the mail passed.
The coming of the motor brought about another revolution. Many of my
readers will remember the 14th November 1896, when a large number of
motor carriages and vans assembled at Northumberland Avenue, Charing
Cross, to celebrate by a run to Brighton the passing of the Act of
Parliament which regulated the use of these vehicles. The Act came into
operation on that day. Many of these motors never reached Brighton; they
broke down at various points on the route; but the trip was an
object-lesson to the British public of the possibilities of motor
traffic. It impressed the Post Office authorities, who were among the
first of the large business concerns in this country to adopt motor
traction. As early as 1897 experimental trials were made between the
General Post Office and the South-Western District Office, and between
the latter office and Kingston-on-Thames. During the same year a steam
motor was tried between London and Redhill, a distance of about 46 miles
there and back. Experiments were also made with electric motors in
different parts of the country at the same time.
There was a difficulty at the outset owing to the Board of Trade
regulations which prohibited vans weighing more than 1½ tons (unladen)
from travelling more than 8 miles an hour. Difficulty was experienced in
constructing cars of sufficient carrying capacity which should be within
the limit of weight. This restriction was afterwards removed, so that it
has been possible to build much larger motors, timed to travel at a
faster rate of speed.
In spite, however, of the numerous improvements in the mechanism of
motors, the new method of traction was far from perfect for several
years, and as late as 1902 the official report was, “So far no motor
vehicle which has been found can be relied on to carry heavy mails with
the same regularity as vans drawn by horses.” Even two years later, in
1904, the opinion held was “that motor vans were not so reliable as
horse-drawn vehicles.”
It is obvious that what the Post Office required was regularity and
certainty rather than speed for their parcels traffic, and so long as
the motor was constantly liable to breakdowns and maintained uncertain
speeds it was unsuitable.
The steam motor service between London and Redhill was only an
experiment, and the horse-drawn vehicle maintained its old position on
that route until 1902, when the improvements in motors justified the
Post Office in starting a motor service. Since 1902 the London and
Redhill service has been performed by motors. Since 1905 the Brighton
service has been worked by motor van, the daily journey there and back
being 109 miles. In the following year motor vans ran to Hastings,
Tunbridge Wells, and Eastbourne. Then followed in three succeeding years
new motor services to Ipswich, Southampton, Cambridge, Reading,
Portsmouth, Oxford, Birmingham, Stony Stratford and Leicester, Tilbury,
Aylesbury, Dover, and Ramsgate. In addition there were cross services
between Manchester and Liverpool, Birmingham and Warwick and Worcester,
Leeds and York, and a number of other places.
The distance covered by Post Office motor vans runs into several
thousands of miles daily.
Motor vans can travel much faster than the old four-horse coaches.
Palmer's idea of the ultimate speed of the mail coach was 10 miles an
hour. This speed was often attained before 1840, but no doubt the
average all over the country was more like 7 or 8 miles an hour. And
this was the average speed of the Parcel Post horse-drawn coaches. The
usual rate of the motor coaches is 10 miles an hour.
Another advantage claimed by motor vans compared with horse-drawn
coaches is that they can carry heavier loads. The larger night vans can
take a load of 2¼ tons as compared with 1½ tons, the carrying capacity
of the old horse coaches.
Most of these motor mail coaches travel during the night. In the case of
the long-distance services, such as London and Brighton, two vehicles
are used, starting from each end of the journey, meeting half way. It is
remarkable how little the place of meeting varies each journey. De
Quincey, in a footnote to his essay on _The English Mail Coach_, remarks
upon this same feature in the early years of the last century. “One case
was familiar to mail coach travellers when two mails in opposite
directions, north and south, starting at the same minute from points six
hundred miles apart, met almost constantly at a particular bridge which
bisected the total distance.”
These night motor coaches are timed to arrive at their destination so
that the mails conveyed can be distributed by the first morning
delivery. A guard accompanies most of the coaches, and in addition to
looking after the safety of the mails and assisting in loading and
unloading, he sorts parcels received from places _en route_ for places
served by the coach. These vehicles serve, therefore, a similar function
to the Travelling Post Office.
The guards used to carry arms for defence in case of attack, but they
are now only supplied with a truncheon and whistle.
The motor coaches are met at the more important cross roads by smaller
motors and carts, with which they exchange mails. There is in this way a
network of van services stretching over the whole country.
The silent highway is stirred into a sudden activity when the Post
Office night motor van appears. Hundreds of haycarts make their way to
London during the night-time along some of the Essex roads. The drivers
of these carts work very long hours and often fall asleep. The horses
sometimes stop and go to sleep also. These carts standing in the centre
of the highway are often a source of danger to the motor mail vans, and
we can imagine the feelings of a driver of one of the carts when
awakened from a long sleep by the hoot of the motor, and perhaps
realising that he is miles farther from his destination than he should
be.
Hop-pickers in Kent frequently sleep at night with their heads under a
hedge and their feet stretching into the roadway. Accidents have only
been avoided through the alertness of the mail van drivers.
A great difference between driving a horse mail coach and a motor
vehicle is that, in the case of the former, the horses can be trusted to
find their own way if the driver dozed off for a moment. With motors,
however, a similar lapse on the driver's part would spell disaster.
An old mail cart driver whom I once interviewed told me this story. “I
was driving the mail one night from Chesham to Taplow, and arriving at
Beaconsfield, which is nearly half way, I got down from my seat and went
into the inn, saying to the Post Office official who was in attendance
that he could take out the bag himself from the back of the car. He did
so, and then shut down the lid of the mail box with a bang. This was
sufficient notice to the horse that all was ready to start, and off he
trotted without his driver, in the darkness of the night. Ten and a half
miles was the distance he had to travel, and the horse knew his business
as well as the required pace, and he trotted into Taplow station within
a minute of his scheduled time.”
I asked the man if he got into trouble for the apparent neglect of his
Majesty's mails. His face brightened up as the face of every official
does when he recollects the sins he has committed which have not been
found out.
“You see, sir, a porter was waiting for me at the station, and he
wondered, but determined not to give the show away. He unloaded the
mails as if nothing extraordinary was happening. Then he went in search
of me. I walked the distance, full of terrible thoughts and gloomy
fears.” And he added, “I wonder if these much-talked-of motor cars are
likely to be of such service to the Post Office as my good old horse.”
Some time ago a motor mail van was coasting down a Kentish hill on a
dark night, and at a bend of the road, the bright lights of the motor
revealed a dark object lying right across the roadway. The powerful
brakes were quickly applied, and the vehicle was pulled up just in time
to avoid an accident. The obstacle was a railway sleeper, which had
apparently been placed there by some miscreant with the idea of wrecking
the mail. Several men were seen disappearing across the fields skirting
the road when the motor stopped.
On another night a shot was fired at the same motor coach, only narrowly
missing the driver, for the bullet passed through the glass window at
his side. Both outrages are supposed to have been the work of the same
persons, who had some grievance against the motor. They were perhaps
making a last stand on behalf of their friends the horses. Country folk
are conservative above all other people. The horse and cart is to them
almost the divinely appointed means of transit, and to attempt to
overthrow it is sacrilege. All other forms of locomotion are distasteful
to the true countryman. “How did you like foreign parts?” asked a
Kentish farmer of his labourer, who had been across to Boulogne. “Furrin
parts was all right,” replied the labourer, “but that boat! Give me
'orse and cart, sir.”
One night a motor mail driver suddenly pulled up at what appeared to be
an ordinary walking-stick lying across the road. On approaching nearer,
to the consternation of the driver it glided rapidly away. The guard
simply said “Snakes,” and this was the explanation.
The only light along the road for a great part of the way is that
afforded by the motor's own lamps. Wonderful effects on the eye are
often produced between lamplight and darkness, and commonplace objects
often assume uncanny shapes and sizes. A number of heaps of stones
intended for road-mending purposes had lain alongside a certain road for
weeks. One night a motor van driver was startled by what appeared to be
one of these heaps rising suddenly and approaching the coach. His heart
went into his mouth, and he applied his brake, ready for a struggle with
animated stones. And then to his relief—he was not anxious for
miracles—an old white cow looked into his face; she had strayed on to
the road; he had mistaken her for stones.
On some routes the guards of the motors have been employed for many
years. These men seem to have inherited the superstitions common to the
old postboys. On one of the roads out of London the following story is
implicitly believed. A mail van travelling one night knocked down an old
man with a long white beard, seriously injuring him. As the coach was
fully loaded with the mails, there was no room for the injured man, so
he was carefully laid by the roadside out of harm's way and the coach
hastened away for assistance. Returning in a very short time to the
spot, the old man was nowhere to be found, although there were traces of
blood round about. He was never heard of again. At the same spot two
drivers, neither of whom had heard of the previous occurrence, pulled up
their coaches under the firm conviction that they had knocked down an
old man with a long white beard. No trace could be found of the
individual, nor anything which would explain the strange circumstance.
The drivers, however, stick to their stories, and they tell them to you
with the evident conviction that there are more things in heaven and
earth than are dreamt of in your sceptical philosophy. Anyhow, it is a
relief to think that the motors have not driven away the supernatural
from the roads. The spirits are there still, and though men drive motors
instead of horses, they see ghosts just in the same old way as their
fathers. Motor men have not yet established a character of their own, as
was the case with the coach-drivers. There was, years ago, a mail
contractor and wagoner who was stated to be worth £100,000, but he
always dressed in a white smock frock. He bore the delightful name of
Jolly. One winter there was a great deal of snow, and Mr. Jolly thought
he ought to be paid extra for the additional work, but the Department
would not hear of it. So he memorialised the Postmaster-General in a
very unconventional manner, but characteristic of his profession.
“MY LORD,—I, John Jolly, of ——, have conveyed her Majesty's mails over
hedges, ditches, and stone walls, and I, John Jolly, have never been
properly paid for the same.” (Here it is thought he lost his temper and
his limited vocabulary of decent words.) “And I, John Jolly, will see
the Postmaster-General damned before I, John Jolly, do it again.”
Many Post Office memorialists probably mean this when they approach the
Postmaster-General as “obedient servants,” but they have not been
trained on the road.