COACH-PROPRIETORS (_continued_)
Edward Sherman, who ranked next to Chaplin as the largest
coach-proprietor in London, was in many respects unlike his brethren
in the trade. He established himself at the “Bull and Mouth,” St.
Martin’s-le-Grand, in 1823, in succession to Willans, and came direct
from the Stock Exchange, where he had been a broker in alliance with
Lewis Levy, a noted figure in those days of Turnpike Trusts. It is
perhaps scarcely necessary to add that Levy was a Jew. He was referred
to by Lord Ravensworth in the course of a discussion in the House of
Lords on Metropolitan Toll-gates in 1857 as “a gentleman of the Hebrew
persuasion.” Persuasion, indeed! As well might you describe a born
Englishman or Frenchman as born into those nationalities by personal
choice and election. Levy was, of course, a Jew by birth, and had no
choice in the matter. He was a farmer of turnpike-tolls to the extent
of half a million sterling per annum, and a very wealthy man. Levy put
Sherman into the coaching business, and he immediately began to make
things extremely uncomfortable for the older proprietors, who had up to
that time been content with going at eight or nine miles an hour.
When Colonel Hawker took coach from the “Bull and Mouth” in 1812, he
found “the ruffians” there “a dissatisfied, grumbling set of fellows,
and their turns-out of horses and harness beggarly.” Such was the place
under Willans’ rule, but Sherman altered all that. He was anything but
a horsy man, and it is therefore remarkable that he should have built
up the very extensive business that the “Bull and Mouth” Yard did
almost immediately become. He was the pioneer of fast long-distance day
coaches, and was the proprietor, at the London end, of the “Shrewsbury
Wonder,” which, like all his coaches at that time, was a light yellow
and black affair. How long he continued subservient to Levy may be
a matter for conjecture, but when he rebuilt the “Bull and Mouth”
Hotel, in 1830, he did so from the money of one of the three old and
wealthy ladies whom he married in succession. The “Wonder” ran 158
miles in the day, as against the 122 miles to Bristol; but was shortly
afterwards eclipsed by the Exeter “Telegraph,” put on the road in 1826
in rivalry with Chaplin’s “Quicksilver” Devonport Mail, by Mrs. Ann
Nelson, of the “Bull,” Whitechapel. In this Sherman had only a small
share. Entirely his own venture was that supreme achievement, the
“Manchester Telegraph” day coach, started in 1833 and running 186 miles
in 18 hours, technically in the day by dint of starting at 5 o’clock
in the morning and reaching Manchester at 11 p.m. The journey was at
last shortened by one hour, when the pace, allowing twenty minutes
for dinner at Derby, and stops for changing, worked out at just under
twelve miles an hour. The Manchester “Telegraph” day coach must by no
means be confounded with the old night coach of that name, which in
1821 started from the “Castle and Falcon” at 2.30 p.m., and arrived
at the “Moseley Arms,” Manchester, at 8 o’clock the next evening--29½
hours, not much more than six miles an hour.
The “Telegraph” day coach was built by Waude, and was able to safely
perform its astonishingly quick journeys over what is in some places an
extremely hilly road by the introduction of the flat springs that, from
first being used on this coach, were known as “telegraph springs,” a
name they retain to this day. They set the fashion of low-hung coaches,
which, in the lowering of the centre of gravity, retained their
equilibrium at high rates of speed and when going round abrupt curves.
Accidents, very numerous in those years, would have been even more
frequent had it not been for this change.
The heated rivalry between Sherman’s “Manchester Telegraph” and
Chaplin’s “Manchester Defiance”--continued for some years--was but one
phase of a keen competition that raged all round the coaching world for
the possession of the Manchester traffic. The “Swan with Two Necks”
“Defiance” may be traced back to 1821, and even before that date, if
necessary. In that year there was not a coach that went the distance
in less than 27 hours, and in this first flight the “Defiance” was
included. It set out at 2.30 p.m., and was at the “Bridgewater Arms,”
Manchester, at 5.30 the next afternoon. By 1823 it was accelerated
by two and a half hours; in 1826 it had become the “Royal Defiance,”
in 24 hours. In succeeding years it continued to go at 6.30 and 6.45
p.m., and when the “Telegraph” was started the pace was screwed up
to the same as that of the new-comer. An evening rival was the fast
“Peveril of the Peak,” running from the “Blossoms” inn, Lawrence Lane,
Cheapside; while Robert Nelson, of the “Belle Sauvage,” also had a fast
night coach, the Manchester “Red Rover,” at 7 p.m., a very lurid affair
on which the guards wore red hats as well as red coats, and the horses
red harness and collars as far as he horsed the coach out of London.
This did not long remain in his hands. Sherman afterwards obtained
it; but Nelson, burning with professional zeal and no little personal
pique, immediately put an entirely new coach on the same route to
Cottonopolis. The announcement of the “Beehive,” as it was called, is
distinctly worth quoting, for it shows at once the keen rivalry between
proprietors at this period and the excellent appointments of the later
coaches:--
“NEW COACH FROM THE ‘BEEHIVE’ COACH OFFICE
“Merchants, buyers, and the public in general, visiting London
and Manchester, are respectfully informed that a new coach,
called the ‘Beehive,’ built expressly, and fitted up with superior
accommodation for comfort and safety to any coach in Europe,
will leave ‘La Belle Sauvage,’ Ludgate Hill, London, at eight
every morning, and arrive in Manchester the following morning,
in time for the coaches leaving for Carlisle, Edinburgh, and
Glasgow. Passengers travelling to the north will reach Carlisle
the following morning, being only one night on the road. The above
coach will leave the ‘Beehive’ Coach Office, Market Street, near
the Exchange, Manchester, every evening at seven, and arrive in
London the following afternoon at three. All small parcels sent by
this conveyance will be delivered to the farthest part of London
within two hours after the arrival of the coach. In order to insure
safety and punctuality, with respectability, no large packages will
be taken, or fish of any description carried by this conveyance.
The inside of the coach is fitted up with spring cushions and a
reading-lamp, lighted with wax, for the accommodation of those
who wish to amuse themselves on the road. The inside backs and
seats are also fitted up with hair cushions, rendering them more
comfortable to passengers than anything hitherto brought out in the
annals of coaching, and, to prevent frequent disputes respecting
seats, every seat is numbered. Persons booking themselves at either
of the above places will receive a card, with a number upon it,
thereby doing away with the disagreeables that occur daily in the
old style. The route is through Stockport, Macclesfield, Congleton,
Newcastle, Wolverhampton, Birmingham, Coventry, Dunchurch,
Towcester, Stony Stratford, Brickhill, Dunstable, and St. Albans,
being the most level line of country, avoiding the danger of the
steep hills through Derbyshire.
“Performed by the public’s obedient servants,
“ROBERT NELSON, London;
“F. CLARE, Stony Stratford;
“ROBERT HADLEY & CO., Manchester.”
Sherman’s rebuilt “Bull and Mouth” inn, or “Queen’s Hotel,” to give it
its later name, long remained a feature of St. Martin’s-le-Grand, many
years after the last coach had been withdrawn; and the old stables in
Bull and Mouth Street, which had not been included in the rebuilding of
1830, remained, a grim and grimy landmark, put to use, as usually the
case with the old coach offices, as a receiving office for the Goods
Department of one of the great railways. In later years the “Queen’s
Hotel” became the property of that very thick-and-thin supporter of
and believer in the Tichborne Claimant, Mr. Quartermaine East; but the
growth of Post Office business made the site an exceedingly desirable
one for an extension, and in 1887 the house was closed and demolished,
and in the fulness of time the gigantic block of buildings officially
known as “G.P.O. North” arose. Not only were the sites of hotel and
stables thus occupied, but even Bull and Mouth Street was stopped up
and built over. The still-existing Angel Street, close by, between
“G.P.O. North” and “G.P.O. West,” marks where another coaching inn, the
“Angel,” once stood.
Robert Nelson, who entered so keenly into rivalry with Sherman over the
Manchester business, was one of the three sons of Mrs. Ann Nelson, of
the “Bull Inn,” Whitechapel. Not the Bull “Hotel,” for Mrs. Nelson most
resolutely set her face against that new-fangled word; and as an “inn”
the house was known to the very last. An excellent inn it was--one of
the very best. It did not seem strange then, as undoubtedly it would
now be, for so high-class a house to be situated in this quarter
of London. Whitechapel of that time was vastly different from the
disreputable place it is to-day; but the prime reason of so fine an inn
as the “Bull” being situated here was that this was the starting-point
of many routes into the eastern counties, and, just as railway hotels
form a usual adjunct of railway termini, so did Mrs. Nelson possess
an excellent hotel business in addition to the important and highly
successful coaches that set out from her yard and stables.
The “Bull,” Whitechapel, was sometimes--and with equal, if not better,
exactness--known as the “Bull,” Aldgate, for it was numbered 25 in
Aldgate High Street. The relentless hand of “improvement” swept it away
in 1868, but until that year it presented the picture of a typical old
English hostelry, and its coffee-room, resplendent with old polished
mahogany fittings, its tables laid with silver, and the walls adorned
with numerous specimens of those old coaching prints that are now so
rare and prized so greatly by collectors, it wore no uncertain air of
that solid and restful comfort the newer and hustling hotels of to-day,
furnished and appointed with a distracting showiness, are incapable of
giving. Everything at the “Bull” was solid and substantial, from the
great heavy mahogany chairs that required the strength of a strong man
to move, to the rich old English fare, and the full-bodied port its
guests were sure of obtaining.
A peculiar feature of this fine establishment of Mrs. Nelson’s
was the room especially reserved for her coachmen and guards,
where those worthies supped and dined off the best the house could
provide, at something less than cost price. Mention has often been
made of the exclusiveness of the commercial-rooms of old, but none
of those strictly reserved haunts were so unapproachable as this
coachmen’s room at the “Bull.” There they and the guards dined with
as much circumstance as the coffee-room guests, drank wine with the
appreciation of connoisseurs, and tipped the waiter as freely as any
travellers down the road. A round dozen daily gathered round the table
of this sanctum, joined sometimes by well-known amateurs of the road
like Sir Henry Peyton and the Honourable Thomas Kenyon, but only as
distinguished and quite exceptional guests. Once, indeed, Charles
Dickens sat at this table. Perhaps he was contemplating a sequence of
stories with some such title as “The Coachmen’s Room”; but if so, he
never fulfilled the intention. The chairman on this occasion, after
sundry flattering remarks, as a tribute to the novelist’s power of
describing a coach journey, said, “Mr. Dickens, sir, we knows you knows
wot’s wot, but can you, sir, ’andle a vip?” There was no mock modesty
about Dickens. He acknowledged that he _could_ describe a journey down
the road (doubtless, if we have a correct mental image of the man, he
acknowledged that little matter with a truculent suggestion in his
manner that he would like to see the man who could do it as well), but
he regretted that in the management of the “vip” he was not an expert.
Unlike commercial dinners, “shop” was not taboo round this hospitable
mahogany, but formed the staple of the conversation. Indeed, these
worthies could talk little else, and with the exception of sometimes
shrewd and humorous sidelights on the towns and villages they passed on
their daily drives, and criticisms of the local magnates whose parks
and mansions they pointed out to the passengers on the way, were silent
on all subjects save wheels, horses, and harness.
The etiquette of this room was strict. The oldest coachman
presided--never a guard, for they always ranked as juniors--and at the
proper moment gave the loyal toast of the King or Queen. An exception
to this rule of seniority was when Mrs. Nelson’s second son, Robert,
who drove her Exeter “Defiance,” was present, as occasionally he was.
Following the practice of the House of Commons, whose members are
never, within the House, referred to by their own names, but always
as the representatives of their several constituencies, Mrs. Nelson’s
coachmen and guards here assembled were addressed as “Manchester,”
“Oxford,” “Ipswich,” “Devonport,” and so forth.
When Mrs. Nelson retired from the active management of the business,
her eldest son, John, became the moving spirit. It was in his time
that railways came in and coaching went out, but he was equal to
the occasion, and started a very successful line of omnibuses, the
“Wellington,” plying between Stratford, Whitechapel, the Bank, Oxford
Street, Royal Oak, and Westbourne Grove. He died, a very wealthy man,
in June, 1868, aged seventy-four.
Thomas Fagg, of the “Bell and Crown,” Holborn--an inn better known
to later generations of Londoners as “Ridler’s Hotel”--was a small
proprietor, but he had in addition a very lucrative business as a
coach-maker at Hartley Row, near Basingstoke. The “Louth” and “Lynn”
mails, however, were partly his, and _Cary’s Itinerary_ for 1821 gives
a list of twenty-six stage-coaches going from his door to all parts
of the country. As “Ridler’s” the house was a very select “family
hotel,” but in this it only carried on the traditions of Fagg’s time,
when he had some most distinguished guests. Standing midway between
the West End and the City, the “Bell and Crown” thus possessed certain
advantages, and received much patronage both from commercial magnates
and Society people. Among his patrons he numbered the “Iron Duke,”
for whom he had an almost religious reverence, and indeed proposed to
change the name of his house to the “Wellington,” in honour of him;
only reconsidering the project when the Duke told him--as he commonly
did the many extravagant hero-worshippers whose attentions were a
daily nuisance--not to be “a d----d fool.” Fagg, however, was no fool,
but a very shrewd person indeed. A coachman, applying to him for a
place on one of his coaches, was put through a strict examination as
to his qualifications, when it appeared that he was (according to his
own account) not only a first-rate and steady “artist,” but had never
capsized a coach in the whole course of his career--“he didn’t know
what a hupset meant.”
“Oh! go away,” retorted the justly incensed Fagg; “you are no man
for me. _My_ coaches are always upsetting, and with _your_ want of
experience, how the devil should you know how to get one on her legs
again?”
Mrs. Mountain also had her own coach-factory. She was no less energetic
than that very lively and masterful person, Mrs. Ann Nelson, but in a
smaller way of business. Sarah Ann Mountain’s house was that “Saracen’s
Head,” Snow Hill, immortalised by Dickens in _Nicholas Nickleby_. She
had succeeded to the business in 1818, on the death of her husband,
and instead of giving up, decided to carry on, aided by Peter, her
son. Thirty coaches left her inn daily, among them the first of the
Birmingham “Tally-Ho’s,” a fast day coach, established in 1823, and
historically interesting as the prime cause of the furious racing that
characterised the St. Albans and Coventry route to Birmingham from this
date until 1838. Mrs. Mountain’s coach-factory was at the rear of her
premises on Snow Hill. There she built the conveyances used by herself
and partners, charging them at the rather high rate of 3½d. a mile for
their use.
A number of smaller proprietors accounted, between them, for many other
coaches. Robert Gray, once established at the “Belle Sauvage,” left
that place in 1807 and settled at the “Bolt-in-Tun,” a house still
standing in Fleet Street, and now known as the “Bolt-in-Tun” London and
North-Western Railway Receiving Office. He sent out twenty-five coaches
daily, almost exclusively down the southern and western roads, among
them the Portsmouth and the Hastings mails, the latter a pair-horse
concern.
William Gilbert, of the “Blossoms” inn, Laurence Lane, Cheapside, had
also a pair-horse mail--the “Brighton”--the “Tantivy,” Birmingham
coach, and a fast night coach to Manchester, the “Peveril of the Peak.”
Seventeen other coaches left his yard.
Joseph Hearn, proprietor of the “King’s Arms,” Snow Hill, was monarch
among the slow-coaches, of which he had twenty-two. Among them were
the Bicester “Regulator,” the Boston “Perseverance,” and the Leicester
and Market Harborough “Convenience”--names that do not spell speed.
Even his Aylesbury “Despatch” was a slow affair, reaching that town in
six hours, at the rate of six and a half miles an hour.
Many great coach-proprietors were established in the chief
provincial towns. Bretherton, of Liverpool, described by Chaplin as
“an exceedingly opulent man,” Wetherald, at Manchester, Teather,
of Carlisle, Waddell, at Birmingham, are names that stand forth
prominently. The cross-country rivalry between these men was quite as
bitter as that which raged among the Londoners, and, although with the
lapse of time the exact explanation of the following extraordinary
epitaph on a coach-proprietor of Bolton, Lancashire, cannot be given,
it is doubtless to be found in one of these business feuds:--
“Sacred to the Memory of Frederic Webb, Coach Proprietor, of the
firm of Webb, Houlden, & Co., of Bolton, who departed this life
the 9th December, 1825, aged 23 years. Not being able to combat
the malevolence of his enemies, who sought his destruction, he
was taken prematurely from an affectionate loving wife and infant
child, to deplore the loss of a good husband, whose worth was
unknown, and who died _an honest man_.”
The inference intended to be drawn was obviously that the others were
not honest men; but, honest or not, they are all gone to their account,
and the world has forgotten them and their contentions. Only the stray
historian of these things comes upon their infrequent footmarks, and
wonders greatly at their elemental ferocity.