testimony, for it is De Quincey’s:—“On any night the spectacle was
beautiful. The absolute perfection of all the appointments about the
carriages and the harness, their strength, their brilliant cleanliness,
their beautiful simplicity—but, more than all, the royal magnificence of
the horses—were what might first have fixed the attention. Every
carriage, on every morning of the year, was taken down to an official
inspector for examination—wheels, axles, linchpins, poles, glasses,
lamps, were all critically probed and tested. Every part of every
carriage had been cleaned, every horse had been groomed, with as much
rigour as if they belonged to a private gentleman; and that part of the
spectacle offered itself always. . . . Every moment are shouted aloud by
the post-office servants, and summoned to draw up, the great ancestral
names of cities known to history through a thousand years—Lincoln,
Winchester, Portsmouth, Gloucester, Oxford, Bristol, Manchester, York,
Newcastle, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Perth, Stirling, Aberdeen—expressing the
grandeur of the empire by the antiquity of its towns, and the grandeur of
the mail establishment by the diffusive radiation of its separate
missions. Every moment you hear the thunder of lids locked down upon the
mail-bags. That sound to each individual mail is the signal for drawing
off, which process is the finest part of the entire spectacle. Then came
the horses into play. Horses! Can these be horses that bound off with
the action and gestures of leopards? What stir! what sea-like ferment!
what a thundering of wheels! what a trampling of hoofs! what a sounding
of trumpets!”
IV
NOW for Post Office history. Much has been made at the “old” General
Post Office in St. Martin’s-le-Grand; and although the building was not
in existence until 1829, it has sent forth and received many
mail-coaches. Its disappearance in 1912, we say, therefore severs the
last link by which this busy quarter was connected with the old days.
[Picture: The Mails starting from the General Post Office, 1832]
The story of the Post Office goes back long before the G.P.O. was
situated either here or at Lombard Street. The original Post Office was
off Eastcheap. When it was there, the course of post between London and
Edinburgh took three days. The first regular service was established in
1635, when Charles the First, to end the inefficiency of the
communications between the two capitals, inaugurated “a running post or
two, to run night and day, between Edinburgh and London, to go thither
and come back again in six days.” We may suppose that this did not work
very well, for in 1649 we find the city of London establishing a post of
its own with a regular staff of runners and postmasters between London
and the North.
But with the Restoration came the establishment of the General Post
Office and an instantaneous decline in the efficiency of the post, six
days instead of three being taken for the single journey to or from
Edinburgh. This roused the towns on the way to indignant protests, and
the post was accelerated to “three and a half or four days,” the
acceleration being slower than the original time.
But however keenly the intermediate towns may have felt this, it could
not have mattered much to Edinburgh, whose mail-bag was very scanty. One
day in 1745, we are told, the mail brought only one letter, for the
British Linen Company; and on another day in the same year only one was
despatched to London, for Sir William Pulteney, the banker.
In 1750 things were no better, but eight years later an Edinburgh
merchant, George Chalmers, procured an improvement. Before 1758 the
Great North Mail set out three times a week and took eighty-seven hours
in going north, and not fewer than one hundred and thirty-one from
Edinburgh to London. This last itinerary was lengthened so greatly in
time on account of stoppages made at Berwick and at Newcastle, ranging
from three hours at one to twenty-four at the other. These delays
Chalmers, in corresponding with the officials, proved to be quite
needless. He also induced them to avoid the old and longer route through
Thorne and York and to take the alternative road by Boroughbridge, thus
shortening the journey by twelve miles. The times were then fixed at
eighty-two hours for the northward-bound mail, and eighty-five for the
south. For his services the Government made Chalmers a grant of £600.
Some years afterwards he induced the Post Office to run the mails six
days a week.
But a greater than Chalmers was at hand in Palmer, the organiser of the
mail-coach service. Palmer accomplished, according to De Quincey, “two
things very hard to do on our little planet, the earth, however cheap
they may be held by eccentric people in comets: he had invented
mail-coaches, and he had married the daughter of a duke. He was
therefore just twice as great a man as Galileo, who did certainly invent
(or, which is the same thing, discover) the satellites of Jupiter, those
very next things extant to mail-coaches in the two capital pretensions of
speed and keeping time; but, on the other hand, who did not marry the
daughter of a duke.” Palmer married, in point of fact, Lady Madeline
Gordon, daughter of the Duke of Richmond, but De Quincey does not lay the
stress he should have done on his having fought his postal scheme to
success against the obstinacy and red-tapeism of the Post Office
officials, itself an enterprise sufficient to daunt any but the stoutest
heart. Government officials have a wonderful power of passive resistance
and an insensibility to argument and proof which might be envied by a
lamp-post. It was thought a brilliant rejoinder when one of these Post
Office dunderheads replied to Palmer’s scheme for supplanting the slow
and uncertain post-boys by fast coaches with the observation that there
was no reason why the post should be the swiftest conveyance in England!
No doubt this witty gentleman resigned in an access of mortification when
Palmer actually succeeded in being appointed Controller-General of the
Post Office, with a salary of £1,500 a year and a two and a-half per
cent. commission on a rise of the income above the £240,000 at which it
stood when he was placed at the head of affairs. The first mail-coach
was put upon the Bath Road on the 8th of August 1784, and its success was
so great and immediate that the chief towns of the kingdom presently
began to petition for similar facilities to be accorded them. York was
the first successful applicant, and a mail was put on the road between
London, York, and Edinburgh in October of the same year, taking three
nights and two days to perform the journey. This was not a very
remarkable rate of speed, to be sure, but the times were not so hurried
then. A greater speed was attained when the roads began to be
reorganised by Telford and Macadam. Macadam’s method of metalling the
existing roads and Telford’s reconstruction of steep and winding highways
produced great results. To Macadam was due the greater speeds attained
at last on the mail route between London and Edinburgh; for, although
Telford’s improved road was begun in 1824, it was never completed owing
to the introduction of railways. Government had, in fact, by this time
recognised the necessity of good roads, and, fresh from the
reorganisation of the mail route between London and Holyhead, had
determined on an improved communication between England and Scotland.
This road, already referred to, was to be straight and as flat as
engineering science could contrive it, and a portion—that between
Edinburgh and Morpeth—was constructed about 1824, going by way of Soutra
Hill, Lauderdale, Coldstream, and Wooler. The route between London and
Morpeth was also surveyed and authorised, and portions between London and
York actually begun, when the opening of the Stockton and Darlington
Railway in 1825 convinced the authorities that the days of the road were
numbered.
But although it was long apparent that a change was impending, coaches
were not entirely run off the Great North Road for another twenty years,
and Post Office surveyors were still busy expediting the mails over short
cuts and roads of more favourable gradients. Thus in 1832 we find the
Scotch mail going by way of Selby. Here is the official time-bill for
that year:—
MILES
LONDON dep. 8.00 P.M.
12½ Waltham Cross arr. 9.25 ,,
22 Ware ,, 10.26 ,,
35½ Buckland ,, 11.52 ,,
45½ Arrington ,, 12.57 A.M.
60 Huntingdon ,, 2.30 ,,
65¼ Alconbury Hill ,, 3.03 ,,
72¼ Stilton ,, 3.45 ,,
87 Stamford ,, 5.15 ,,
95 Stretton ,, 6.03 ,,
108½ GRANTHAM arr. 7.23 ,,
dep. 8.03 ,,
115½ Long Bennington arr. 8.53 ,,
122¼ Newark ,, 9.30 ,,
132¾ Scarthing Moor ,, 10.34 ,,
145½ Barnby Moor ,, 11.49 ,,
155¼ Rossington Bridge ,, 12.47 P.M.
159½ Doncaster ,, 1.12 ,,
166¼ Askerne ,, 1.55 ,,
179¾ Selby ,, 3.21 ,,
194 YORK arr. 4.54 ,,
dep. 5.34 ,,
207¼ Easingwold arr. 6.54 ,,
218 Thirsk ,, 7.58 ,,
227 Northallerton ,, 8.52 ,,
243 Darlington ,, 10.28 ,,
261½ Durham ,, 12.23 ,,
276 NEWCASTLE-ON-TYNE arr. 1.50 ,,
dep. 1.53 ,,
290½ Morpeth arr. 3.22 ,,
300½ Felton ,, 4.23 ,,
309¾ Alnwick ,, 5.17 ,,
324½ BELFORD arr. 6.47 ,,
dep. 7.17 ,,
329¾ Berwick-on-Tweed arr. 8.47 ,,
353½ Houndswood ,, 10.09 ,,
369¼ Dunbar ,, 11.41 ,,
380¼ Haddington ,, 12.45 P.M.
397¼ EDINBURGH ,, 2.23 ,,
_Time_—42 hours 23 minutes
The “up” mail was timed considerably slower, 45 hours 39 minutes.
The punctuality of the mails was so great that the Glasgow and the
Edinburgh mails, which went by Shoreditch and Islington respectively, and
took different routes as far as Alconbury Hill, where their roads met,
could always be depended upon to keep the official interval of four
minutes which divided them at that point. Their route was identical
between Alconbury Hill and Doncaster, where the Glasgow mail branched off
to the left to Ferrybridge and Greta Bridge.
This was the _ne plus ultra_ of Post Office enterprise on the Great North
Road, and closes an era.
V
WE have seen with what extraordinary speed letters were carried in the
time of Charles the First between London and Edinburgh; but how did folk
travel? They rode horseback, from kings, to nobles, and down to
merchants; princesses, madam, or my lady riding pillion. Private
carriages—“coaches,” they were called—had been introduced in 1553, when
Queen Mary rode in one, as a novelty, from London to Westminster, drawn
by six horses. In 1556 Sir Thomas Hoby had one of these strange
machines, and just because the fact is expressly mentioned we see how
rare they were. In fact, they went out of use altogether for a time, and
were reintroduced by William Boonen, Queen Elizabeth’s Dutch coachman, in
1564. On this occasion they came into better favour, and their numbers
must have greatly increased, for a Bill “to restrain their excessive use”
was introduced to Parliament, and rejected, in 1601. But both their make
and the fearful condition of the roads forbade them being used in the
country. Moreover, they had only shutters in place of windows, the first
“glass coach” being that used by the Duke of York in 1661.
It was in 1658 that the first stage-coach between London and Edinburgh
was put on the road. It set out once a fortnight, but the length of the
whole journey and just what kind of vehicle it was are unknown. Four
days, however, and two pounds were consumed in travelling between London
and York. The cost of the whole journey was four pounds.
In 1734 things do not seem to have been much better, John Dale
advertising in the May of that year that a coach would take the road from
Edinburgh for London “towards the end of each week, to be performed in
nine days, or three days sooner than any coach that travels that road.”
After this matters went from bad to worse, and speed was slower twenty
years later than it had been for a long time.
The _Edinburgh Courant_ of 1754 contained the following advertisement:—
THE EDINBURGH STAGE COACH,
for the better accommodation of passengers, will be altered to a new
genteel, two-end, glass coach machine, being on steel springs,
exceeding light, and easy to go in ten days in summer and twelve in
winter; to set out the
FIRST TUESDAY IN MARCH,
and continue it from HOSEA EASTGATE’S, the COACH AND HORSES in DEAN
STREET, SOHO, LONDON, and from JOHN SOMERVILLE’S in the CANONGATE,
EDINBURGH, every other Tuesday, and meet at BURROW BRIDGE on Saturday
night and set out from thence on Monday morning, and get to LONDON
and EDINBURGH on Friday. In winter to set out from LONDON to
EDINBURGH every other (alternate) Monday morning, and to go to BURROW
BRIDGE on Saturday night. Passengers to pay as usual.
Performed, if God permits, by
Your dutiful servant,
HOSEA EASTGATE.
Even Hosea Eastgate’s conveyance stands forth as a miracle of swiftness
and frequency when compared with the coach of 1763, which set out once a
month and took a _fortnight_, _if the weather was favourable_! Probably
this degeneracy of coaches was due to the practice of travellers clubbing
together to hire a post-chaise for the journey. This was a plan
eminently characteristic of the Scottish mind. It both secured quicker
travelling and saved expense. The Edinburgh papers of that time often
contained advertisements inquiring for a fellow-passenger to share these
costs and charges.
Edinburgh, as a matter of fact, even now a far cry, was beyond the ken of
most Londoners in those times, and London was to Edinburgh folks a place
dimly heard of, and never to be visited, save perhaps once in a lifetime.
York, half-way, was better known, and was well supplied with coaches.
The “Black Swan” in Coney Street, York, received and sent forth a
coach—in after years known as the “York Old Coach”—so early as 1698.
This appears to have always laid up for the winter and come out again in
April, like the cuckoo, as a harbinger of spring. One of these spring
announcements was discovered, some years since, in an old drawer at the
“Black Swan.” It runs:—
YORK Four Days
Stage-Coach.
_Begins on Friday the_ 12_th_ _of April_ 1706.
ALL that are defirous to pafs from _London_ to _York_, or from York
to London, or any other Place on that Road; Let them Repair to the
_Black Swan_ in _Holbourn_ in _London_, and to the _Black Swan_ in
_Coney Street_ in _York_.
At both which Places they may be received in a Stage Coach every
_Monday_, _Wednefday_, and _Friday_, which performs the whole Journey
in Four Days (_if God permits_). And fets forth at Five in the
Morning.
And returns from _York_ to _Stamford_ in two days, and from
_Stamford_ by _Huntingdon_ to _London_ in two days more. And the
like Stages on their return.
Allowing each Paffenger 14lb. weight, and all above 3d. a Pound.
Performed By
_Benjamin Kingman_.
_Henry Harrifon_.
_Walter Bayne’s_.
Alfo this gives Notice that Newcaftle Stage Coach fets out from York
every Monday and Friday, and from Newcaftle every Monday and Friday.
It is singular that this coach should have had a “Black Swan” at either
end of its journey. The London house was in later years the well-known
“Black Swan Distillery” in Holborn.
To display the many coaches, their names and times of arrival and
departure in these pages would afford but dull reading. Besides,
Paterson and Cary, those encyclopædic old road-books, contain lists of
them in interminable array: the “Highflyers,” “Rockinghams,” “Unions,”
“Amitys,” “Defiances,” “Wellingtons,” “Bluchers,” “Nelsons,” “Rodneys,”
and what not. There was so extraordinary a run upon these popular names
that they are often triplicated—and sometimes occur six times—on the
local and byroad coaches; with the result that if the traveller desired
to travel by the “Highflyer,” let us say, to Edinburgh, he had to
carefully sort it out from other “Highflyers” which flew not only to
Leeds but to all kinds of obscure places.
The early stage-coaches must have been terribly trying. They were, as
Byron says of the “kibitka,” “a cursed kind of carriage without springs.”
As time went on they were not only provided with glass windows, but—as
duly set forth in the advertisements—were furnished with springs and
cushions. The resources of civilisation were not exhausted at this
point, for it was gravely announced that the guards were armed, and the
coaches were bullet-proof!
The life of a coach-proprietor was all hard work, with no little anxiety
attached. Up early and to bed late—for on however large a scale his
business might be, it was one peculiarly dependent upon the master’s
eye—he knew the inner meaning of the primeval curse, and earned his
living by the sweat of his brow. And, lest that was not sufficient, the
Government sweated him in a financial sense. The coaching business was
the especial prey of Chancellors of the Exchequer, and yielded huge
returns. If it be argued that coach-proprietors, unlike railway
companies, had no parliamentary powers to obtain, and no enormous
expenses for purchase of land and construction of lines, this can be met
by setting forth the heavy duties and taxes, the great outlay on turnpike
tolls, and the relatively high cost of haulage by horses. The initial
expenses of a railway are immense, the upkeep of lines and buildings
large; but the actual cost of steam-power as against horse-traction is
absurdly little. Railways, of course, pay passenger duty, and immense
sums in the aggregate for rates and taxes; but they are not burdened as
the coaches were. If it cost from £3 10s. to £6 15s. to travel “outside”
or “inside” by ordinary stage-coach between London and Edinburgh, those
high figures were the necessary results of Government exactions and
turnpike imposts. Duties and taxes varied from time to time, but a
stage-coach licensed, about 1830, to carry fifteen passengers paid a duty
of threepence a mile, whether the coach carried a full load or not.
Thus, for every single journey, a coach licensed to that extent paid £4
19s. 3d. A coach could be licensed to carry a smaller number, when the
duties would be proportionately lighter, and coaches licensed for fifteen
or so during the summer would take out a licence for perhaps six or eight
in winter, when travellers were few and far between.
Suppose, now, that we roughly add up the working expenses of a
stage-coach to Edinburgh. We start with the passenger-duty of £4 19s.
3d. To this we add, say, £4 for hire of coach at the rate of 2½d. a
mile; £4 19s. 3d. for horsing, at 3d. a mile; and £6 12s., turnpikes, at
4d. This gives a total of £20 10s. 6d. But we have not yet done with
expenses, including wages for coachmen, guards, ostlers, and helpers;
advertising, rent, oil for lamps, greasing, washing, etc.
There would be six, or perhaps seven, coachmen, one driving about sixty
miles, when he would be relieved by another; and perhaps four guards,
because guards, not having the physical exertion of driving, could go
longer journeys. The proportion of their week’s wages must be added to
the debit account for the one journey, together with the proportion of
the £5 yearly tax payable for every coachman and guard employed, and a
similar annual sum for the coach itself. Any more items? Oh yes!
Office expenses, clerks, etc., and incidentals. If we lump all these
items together, they will mean an additional £12 cost on every journey to
or from Edinburgh, bringing the cost to the proprietors to over £32.
Now for the other side of the account. Our coach is licensed for
fifteen, and if we carry our four insides and eleven outsides all the
way, it holds £65 10s. at the fares named above—about 4d. and 2d. a mile
respectively. But how often were those fifteen “through” passengers?
Not more, perhaps, than half would be bound for Edinburgh. Others might
alight at York, or even at Grantham or Stamford. Others, again, might go
to Newcastle. For fares thus lost, the proprietors looked to chance
passengers; but the shillings and perhaps the two shillings taken on the
way for short distances went, by common consent, into the coachmen’s and
guards’ pockets, and were never entered on the way-bill. In this manner,
and by their “tips,” the men added to their somewhat meagre wages, which,
rightly considered, were retaining-fees rather than full payment. This
practice was generally known as “shouldering.” Some proprietors,
however, were stricter than others, and did not allow it. Of course it
went on all the same, and the standing toast which they were compelled to
give at annual coaching dinners, “Success to shouldering,” with the
proviso, “but don’t let me find you at it,” was a tacit acknowledgment of
the custom. In later days, when proprietors paid slightly higher wages
and tried to forbid tips, the coachmen were loth to give up these odd
sums, for the diminution of tips was greater than the increase of wages.
They then pocketed larger fares, and called the practice “swallowing.” A
tale is told of a coach approaching town, and the coachman asking his
box-seat passenger if he had any luggage. “No,” said the passenger.
“Then,” rejoined the coachman, “do you mind getting down here, sir,
because I mean to swallow you.” The passenger got down, and was
“swallowed” accordingly.
The average takings of the coach would certainly never, at the best of
it, come to more than £50 a journey, leaving a balance of £15 10s.
profit. Now, taking a year of three hundred and thirteen days, and
coaches “up” and “down,” this gives a profit of £9,702—not, be it borne
in mind, going to one man. The “end men” had the greatest share, as they
had also the heaviest expenses, and the “middle-ground men” got little
beyond the mileage on which they horsed the coaches; but with twenty-five
stages or so, and twenty-five participants in the profits, it will be
seen that the individual earnings on one coach could not be classed very
high.
VI
IT was a costly as well as a lengthy business to travel from London to
Edinburgh. Not so lengthy, of course, by mail as by stage-coach, but
much more expensive. If you wished to take it comfortably during the
forty-two hours and a-half or so of travelling, you went inside,
especially if it happened to be in winter; but an inside place cost
eleven guineas and a-half, which was thought a much larger sum in 1830
than it would be nowadays. Accordingly, the stalwart and the not
particularly well-to-do, who at the same time wanted to travel quickly,
went outside, whereby they saved no less than four guineas.
But let not the reader think that these respective sums of eleven and
a-half and seven and a-half guineas comprised the whole of the
traveller’s expenses in the old days. There were numerous people to tip,
such as porters, waiters, and last, but certainly not the least of them,
the coachmen and guards, who at the end of their respective journeys,
when they left their seats to a new guard or a new Jehu, “kicked” the
passengers, as the expressive phrase went, for their respective two
shillings or so. To be kicked at intervals in this figurative manner,
all the way between London and Edinburgh, was not physically painful, but
it came expensive; and what with the necessary meals and refreshments
during those forty-two hours or so, it could scarce have cost an “inside”
less than fifteen guineas, or an “outside” less than eleven.
Now let us take the mazy “Bradshaw” or the simpler “A B C” railway
guides, and see what it will cost us in time and pocket to reach the
capital of Scotland. A vast difference, you may be sure. It is possible
to go by three different routes, but the distance is much the same, and
the times vary little, whether you go by Midland, London and
North-Western, or by the Great Northern Railway. The last-named has, on
the whole, the best of it, with a mileage of 395 miles, and a fast train
performing the journey in seven hours and twenty-five minutes. It costs
by any of these routes for first-class travelling, which answers to the
“inside” of old times, fifty-seven shillings and sixpence, and thirty-two
shillings and eightpence by third-class, equivalent to the “outside.”
{40} You need not tip unless you like, and even then but once or twice,
and assuredly no one will ask you for one. Whether you travel “first” or
“third,” a dining-saloon and an excellent dinner are at your service for
a moderate sum, and the sun scarce rises or sets with greater certainty
than that the Scotch express or its London equivalent will set out or
reach its destination at its appointed minute.
Accidents—when they happen—are beyond comparison more fearful on the
railway than ever they were on the coaches; but they are rare indeed when
it is considered how many trains are run. Coaching accidents were
frequent, but just because they seldom ended fatally they do not figure
so largely in coaching annals as might be expected. A dreadful accident,
however, happened in 1805 to the Leeds “Union” coach, owing to the reins
breaking and the horses dashing the vehicle against a tree. This
occurred at a point about half a mile from Ferrybridge. William Hope,
the coachman, and an outside passenger were killed, and many others
seriously injured. The jury imposed a deodand of £5 on the coach and £10
on the horses.