STAGE-COACH GUARDS
Not every stage-coach carried a guard, and largely to that omission was
due the prevalence of accidents in the last years of coaching. When we
find guards first mentioned in old stage-coach advertisements, shortly
after the middle of the eighteenth century, they were provided strictly
for the purpose their name indicates--to guard the coaches against
attack; and when such dangers grew more remote they were generally
discontinued on day-coaches. Thus very often, except on long-distance
stages, even the smart day-coaches carried no guard, and when they did,
his functions were not so much to safeguard the coach in the original
sense as to help the coachman by skidding and unskidding down hill, and
to look after the way-bill and the passengers’ luggage. It was when no
such useful functionary was carried, and when the coachman, combining
the parts, descended from his box, and leaving the reins in charge of a
passenger, or often merely resting them on the horses’ backs, went to
explore the contents of the boots, or alighted for some other necessary
business, that the horses often started off on their own accord and
wrought disaster to coach and passengers.
In early days, when horses were either not changed at all on a long
journey, or went twenty-mile stages, nothing was less likely than that
they would bolt. All they wanted to do was to lie down and die. But in
the golden age of coaching, when well-kept teams working sometimes only
six- or eight-mile stages were usual, that coach-proprietor who, from
motives of economy or for any other reason, omitted to provide a guard,
should have been made criminally responsible for any accidents caused
by that omission.
As a rule the guards of mails and stages went from end to end, being
responsible for the contents of the way-bill. These spells of from ten
to fifteen hours’ duty were naturally very tiring, and they generally
rested the following day, or, if in London, took the opportunity of
executing those varied commissions--from the filing of a Bill in
Chancery to the matching of silks--of which every guard had plenty
always in hand.
An outstanding specimen of a stage-coach guard is the figure of George
Young, of the Leeds “Union.” An excellent whip, as well as guard, he
was a man of a peculiar versatility of genius, and as an entertainer of
company on the roof of a coach was probably unequalled in his day. He
transacted business commissions for the better class of jewellers and
attorneys, was fond of all kinds of sport, a successful bookmaker, a
good shot, went coursing, and at horseracing was as keen as any tyke in
broad Yorkshire. Not insensible, either, to the charms of the P. R., he
introduced some noted bruisers in his day, and was an intimate friend
and companion of Tom Spring. When not actively engaged, he was always
ready to take the ribbons for a friend who wanted a holiday or had
urgent private affairs to attend to; and the tooling of the teams, no
matter how refractory, never suffered in dignity from his manipulation.
He was, take him for all in all, perhaps one of the most original and
perfect specimens of the old-fashioned, cheery, story-telling, and
loquacious sort who ever blew a horn, kissed a pretty barmaid, pulled
a sluggish team out of a difficulty, or chaffed a yokel on his way to
market.
This paragon among guards met his death in April 1825, dying at the
“Red Lion,” Pontefract, of mortification resulting from an accident.
It seems that, to make room for an extra passenger, he had given up
the guard’s seat, and went to sit beside the coachman, who already had
a passenger on the box. In order not to inconvenience the coachman’s
driving, he sat on the edge of the seat, with one of his legs dangling
over the side, and so when the coach gave a lurch, was thrown off and
his thigh broken.
Bob Hadley, guard of the “Unicorn” coach between Manchester and the
Potteries, was of the eccentric kind, sporting an odd kind of headgear
which went by the name of the “Hadley Tile,” and was as well known
in his circle as the “D’Orsay Hat” was in fashionable London. “It
resembles,” said a contemporary, “an umbrella in extent, and Bob, as
he luxuriates under its broad leaf, looks like an ourang-outang under
a banyan-tree. Some of his contemporaries having adopted his taste
too closely, he has been under the necessity of extending its brim
about four inches, which puts all competition at defiance, and he now
presents an unique specimen. To put himself still further beyond the
reach of envious competition, he has enclosed his delicate person in a
complete suit of plaid, from his thorax to his trotters, and is now as
complete an original as is to be found in any zoological collection in
the Kingdom.”
It was in the very nature of their work that the “up” and “down”
coachmen and guards should never meet, save in that moment of passing
one another on the road. Like the little man and woman of the
old-fashioned weather-gauge--the one coming out and the other going
in, as fine or wet weather willed it--they could not, in the ordinary
routine, possibly enjoy one another’s society. An exception was
annually made on the Holyhead Road, when a hundred coachmen and guards
were bidden to a feast at the “Green Man,” Dunchurch. They managed to
find substitutes for their places on the box, or on the guard’s seat,
for the occasion, and usually sat down to the half of a fat buck from
the Buccleuch estate adjoining that village.
The festival of September 1834 was a memorable one. According to a
contemporary, the anticipation of the tuck-out had kept them on the
_qui vive_ for a week, and it was not a little amusing to see them
nearing the point of attraction on the evening and night before;
in some cases two, and even three, being perched on one coach and
making the welkin ring with notes of their bugles, in solos, duets,
or trios, to the no small interruption of the peaceful slumbers of
wayside hamlets, whose inhabitants, from the constant din of “See the
Conquering Hero Comes,” fancied the Duke of Wellington, at least, was
on the road.
The guards of the Manchester “Red Rover” were particularly on their
stilts, and, having met for the first time on the same vehicle in
musical fellowship, continued practising every tune they did know and
did not know, from the time they quitted Highgate until they entered
Dunchurch, at about 3 a.m., when they took leave of the coach with
the splendid finale of “We Won’t go Home till Morning,” leaving the
harassed passengers with the chance of an odd wink for the remainder
of the journey. “We ought,” says the historian of these things, “as
faithful reporters, to state that Bob Hadley and his chum on the
‘Rover’ occasionally rested their pipes with a cigar or a song; and
in the latter attempt Hadley was certainly second best, for no raven
in a chimney-pot could have more barbarously murdered the airs of
Rossini--so much to the horror of a lady outside, who was herself a
bit of a musician, that she fancied she had by accident got upon the
railway, and taken her seat in a cattle train, in one of the private
boxes set apart for the accommodation of four-footed squeakers.”
The dinner on this occasion was of the most substantial description,
and, for want of a better, Rob Hadley was put in the chair, a
distinction his modesty would have induced him to decline; but the
voices of the company were unanimous, and on mounting his perch he
returned thanks on his bugle in the favourite hunting air of “Old
Towler”; which, as “on that day,” or a few days before, a stag was
supposed to have died, was considered extremely appropriate, and
was applauded accordingly. Whether a stag had died or not seemed
subsequently to have become a matter of doubt, for the chairman, after
carving the “noble haunch,” and coming to the foot, which was enclosed
with a profusion of curled writing-paper, was not a little surprised
to find the hoof, instead of being _cloven_, to be _entire_. A noted
farrier present swore it was the hoof of a young donkey! This the
landlord positively denied, but upon a jury being summoned to decide
the question, the hoof was found to have mysteriously disappeared, and
the point remained for ever unsettled; although it was freely hinted
that the guard of the “Emerald,” jealous at being shut out from
the feast, had conveyed the haunch away and substituted for it the
hind-quarter of a deceased “Neddy” he had imported from Wolverhampton.
One of the most daring deeds ever related of a guard was that well-nigh
incredible one told of the guard of the famous “Tantivy”:--
“We had just entered Oxford from Woodstock,” says Lord William Lennox,
“when suddenly the horses started off at an awful pace. What made
matters worse was that we saw at a distance some men employed in
removing a large tree that had fallen during the storm of the previous
night across the road near St. John’s College. The coachman shook his
head, looking very nervous, while the guard, a most powerful man, stood
up, prepared for any emergency. On we went, the coachman trying in
vain to check the galloping steeds, and we had got within a few yards
of the critical spot when the guard, crawling over the roof, managed,
somehow or another, to get on the footboard, when, with a spring, he
threw himself on the near wheeler, and with a giant’s clasp checked the
horses at the very moment the leaders were about to charge the tree.
Down they came, but the guard never yielded an inch, and, with the
assistance of the country people near at hand, the leaders regained
their legs, without the slightest damage to man, horse, coach, or
harness. A subscription for our gallant preserver was got up on the
spot.”
The last twenty years of the coaching era were remarkable for the
development of musical ability on the part of the guards, both of the
mail- and stage-coaches, who, relieved from their old-time anxieties
and fears of highwaymen, kept their blunderbusses safely stowed away,
and, turning their attention, like so many scarlet-coated Strephons,
to the ballad-music of the moment, became expert practitioners on the
key-bugle. That instrument came over from Germany in 1818, and for a
time pretty thoroughly displaced the old “yard of tin” the earlier
guards had blown so lustily. The new generation developed a passion for
this strident kind of minstrelsy. Like the hero (or is it heroine?) of
the “Lost Chord,” their “fingers wandered idly over the sounding keys,”
and although many were expert players and, unlike the organist in that
song, _did_ know what they were playing, the jolting of the coaches
must often have discomposed their harmony to some extent, so that the
passengers could not always boast the same knowledge.
Piccadilly, one of the chief starting-points in London, was in this
manner a highly musical thoroughfare at the period now under review.
Ten guards, blowing ten different tunes at once, produced, we are
told--and can well believe--a wonderful effect; and the roads became
excruciatingly lively when every gay young blood of a guard learned to
play “Cherry Ripe,” the “Huntsman’s Chorus,” “Oh! Nanny, wilt Thou
gang wi’ Me?” and half a hundred others. The passengers, like that
famous young lady “with rings on her fingers and bells on her toes,”
had music wherever they went. Let us hope they appreciated their good
fortune to the full.
The Post Office looked with a cold glance upon these proceedings, and
forbade mail-guards to play the key-bugle. Those officials therefore
purchased them secretly, and snatched a fearful joy by producing them
when clear of London streets, and playing, loud and long, such airs
as “The Days when we went Gipsying, a Long Time Ago,” and “Sally
in our Alley,” to the great admiration of the country joskins. The
performances of expert players were said to be delightful, and no doubt
they quickly reaped in tips a harvest from what they had expended on
their instruments.
It is on record that a guard on the Chester Mail, with the fear of God
or public opinion before him, always used to honour the Sabbath Day
by playing the “Old Hundredth” as the coach passed through town and
village, reserving his secular tunes for the secluded highway.
Cornets-à-piston began to rival the key-bugle in the last years
of coaching, and the hurly-burly grew terrific. To what lengths
this progressive din would have been carried had not the coaching
age itself come to an end let us not seek to inquire; but when the
coaching revival of 1863 and succeeding years brought back some of
the old sights and sounds of the road, key-bugles and their like were
very properly voted bad form, and the older coach-horn regained and
still retains its ancient ascendency. Those other instruments and all
their possibilities are left to modern beanfeasters and Bank-holiday
merrymakers, who, as the suburban Londoner knows only too well, do not
fail to take full advantage of them.
What became of the stage-coach guards? Some of them were killed, and
thus never experienced the bitterness of finding their occupation
gone. There is an inscription in the churchyard at Great Driffield,
Yorkshire, to one who ended thus:--
TO THE MEMORY OF
THOMAS RUSSELL,
Guard of the “Wellington,” who lost his life by
the Coach being unfortunately overturned at
Nafferton, September 9th, 1825.
Aged 36 years.
Praises on Tomb Stones are but vainly spent;
A Man’s Good Name is his best Monument.
This Stone was erected by his Companions in Friendship.
Less noticed by gossips on old coaching days than the coachmen were,
their ending is more obscure, but it may be supposed that, like those
occupants of the box-seat, many of them settled down as landlords of
small inns in towns they had known when they travelled the road.