COACH LEGISLATION
“The law,” said Mr. Bumble, “is a hass!” and scarcely ever has
it appeared more asinine than in its dealings with the roads and
road-traffic. Legislative traffic restrictions were very early
introduced, originally on behalf of the highways; and not until the
coaching age was well advanced did it appear necessary to intervene
with enactments protecting the passengers as well as the road surface.
There was perhaps no necessity to legislate against reckless driving in
the early days of coaching; for, with the singularly bad state of the
roads, the clumsy build of the original vehicles, and the exhaustion
of the teams that drew them great distances without a change, it would
have passed the wit of man to be a charioteer with the dashing methods
attributed to Jehu, that Biblical hero, the son of Nimshi, who, we are
told, “drove furiously.”
The first restrictions to be put in force were those levelled against
the heavy road-traffic of the time of James I. By them, four-wheeled
carts and waggons were, in 1622, absolutely prohibited, and loads
above 20 cwt. forbidden: “No carrier or other person whatsoever shall
travel with any wain, cart, or carriage with more than two wheels, nor
above the weight of twenty hundred, nor shall draw any wain, cart, or
carriage with more than five horses at once.” This was confirmed in
1629. It seems an arbitrary and merely freakish act, thus to interfere
with the traffic of the roads; but we must remember what those roads
were like, and consider that our ancestors were not irrational puppets,
but living, breathing, and reasoning men, whose doings, when considered
in relation with the times, the limitations that obscured their view,
and the disabilities that surrounded them, were eminently logical.
It is not easy to be wiser than one’s generation, and those who are
have generally been accounted geniuses by later ages and madmen by
their contemporaries. Even when ideas are of the enlightened kind,
they are not readily to be applied when greatly in advance of their
era; for stubborn facts, difficult to remove or improve away, commonly
delay the practical application of the most brilliant theories. If a
seventeenth-century MacAdam had arisen to preach the gospel of good
roads, instead of repressive regulations for bad ones, he would still
have had to overcome the difficulty of finding road-metal in districts
far removed from stone; and how he would or could have surmounted that
impediment when all roads were bad and the transport of materials
from a distance expensive and tedious, we will leave the reader to
determine.
To look upon our forbears, therefore, as though they were strange
creatures whose movements were not governed by as much common sense as
our own would be absurd.
The reason for the regulations proclaimed in 1622 and again in 1629 was
set forth in the statement that the four-wheeled waggons used up to
that time had, with their excessive burdens, so galled the highways and
the very foundations of bridges that they had become common nuisances.
The carriers and drovers and their kind were, in 1627, forbidden to
travel on Sunday, under a penalty of 20s. By the terms of this Act,
which began by stating that “the Lord’s Day, commonly called Sunday,”
was “much broken and profaned by carriers, waggoners, carters, wainmen,
butchers, and drovers of cattle, to the great dishonour of God and
reproach of religion,” any of these persons travelling or causing
their servants to travel or come to their inns on Sundays could be
convicted on the evidence of witnesses, or on their own confession, at
any time up to six months after the commission of the offence, and the
magistrates could at their discretion award one-third of the penalty to
the informer and two-thirds to the poor of the parish. Thus early did
the informer, who was in later years to play so important a part, come
upon the scene. The notion of a conscious-stricken carrier or drover
confessing to the heinous crime of travelling on Sunday is amusing.
The next intervention was that of the Sunday Trading Act of 1676, a
Puritanical measure whose enactment in the licentious reign of Charles
II. is still the wonder of students of social history. Had it been
a measure originating with the Commonwealth, its appearance in the
statute book could be readily explained, but, as matters stand, we
are reduced to assuming that, although King, Court and Society might
be vicious, yet Parliament, and England as a whole, were still deeply
tinged with strict Sabbatarian sentiments. The Act forbade the sale or
exposing for sale of any wares of merchandise whatsoever on the Sabbath
day. Drovers, waggoners, horse-coursers, butchers and higglers were
not to come to their inns on Sundays, under a penalty of 20s.; and no
work, except works of necessity and charity, was to be undertaken. The
service in private families and at inns was allowed, and meat might be
dressed on that day, and milk cried before 9 a.m. or after 4 p.m. But
plying for hire and travelling were not then considered necessary on
that day, and so enjoyed no special exemption. The cooking of meat and
the selling of milk only enjoyed this Sunday franchise because milk and
meat are perishable. It was this consideration that, in 1690, brought
about an amendment by which the crying of that exceptionally perishable
fish, mackerel, was legalised on the Sabbath.
Not a wheel wagged, therefore, on Sundays in the early days of
coaching, and the tradition against Sunday travel long outlasted
the legal disability; so that although mail-coaches were never a
Sabbatarian institution, the stage-coaches on that day were always few
while coaching lasted. The tradition was weaker on the Brighton Road
than elsewhere. That was a fashionable road, and fashion has ever been
irreligious, leaving the people outside its ranks to be the bulwarks of
the Seventh Day. Thus we find the first Sunday coach between London and
Brighton established in 1792.
The Sunday Trading Act has never been wholly repealed, and it is still
possible for sour and malignant persons to intervene, under the ready
cloak of religious and Sabbatarian feeling, and to lay information
against shopkeepers who open on Sundays, and so cause the tobacconists,
the hairdressers and newsagents, who commonly continue their business
on that day, to be summoned and fined for every such offence. The Act
only generally comprehended hackney-coaches, but that term included the
stages, which were thus penalised until 1710, when, by the 9th of Anne,
c. 23, hackney-coachmen and chairmen might ply.
It is a curious and noteworthy point about this obsolescent Act that
when an information is laid the police have no optional course. They
must issue a summons, while the magistrates are bound to fine offenders
on their being convicted. It depends, however, upon the character and
the prejudices of the bench whether the penalty may be a merely nominal
one, carrying an implied disapproval of the informer’s action, or the
full statutory fine of 5s. and costs. We here observe the ill which it
is still possible for the common informer to work, but the great days
of these gentry are gone.
Parliament, never tired of legislating for roads and vehicles,
produced in course of time a strange and bewildering medley of laws,
often contradictory of one another. Among these Acts, those for the
regulation of waggons were the most numerous. An early curiosity of the
statute book in this connection is the Act of Charles II. forbidding
carters and waggoners to drive six or more horses tandem. Already, it
appears, the old prohibition of four-wheeled carts or wains, in 1622
and 1629, was obsolete. Then followed an Act of William III. expressly
forbidding waggon-horses being yoked in pairs; but another of the same
reign withdrew this prohibition, and, in allowing pairs, limited the
team to eight animals. In the succeeding reign of Anne this limit was
reduced to six in pairs, except uphill, when additional horses might be
yoked on. The prohibition of horses going abreast points to the extreme
narrowness of the roads in many parts of the country at that time, just
as its supersession by the Act permitting pairs would appear to be a
result of road-widening.
To make a digest of this whole series of enactments and the clauses
repealed and re-enacted would not only tax the acumen and industry of
a Parliamentary lawyer, but the result would be tedious. Let us, then,
pass to the Act called, in Parliamentary jargon, “24th George II., c.
43.” This came into operation July 1st, 1752, and took off one of
the six horses allowed to waggons by the Parliament of Queen Anne. No
carriage or waggon drawn by more than five horses, except up steep
hills, was permitted to pass through any toll-gate or toll-bar, unless
the sum of twenty shillings over and above the usual tolls was paid;
and any person taking off any horse from such vehicle, with intent
to avoid the payment of the additional toll, was, on conviction of
the offence, to forfeit £5 to the informer, who was given the right
to levy a distress on the offender’s goods if he could not recover
the penalty in any other way. At the same time, no waggon was to pass
which weighed, with its contents, more than three tons; and weighing
engines were to be provided by turnpike trustees, to see that the law
was not infringed. This was a very determined Act, but those who drew
it were very well satisfied that, considering the comparatively few
roads already turnpiked, its meshes could not be made small enough to
catch those offenders who constantly carried weights up to five tons
upon the roads and yoked up ten or twelve horses to drag the enormous
load. It was obvious that the only thing the waggoners had to do in
order to evade the law was--risking the chance of finding the way
impassable--to turn aside on nearing a turnpike and to make a circuit
along parish roads where no toll-houses existed. Accordingly, those
who framed the Act inserted what was intended to be a very alarming
and altogether disabling clause. It was made an unlawful act to drive
off in this manner into adjacent roads for the purpose of avoiding
toll, and a penalty was set up for so doing. This was the forfeiting
of one horse (not being the shaft or thill horse) and “all his gear
and accoutrements.” This phrase for harness strikes one as being
magnificent, and almost raises the sturdy Suffolk “Punch” or the
Lincolnshire carthorse to the status of a military hero.
No enforcement of this penalty can be found, but it is not to be
supposed that it was never made, although, to be sure, the clause
had loopholes sufficiently wide for the traditional coach-and-six to
be easily driven through. Apart from the questionable legality of
forbidding common roads to traffic, it would have needed no very able
lawyer to successfully defend an offender charged with being on a
bye-route “with intent to defraud” the tolls. Half a dozen sufficient
explanations would have been ready. The waggoner might have missed his
way; it might have been his best way--and so forth.
This Act, and others of like nature, especially exempted certain
classes of waggons and carts, particularly agricultural vehicles; while
his Majesty’s War Office and military commanders might use waggons
carrying any weight they thought proper and drawn by as many horses as
might be thought necessary. The law was, in fact, framed to protect the
roads against traders, who were thought to be profiting greatly by the
growth of manufactures and not contributing sufficiently to the upkeep
of the roads which it was thought their excessive loads did much to
wear out. The Acts had force in the country generally, but London and a
radius from twenty-five to thirty miles were usually excepted.
A very lengthy and severe General Turnpike Act, embodying some of the
provisions already detailed, with many new ones, was that of 1766.
Preambles to Acts of Parliament are generally exaggerated statements
of the necessities that procured the passing of the enactments to
which they sometimes afford astonishing prefaces. They are, indeed,
officially so recognised, and lawyers accordingly describe them as
“common form.” The preamble, however, to the Act of 1766 was an exact
statement of affairs, and in saying that “the laws for the general
regulation of turnpike roads are very numerous and in some respects
ineffectual,” it merely set forth a commonplace of the time.
For a number of years before the passing of this measure, lengthy and
heated controversies had arisen on the subject of waggons and roads,
and as a result it was generally conceded that wheels with narrow tyres
and heavy loads cut up the highways into ruts, while broad wheels
so distributed the weight that they greatly minimised that evil, or
even, if they were broad enough, rolled the surface into a better
condition than it was in before their passing. Inventive minds, rioting
with theories not perfectly tested, went to extremes and produced
extraordinary waggons with heavy iron rollers instead of wheels, which
would certainly have flattened out the most rugged of roads had it been
possible for horses to have moved the enormous weight. As a result
of much trial, the stage-waggons of the time were constructed with
wheels whose breadth ranged from six to nine inches, and such vehicles
enjoyed a remission of extraordinary toll in proportion to those
measurements. From 1766, then, four-wheeled waggons weighing over three
tons, with wheels less than nine inches in breadth, paid 20s. over and
above the ordinary toll; all over six tons, irrespective of wheels,
20s.; and two-wheeled carts over three tons, 20s.; while waggons
and carts so constructed with regard to long and short axletrees to
front and hind wheels that, in conjunction with the breadth of their
wheels, they rolled a track of not less than sixteen inches on either
side, paid only half of the ordinary toll levied upon wagons with a
nine-inch breadth of wheel. These provisions may perhaps seem a little
complicated, but they were a great deal more so in actual working, for
their chance of being always understood and fairly applied was small
when administered by country pike-keepers.
The maximum length and width of waggons was specified by this Act,
which declared it to be unlawful for any but timber-waggons to be of
greater breadth than four feet six inches between the axletrees, or of
a greater length than nine feet from the centre of fore wheels to that
of the hind ones. No broad-wheeled waggon was to be drawn by more than
eight horses, or two-wheeled carts by more than five, in pairs; and
narrow-wheeled waggons were not allowed more than four. A penalty of
20s. was indicated for harnessing an extra horse, in addition to the
horse being confiscated. Additional horses might be used when the roads
were covered with snow or ice, and it was left to the discretion of
turnpike trustees to allow extra horses on steep hills, in which cases
any number up to ten might be used for four-wheeled waggons, or up to
six for two-wheeled; but trustees were to carefully specify those hills
on which this indulgence was granted. Steep hills, consequently, for
many years afterwards were generally seen with notices beside the road,
where the horses might be attached. A post at the bottom announced in
large letters, “Put On,” and another, at the top, “Take Off.”
Narrow-wheeled waggons were not to be drawn by pairs. Drag-irons or
slippers to be flat, not rounded; penalty 40s. The owner’s name and
place of abode were to be painted on the most conspicuous part of each
waggon or cart, with the words “COMMON STAGE-WAGGON,” or cart, as the
case might be. It was this enactment that for many years afterwards
gave their characteristic appearance to the old stage-waggons, for the
most conspicuous place on them was undoubtedly the canvas tilt, which
was always painted as the Act directed, in very large lettering.
The Act was lavish with its pains and penalties. For using a waggon
with a false name, or without a name, 40s. was the price. The driver of
any waggon with wheels not constructed according to law, or drawn by
more horses than authorised, could be imprisoned, and powers were given
to any person to apprehend any driver in such cases. If a driver, on
coming to a toll-gate, unharnessed any horses or unloaded any part of
his load with intent to deceive or defraud the turnpike authorities, he
forfeited £5; while the owner paid the same sum in cases where waggons
were loaded to excess, and the driver became liable to be committed for
one month to a house of correction.
Among the clauses of this and other Acts it is especially forbidden to
waggoners to sit in, or drive from, their waggons. They must either
walk or ride beside them. They had, indeed, generally done so, as
the portrait of old Hobson, on horseback, shows us, or the pictures
and narratives of old road life by contemporary artists and writers
sufficiently prove; but as the Acts especially decree that waggoners
were not to ride on the waggons, the reason being that from such a
position they could not maintain sufficient control over their horses,
some of them must have done so, and perhaps have fallen asleep and so
caused accidents, just as the slumbering carters and waggoners on their
way to and from Covent Garden Market do now.
It now became the turn of the coaches to attract the attention of
legislators. They obtained this doubtful favour because it had just
occurred to the Revenue officials that, owing to the increased number
of coaches running, and the larger number of persons resorting to
them, the duty on post-horses had not grown at its accustomed rate. The
remedy ready to hand was a Stamp Office duty on stage-coaches, which
was accordingly introduced in 1776, and four-wheeled coaches paid £5
per annum. The Revenue “vampires,” as the coach-proprietors called
them, turned again to this new source of income, and in 1783 levied a
duty of a halfpenny a mile run by every stage-coach. Further measures
were introduced two years later, when the duties were revised, and
four-wheeled and two-wheeled coaches alike paid a five-shilling annual
license, and a duty of a penny a mile. From this express inclusion
of two-wheeled coaches, it would seem that some vehicles of that
nature had been introduced to evade the previous duty; but coaching
history is silent on the subject. The duty of a penny a mile was to be
paid monthly, and seven days’ notice to be given of any coach being
discontinued.
So far the legislature had only taken notice of coaches when new
sources of revenue were being sought; but an eye was already upon
their doings, an eye that had noted the increasing accidents, due to
overloading, reckless driving, and a variety of other causes. It was
not an official eye that thus ranged over the roads of the kingdom
and marked the broken limbs and contusions of the lieges, acquired
by falling from the roofs of coaches, by collisions and upsets: it
was the stern gaze, indeed, of one Richard Gamon, a private member of
Parliament, who in 1788, in the face of much opposition and ridicule,
brought in a Bill to regulate stage-coaches. It is sad to think that
even those who travelled largely by coach, whom Mr. Gamon desired to
protect, made fun of his efforts, and, when his Bill at first failed to
pass, rejoiced as greatly in the prospect of a continued free trade in
broken necks and legs as ever the coach-proprietors themselves could
have done. Some of this wit was very cheap stuff indeed. It largely
consisted of torturing Mr. Gamon’s name into “Gammon,” and that done,
the rest was easy. A morning newspaper found it possible to write
thus:--
Whene’er a loaded stage drives by
With more than it should draw,
We view the outside group, and cry,
“That’s contrary to law.”
But all the folks who clamour thus
Are totally mistaken,
For Gammon’s Bill did never pass,
So coachmen saved their bacon.
Richard Gamon was a member for Winchester in five several Parliaments.
He had been a commissioner for salt duties, but resigned that office
to enter the House. He was created a baronet in July, 1795, and died,
aged sixty-nine, April 9th, 1818. His Act was not forgotten, for in
his obituary notice it is duly stated that “with him originated that
useful and humane law for regulating the number of outside passengers
on stage-coaches.”
What with public ridicule of his original Bill and the petition of
the coach-proprietors against it, Mr. Gamon and his legislative effort
had, in one way and another, a stirring time. But in the same year he
saw it pass into an Act, and two years later he procured an amended and
stricter statute. So ridicule does not always kill.
It therefore became law that stage-coaches were not to carry more than
six passengers on the roof or more than two on the box in addition to
the coachman. For every passenger in excess the coachman was liable to
a penalty of 40s., and if he was proprietor, or part proprietor, this
penalty was raised to £4. The amended Act very materially altered this
regulation. Coaches drawn by three or more horses were allowed only
one passenger on the box and four on the roof, and those with fewer
than three horses, one passenger on the box and three on the roof. If
the pair-horse coaches did not travel farther than twenty-five miles
from London, they might carry an additional passenger on the roof. The
penalty for carrying excess passengers was severe, and ingeniously
contrived in order to wholly suppress the practice. It was 5s. each
for every supernumerary passenger, to be paid to the toll-keeper at
every turnpike gate. This was a sure method, for an excess number would
be instantly detected by pike-men eager for a chance to add to their
income. The penalty for fraudulently setting down a passenger near a
turnpike gate, and taking him up on the other side, with intent to
evade this regulation, was of a different kind, but of equal severity.
It was a term of imprisonment, of not less than fourteen days or more
than a month. The names of the coach proprietors were to be painted in
legible characters on the doors of all the coaches, with the exception
of the mails.
One section of the Acts of 1788 and 1790 had a special significance.
It forbade coachmen permitting other persons to drive, under a penalty
of from 40s. to £5. The amateur whip, of whom later writers complained
so bitterly, had evidently already been taking coaching lessons on the
road, with disastrous results. The practice was not stopped by the
Acts or the penalty, for in 1811 the prohibition was renewed, and the
fine raised. It was then to be anything between £5 and £10, at the
discretion of the magistrates.
Coachmen were viewed all round, as it were, and their failings
separately ticked off and provided against. No coachman was to leave
his box without reasonable cause or occasion, or for an unnecessary
length of time. Furious driving now being physically possible,
and frequently indulged in, was legislated for, together with any
negligence or misconduct resulting in the overturning of a coach or the
endangering of passengers. A guard of a stage-coach who should fire off
his piece unnecessarily, or for other than defensive purposes, on the
road or in any town, forfeited 20s., a penalty enlarged to £5 in 1811,
and including mail-guards.
The Act of 1806, introducing itself by stating that previous Acts were
ineffectual and insufficient, started off by repealing the provisions
of the older ones, allowing only six outsides for four-horse coaches.
They might now carry twelve outsides in summer and ten in winter,
including the guard, but exclusive of coachman. In 1811 the number
was reduced to ten throughout the year. The positions of the outsides
were specified--one passenger on the box with the coachman, three in
front of the roof, the remainder behind. Coaches with only two or three
horses now carried five outsides, exclusive of the coachman; but “all
stages called long coaches, or double-bodied coaches” might carry eight
outsides, exclusive of coachman, but including the guard. Children in
arms or under seven years of age were not to be counted, unless there
were more than one, when two were to be counted as one passenger, and
so on.
A curious section, bearing upon and corroborating what De Quincey and
others have written upon the disdain and contempt of the insides for
the outsides, is that which forbade any outside passenger to go inside
or to remain inside without the consent of one at least among those
already within; and when that permission was granted, the outsider was
to be placed next the consenting passenger.
The height to which luggage might be piled on the roof of a coach was
also carefully set forth. From March 1st, 1811, it became unlawful
for any driver, owner or proprietor to permit luggage, or indeed any
person, on the roof of a coach the top of which was more than 8 ft. 9
in. from the ground, or whose gauge was less than 4 ft. 6 in. Coaches
must then have been of an extraordinary height to need such a clause
as this. The penalty for infringing it was £5. Luggage on ordinary
stage-coaches was not to exceed 2 ft. in height, or three-horsed
coaches, 18 in., with a penalty of £5 for every inch in excess. Luggage
might be carried to a greater height if it was not, in all, more than
10 ft 9 in. from the ground. Turnpike keepers and others were given
powers to have the luggage measured, and passengers themselves might
see that it was done; and drivers refusing such measurements to be
taken were to be fined, on conviction, 50s. Passengers, too, came in
for their share. No passenger was to sit on the luggage, or the place
reserved for it, under the like penalty of 50s.
Intoxicated coachmen came in for a maximum £10 penalty, or the
alternative of a term of imprisonment not less than three months or not
exceeding six; insulting coachmen, or others exacting more than the
proper fare, or endangering passengers’ lives, a maximum of 40s., or
imprisonment of three days to one month. Mail-coach drivers, being more
responsible officials, were awarded the heavier of the above penalties
for any among a variety of possible offences--such as loitering, or
hindering the conduct of his Majesty’s mails to the next stage, or
wilfully misspending or losing time, so that the mails did not travel
at the rates of speed specified by the Postmaster-General.
Licences were to specify the number of persons inside and out the
coaches were authorised to carry; and any running without a licence, or
carrying passengers in excess, were to be fined £10 for each passenger
or additional passenger, or double if the driver were also owner or
part-owner. If the offending coachman could be proved to have carried
the additional passengers without the knowledge of the proprietors, and
if the proprietors derived no profit from it, they escaped the penalty,
which then had to be borne by the coachman, with the alternative of
imprisonment.
These regulations were notoriously broken with impunity every day in
the year. Passengers sat on the luggage if they felt so inclined;
coachmen got drunk, drove furiously, or allowed the deadly amateur to
drive; luggage was stacked to alpine heights; guards discharged their
blunderbusses everywhere from sheer wantonness or on joyful occasions;
passengers were carried to excess; and, indeed, every provision of
every Act was flagrantly violated, generally of malice aforethought,
but not seldom from very ignorance and the sheer inability of
coach-proprietors and the others concerned to keep themselves fully
informed on all points. The waggoners especially found it difficult,
with the best will in the world, to keep the law; and even the pikemen
at the turnpike gates, who were the sworn enemies of all the users of
the roads, but who were bound to comply with certain regulations, often
heedlessly omitted the formulæ as by law established, and became liable
to penalties.
This lengthy and confusing series of Acts brought into existence that
contemptible parasite, the Professional Informer. By those provisions,
which awarded sometimes the whole penalty, and in other cases the
half or two-thirds, or merely one-third, at the discretion of the
magistrates, to those persons who would discover these infringements
of the law to the authorities, the Sneak became an institution, wholly
supported by the involuntary contributions of the coaching world.
Informers swarmed on every road, and their operations were conducted
with a legal astuteness and business acumen that would have made the
fortunes of these gentry if they had directed their talents into
more reputable channels. For although Parliament had created the
Informer, it is not to be thought that he was liked by any class. He
was held to be a necessary evil, as from fear of him offenders might
be made to mend their ways, and so the roads be preserved. The end,
it was thought, justified the means employed. No one knew the Acts of
Parliament through and through, inside out and up and down, as this
detested class. Informers sometimes worked singly; at others they
constituted themselves into firms, with offices and tame attorneys, and
staffs of travelling spies, whose travelling expenses were well repaid,
with a handsome profit besides, by the materials for informations which
they had obtained on the roads. Indeed, it was stated that on certain
routes the waggoners paid annual sums to the informers, as a kind of
quit-rent against prosecutions; for, as an informer in a confidential
moment was heard to declare, the Acts were so many and so conflicting
that it was impossible to travel without a breach of the law.
The greatest of all informers was Byers, who combined the occupation
with that of a small shopkeeper in the outskirts of London. The acts
of Byers may be traced through many old files of newspapers, and even
_then_ you shall not discover his Christian name; for in those records
it is generally “Byers again!” or “Byers appeared before So-and-so
charging What’s-his-name.” Thus do we speak of the great in war, in
science, in literature; for custom tells only of a Wellington, a
Newton, or a Thackeray. We know their titles and Christian names, but
suppress them to gain a grand and monumental simplicity. To reduce the
argument to a logical conclusion, Byers was a greater than these, for
we do not even know his baptismal cognomen. He is a classic now, for
Barham accorded him the honour of an allusion and an explanatory note
in one of the _Ingoldsby Legends_--the “Lay of St. Nicholas,” where we
read:--
The Accusing Byers “flew up to Heaven’s Chancery,”
Blushing like scarlet with shame and concern.
The note describes him as “The Prince of Peripatetic Informers, and
terror of Stage Coachmen, when such things were. Alack! alack! the
Railroads have ruined his ‘vested interest.’” Time has so dimmed
the meaning of both the reference and the explanation that modern
commentators are generally puzzled by both. What he was we have stated;
what became of him when railways ruined coaching and his business at
once, we do not know. Some few details of his career have survived.
He originally seems to have been in the employ of one Johnson, an
informer, in 1824, when he obtained convictions against coachmen at
Dover and Canterbury, and on the Brighton Road; but by the summer of
the next year he had gone into the business for himself, and presently
became the Napoleon of the profession. 1825 was a busy year with him.
In August he summoned a coach-proprietor named Selby for that “on the
28th day of July he did suffer and permit a stage-coach belonging
to him, and drawn by two horses only, to carry more than the usual
number of passengers on the roof.” Moreover, he was summoned again
for not having his name painted on the door of the coach. After
much cross-swearing and discussion, the Brighton bench fined the
coach-proprietor £5 and 16s. costs.
In Bath, in the November of the same year, Byers laid so many as
thirty-four informations. The penalties to which the unfortunate
coach-proprietors and others were liable in this prodigious batch were
estimated at £500, but the newspaper reports of that time do not tell
us the total of the fines actually inflicted, so we are unable to form
any idea of the profits realised by the enterprising Byers in this
Western raid. The petty and tyrannical nature of the prosecutions may
be gathered from one instance before the Bathforum (for such was the
style and title of the local bench) magistrates. A farmer was summoned
for not having his Christian name and surname painted on the _right_ or
off-side of his waggon, and mulcted in 10s. and costs, while another
for the same mistake in the position was fined 5s. and costs; the
magistrates, in addition, holding that the strict letter of the law
required not only the name of the owner and that of the town, but the
street as well.
A great sheaf of informations was laid by him at Brighton in July 1827.
William Blunden, proprietor of a stage-van, was summoned--not for
carrying more passengers than he should, but for not having painted
on his conveyance the number of passengers his licence entitled him
to carry. A £5 fine was the result, of which Byers was awarded 50s.
and costs. In another of his cases on this occasion the informer did
not come off victorious. It was not his master-mind that had prepared
the cases, but that of one of his hirelings, Aaron Rolland, and there
was a fatal flaw in this particular one. It was a summons against
Snow, the Brighton proprietor, for carrying passengers in excess; but,
unfortunately for the prosecution, the coach was not plying for hire on
that occasion, and Byers suffered defeat.
In this same year Byers was arrested and imprisoned for debt, but he
was soon out again and prosecuting with redoubled energy. In November
William Cripps, of the firm of Cripps & Wilkins, coach-proprietors,
appeared at his instance before the Brighton magistrates, charged with
permitting a name other than that of the licensees to be painted on his
coach. The name was that of the afterwards celebrated Henry Stevenson,
of the “Age.” It was placed there with an idea of securing patronage
for the coach, and it was contended in court, that forty names might so
be painted on the panel of the coach, if the proprietors liked. But the
bench held otherwise, and imposed two mitigated penalties of 50s. each
with costs, it being the first offence.
In August 1830, Byers procured three fines of £10 each and costs in an
overloading case against Francis Vickers. In this affair the methods
of himself and his spies were disclosed, for it appeared that the spy
was watching the coaches from the upstairs window of a public-house.
But already, for some time past, one of Byers’ men had set up for
himself as a coachman’s lawyer, and, coming from the opposition camp,
of course brought with him a great deal of special knowledge. From
this time Byers’ business waned. The early steam-carriages of 1826 had
foreshadowed the end of the coaching age, and when railways came the
informers’ business was ruined. True, they might still make a trifle
out of the surviving waggons, and it was possible, now and again,
to catch a pikeman not giving a ticket when toll was paid, or not
having his own name painted on his toll-board as collector when he had
succeeded some other pikeman; but the penalties for these offences
were, like the offences themselves, trivial. In short, informing ceased
to pay its travelling expenses.
Among the many enactments for the protection of the public was
one forbidding all four horses galloping at the same time.
Mail-contractors, however, finding that they could not maintain the
speed necessary to fulfil their contracts without galloping, generally
secured a certain number of exceptionally fast trotters, for which
they paid high prices, in order to have one in every team. Such an one
was pretty widely known down the road as “the Parliamentary horse.”
Proprietors of fast day-coaches, however, infringed this provision of
the Act every day, as indeed every Act was continually infringed.
The last years of coaching were marked by a reduction in the duties on
stage-carriages, long urged by the coaching interest, and introduced by
the Act of August 24th, 1839. It was a grudging reduction, and came too
late to be of much relief to an oppressed industry. Up to that date the
mileage duty on passengers was on the graduated scale of 1d. a mile if
licensed to carry four; 1½d. if licensed for six; 2d. for nine; 2½d.
for twelve; 3d. for fifteen; and 3½d. for eighteen; whether running
fully loaded or not. It was always open for proprietors to license
for more or less, according to the season or their own requirements;
but, on the other hand, if in view of a slack season they licensed for
a small number and then on one of their journeys took up additional
passengers, they were liable, on conviction, to a heavy penalty. In
addition, there was a duty of 1d. a mile on the coach itself. The
concession of 1839 reduced this impost to a halfpenny a mile, and
provided a graduated passenger duty by which a coach licensed for not
more than six persons paid 1d. a mile; up to ten, 1½d.; not more than
thirteen, 2d.; not more than sixteen, 2½d., and so on to the impossible
number of twenty-two, when the license would be 3½d.
According to a return made for 1838, the mileage duty paid on
stage-coaches in England for that year was £166,625, showing a total
mileage for those twelve months of 40,530,000. The Government thus
apparently sacrificed £83,312 10s. in reducing the mileage duty
by one-half; but the greatness of the sacrifice was more apparent
than real, for already railways had begun and coaches were being
discontinued on every hand, while a small railway passenger duty of
one-eighth of a penny a mile made up for its smallness by the increase
in travelling that railways brought.
Still later, the passenger duty on coaches was further reduced,
and made 1½d. a mile on any number of passengers; while the annual
stage-carriage license was reduced from £5 to £3 3s., and the licence
for each coachman or guard from £1 5s. to 5s.
The harassed coach-proprietors, or those who still existed, were
properly grateful for the reduction made, for it just turned the scale
in many coaching accounts, and so kept on those public conveyances
where otherwise they would have been commercially impossible.
The railway magnates, who had by that time become a power in the
land, could afford to influence the Government in favour of these
concessions, for the coaches had already been driven off the direct
routes, and were no longer formidable competitors of the locomotive.
They had, indeed, become merely feeders to the victorious railways.