would “greatly enhance the price of carriage of goods,” but its
apologists argued that even if it did, better-designed carriages and
carts would be built, so that the roads would improve, and the price
of cartage ultimately go down. “It is urged,” they said, “that light
carts or waggons may be used, and the horses draw double, as in the
rabbet waggons of Norfolk, which improves the road and contributes to
expedition.”
At an early stage in this war two factions arose. On the one hand you
had coachbuilders and others filling the newspapers and publishing
tracts, some very serious, some extraordinarily mathematical, others
merely facetious, to prove that the roads could be preserved only by
using very broad wheels—some, indeed, advocated rollers, which, as we
shall see, were actually tried—and on the other hand you had people
filling more columns, and very dull columns some of them were, to show
that a low broad wheel was the one thing which no really satisfactory
vehicle could possibly possess. These were the apologists for the
lighter waggons with large but slender wheels. Decrease your weight,
said they, and never mind about the wheels; it is the great weight that
ruins the roads. How can you decrease the weight, asked the broad-wheel
faction, without increasing the cost of carriage? Increase the cost of
carriage for a while, was the reply, and see what happens to the roads.
For a time, however, the broad-wheel faction held the advantage, and
when further legislation was made in 1754, it was entirely in their
favour.
“It is enacted that after next Michaelmas, no wheel carriage
of burthen (except it be drawn by oxen only, or if by horses
with less than five, if a four-wheeled carriage, with less
than four) shall travel any turnpike road, unless the fellies
of the wheels shall be nine inches from side to side under a
penalty of £5, or the forfeiture of one of the horses, with
all his accoutrements, to the sole use of the person who shall
seize them.”
So soon as such proposals had become law, it was asked with some
pertinence: where were these huge wheels to come from? What of the
heavy expenses that would fall on the farmers? The parrot cry, “Your
wheels will cost you more,” was hinted at, if not expressed in so
modern a way. Arguments were put forward to show that the correct
height for wheels was anything between two and eight feet, and the
correct breadth from three to eighteen inches. And the disputes became
tinged with personalities. But the net result seems to have been that
most people fought shy of the very wide wheels, and were content to use
less horses.
The war dragged on, and particular inventions to cope with the
difficulty began to appear. A new tire was widely advertised. An
enthusiastic inventor occupied two or three pages of the _Gentleman’s
Magazine_ with details of his particular waggon, which had the
front and back wheels of very different sizes, but what exactly its
advantages might be were not very clear to any one but himself. Then
on the 14th of April, 1764, one Daniel Bourn of Leominster produced a
waggon on small rollers. Though it was unsuccessful, it led the way to
further experiments, and as will be seen from the contemporary account
immediately below, contained at any rate one novel feature which was
subsequently widely adopted not only in waggons and carts, but also in
four-wheeled carriages of every description.
“Mr. Bourn’s new machine for travelling the roads was tried
against a common broad-wheeled waggon, but did not answer,
the common waggon going as well with four horses, as the new
one with eight. The weight carried was five ton besides the
carriage. The wheels of this waggon are 14 inches; the fore
wheels go within the hind wheels, and are so shallow as to
turn under the bed of the waggon. The _Leominster_ stage
waggon has these wheels.”
The experiment took place “abreast between the new road just by Pancras
to within a small distance of Bog-house Bar.” Apparently the only
advantage which the new waggon possessed was its ability to turn in
a narrow road, but although Mr. Bourn not only continued to build
such waggons, but also answered his opponents in two tracts, we hear
little more of him. Such “rolling-carts,” however, were also made by
one James Sharpe, of Leadenhall Street. Sharpe was a pushful man.
He believed in his system, and apparently made those in authority
see its advantages. His rollers, you learn, were cylinders of cast
iron, two feet in diameter and sixteen inches broad. An iron spindle
was inserted through the centre of each. Several of Sharpe’s waggons
were on the roads, but although every facility was given them, they
never really took the popular fancy. And indeed, they must have been
uncouth monsters rattling along the roads something after the fashion
of the steam-roller of ten years ago. Just about this time, too, the
light-cart faction showed that it was not in the least moribund. It
indited learned and highly technical articles which the newspapers
found space to print with some regularity. A typical reply to such
articles was inserted in the _Public Advertiser_ early in 1767:—
“There are people, I may say,” runs this most impolite retort,
“a depraved Number, who write long letters upon this Subject
in an ignorant Manner. Their Errors confirm Mankind of a
sensible Turn what Measures ought to be taken for the Benefit
of the trading Part of this Nation. The illiterate Scribblers
he [the last correspondent] means to lash are those that
insist upon the Necessity of Horses going at length instead
of being placed abreast. The Power that draft Horses have in
being placed abreast is so well known, that ’tis amazing any
body is absurd enough to advance a Doctrine to the contrary.
Then again, these deluded Idiots propagate, that the Loads
drawn by eight Horses, having the Wheels placed nine Inches
within nine, are destructive to the Roads, and that the Weight
had better be divided into several narrow wheeled Carriages.
Being thus destitute of Judgment upon the Subject, they do
not reflect that the more Horses and Carriages the more the
Expence increases, consequently that the internal Trade of
this Kingdom would advance in this Article 100 per Cent. One
Waggon with eight Horses in Pairs, drawing eight Ton upon the
new Plan, don’t do near the Mischief that the same Weight
would in two Waggons with narrow Wheels. Besides, four Horses
at length cannot draw four Ton Weight. A late trifling Writer
upon the Subject says, the Appearance of a broad Wheel Waggon
was terrific. I think he may be pronounced a Cockney without
Ceremony—a Cit that carries his Wife and Children four Miles
out of Town in a Tim-Whisky, and, being most likely an aukward
Driver, suffers the Squalls of his Horn-making Spouse to alarm
his Dove-like Pusillanimity.”
Such a man, the article goes on to say, would surely be frightened
if he saw a three-master sailing the seas, and he and his kind had
better keep quiet upon a subject of which they appeared so entirely and
pitiably ignorant.
The contest began to embrace wider issues than the mere wheels of
waggons. It took in the whole question of wheeled carriages. It even
went so far as to include a denunciation of the general policy of the
Government, whose legislation, or lack of it, on this vexed question
was, so the light-cart faction maintained, leading directly to an
increase in the price of provisions. Nothing, apparently, was right. If
waggons were constructed on principles which were as bad as they could
be, so were the Stage-coaches, which also were using the public roads,
though some of the controversialists seemed to forget the fact.
“We are desired,” runs a paragraph in the newspapers of this
time, “to inform the Masters of Stage-Coaches, Machines, &c.,
that their present Method of hanging their Carriages high with
a low Fore-Wheel, and the body of the Coach hung forwards with
the Stems of the Box leaning likewise forwards, is all upon a
ridiculous wrong Principle,—the Effect of the Stupidity of
Coachmen and Wheelwrights; that if they pursue the following
Regulations, they will find the same Advantage that the
Nobility and Gentry have already done by adopting this Plan:
Let the fore Wheels be three Feet, six, eight, or ten Inches
high, the Stems of the Box upright, and admit as little Weight
forward as possible upon the low Wheel; the Body of the Coach
to hang low for the Convenience of Passengers, as no Benefit
arises from its Hanging high to the Horses, their Advantage
laying intirely upon the Height of the Fore-Wheels.”
This in its turn was argued. Then came a proposal to tax private
carriages according to the number of horses used, and see whether
such revenue would not counterbalance in some way the increase in the
prices of provisions, which, of course, was following on this eternal
wrangle of the waggons. Also there was more legislation. Some of the
new regulations read curiously. “No tree or bush is to be allowed to
grow or stand within fifteen feet of the center of the highway, on
forfeiture of 10s. by the owner.” Cartways were to be at least twenty
feet wide, and horse causeways three feet wide. No waggon with more
than four horses might have wheels less than nine inches in width,
and some one on horseback or on foot had to go in front of it. More
criticism filled the newspapers, and more inventions appeared.
Meetings were held. One advertisement which appeared in 1767 has an
agreeable air of mystery about it.
“All persons working Shod-wheel’d Carts, Waggons, Drays, &c.
of all Breadths, are desired to meet at the Sun Tavern in St.
Paul’s Churchyard, on Friday next, at four o’clock in the
Afternoon. Enquire for No. 1.”
And more pamphlets appeared, but the roads failed to improve.
Then in 1770 another Act was passed giving privileges to the
roller-carts which were denied to the ordinary waggons. “All
carriages,” it ordered, “moving upon rollers the breadth of fifteen
inches, are allowed to be drawn with any number of horses, or other
cattle.” And, as a further inducement, such carts were to be toll-free
for a year. Mr. Sharpe, of Leadenhall Street, prospered, and wrote
to the papers to say so. The rollers, he maintained, were light and
strong, and there was considerably less friction when they were used.
And he challenged the world to disprove his statement. Whereupon an
anonymous writer belonging to the rival faction—possibly Joseph Jacob,
a coachbuilder who had already written against the system—entered the
field, and ventured to suggest that cast iron was exceedingly brittle
and not very light. Mr. Sharpe speedily replied. “The principle,” he
said, and his point is of interest, “upon which rolling carriages are
adopted is simply this, That, by the use of them the roads may be made
smooth and hard, and by that means, _become part of the mechanism_: for
thus the rollers are made to answer all the purposes of light wheels.”
The anonymous writer appears to have felt the point of this argument,
and was forced to retort, quite unworthily, that in any case Mr.
Sharpe’s rollers were not his own ideas. “No,” replied Sharpe, “they
were Mr. Daniel Bourn’s idea—a very sensible man and good mechanic,
and who was also the first contriver of nine-inch broad wheels, who so
long as ten or eleven years ago built a waggon on rollers at Leominster
where he then lived, and brought it to the Society of Arts and Sciences
in the Strand, by whom upon trial it was rejected.” The anonymous
writer left it at that, but the controversy raged fiercely. It became
so highly technical and apparently so interminable that somebody
suggested we should all use flying machines and leave the wretched
roads to look after themselves.
We may leave the war of the wheels here. The roller-carts were
discarded soon afterwards, and M’Adam and his successors rendered for
ever such wars unnecessary. But it must not be wholly neglected, and is
a tiny chapter by itself in the history of locomotion.
We come to the curiosities.
To this period belongs the present State Coach of Great Britain—that
famous “glass-coach” which Londoners had an opportunity of seeing
at King George’s Coronation. Who built it is not known. Sir William
Chambers, “an amateur,” as Thrupp is careful to point out, designed
it in 1761 for George III. “There is come forth,” wrote Walpole to
Horace Mann, “a new State Coach which has cost £8000. It is a beautiful
object, though crowded with improprieties. Its supports are Tritons,
not very well adapted to land carriage, and formed of palm trees, which
are as little aquatic as Tritons are terrestrial. The crowd to see it
on the opening of Parliament was greater than at the Coronation, and
much more damage done.”
The ornamentation of the coach, indeed, is a mass of contradictions,
but Sir William Chambers did no more than follow tradition. For over a
century the principal State Coaches had had Tritons and other queerly
inept figures, and Tritons there were in the new coach for King George.
Gorgeousness was aimed at, and gorgeousness obtained. There is a
detailed contemporary description of this coach which may be given with
an account of the expenditure, not quite £8000 as Walpole writes, which
it entailed.
“The carriage is composed of four Tritons, who support the
body by cables fastened to the roots of their fins: The two
placed on the front of the carriage, bear the driver on their
shoulders, and are represented in the action of sounding
shells to announce the approach of the monarch of the sea; and
those on the back part, carry the imperial fasces, topt with
tridents instead of the ancient axes. The driver’s footboard
is a large scollop shell, supported by a bunch of reeds,
and other marine plants. The pole represents a bundle of
lances, and the wheels are imitated from those of the ancient
triumphal chariots. The body of the coach is composed of eight
palm-trees, which, branching out at the top, sustain the roof.
The four angular trees are loaded with trophies, allusive to
the victories obtained by _Britain_ during the course of the
present glorious war. On the center of the roof stand three
boys, representing the Genii of _England_, _Scotland_, and
_Ireland_, supporting on their heads the Imperial Crown, and
holding in their hands the scepter, the sword of state, and
ensigns of knighthood. Their bodies are adorned with festoons
of laurel, which fall from thence towards the four corners of
the roof. The intervals between the palm-trees which form the
body of the coach, are filled in the upper parts with plates
of glass, and below with pannels adorned with paintings.
On the front pannel is represented BRITANNIA seated on a
throne, holding in her hand, a staff of liberty, attended
by _Religion_, _Justice_, _Wisdom_, _Valour_, _Fortitude_,
and _Victory_, presenting her with a garland of laurels. On
the back pannel, _Neptune_ issuing from his palace, drawn by
sea-horses, and attended by the Winds, the Rivers, Tritons,
Naids, &c., bringing the tribute of the world to the _British_
shore. On one of the doors are represented _Mars_, _Minerva_,
and _Mercury_, supporting the Imperial Crown of _Britain_; and
on the other, _Industry_ and _Ingenuity_, giving a cornucopia
to the Genius of _England_. The other four pannels represent
the liberal _Arts_ and _Sciences_ protected; _History_ burning
the implements of war. The inside of the coach is lined with
Crimson Velvet richly embroidered with gold. All the wood work
is triple gilt, and all the paintings highly varnished. The
harness is of Crimson Velvet, adorned with buckles and other
embelishments of silver gilt; and the saddle-cloths are of
Blue Velvet, embroidered and fringed with gold.”
The account was as follows:—
£ s. d.
Coachmaker 1673 15 0
Carver 2500 0 0
Gilder 933 14 0
Painter 315 0 0
Laceman 737 10 7
Chaser 665 4 6
Harnessmaker 385 15 0
Mercer 202 5 10-1/2
Bitt-maker 99 6 6
Millener 31 3 4
Sadler 10 16 6
Woollen-draper 4 3 6
Cover-maker 3 9 6
———————————————
£7562 4 3-1/2
Hardly less resplendent was the Lord Mayor’s coach which had been
built at a cost of over a thousand pounds in 1757, and still performs
its duties at stated and regular intervals. It was in 1711 that a
Lord Mayor of London had ridden for the last time on horseback in his
State procession, this distinction falling to Sir Gilbert Heathcote.
Since that date he has been driven in his coach. The 1757 coach was
not at first the property of the corporation, but had been built by
subscription amongst the aldermen, to whom it belonged until 1778,
when the corporation bought it. In that year it had been repaired
and repainted—the panels possibly by Cipriani, the heraldic devices
by Catton, one of the original members of the Royal Academy and
“coach-painter to George III.” The Lord Mayor’s coach, like many
other State coaches of this date, is full of allegorical devices
of ornamentation, very plutocratic, very rich, very gorgeous, and
incidentally rather more comfortable to drive in than that in which the
British Sovereign drives to his Coronation.
Coming to lesser matters, we have mention of a carriage which performed
a remarkable feat in 1750.
“On Wednesday 29,” runs a notice of this, “at seven in the
morning was decided at _Newmarket_ a remarkable wager for 1000
guineas, laid by _Theobald Taaff_, Esq., against the E. of
_March_ and Lord _Eglington_, who were to provide a four-wheel
carriage with a man in it to be drawn by four horses 19 miles
in an hour; which was performed in 53 minutes and 27 seconds.
The pole was small but lapp’d with fine wire; the perch had
a plate underneath, two cords went on each side from the
back carriage to the fore carriage, fastened to springs: the
harness was of thin leather covered with silk; the seat, for
the man to sit on, was of leather straps and covered with
velvet; the axles of the wheel were brass, and had tins of
oil to drop slowly for an hour. The breechens for the horses
were whale-bone; the bars were small wood, straightened with
steel-springs, as were most parts of the carriage, but all
so light that a man could carry the whole with the harness.”
Then followed the names of each of the four horses—all had
riders—and “lord March’s groom sat in the carriage. Two or
three other carriages had been made before, but disapproved;
and several horses killed in trials—to the expence of 6 or
700_l._”
Now such a carriage—there is a print of it by Bodger—was, of course,
little more than a freak. It was a mere skeleton, fragile and entirely
useless as a mode of conveyance over the ordinary roads. But the
knowledge of those nineteen miles covered easily within the hour must
have set people thinking. Such a speed was almost incredible to those
accustomed to five or six miles an hour. The carriage itself was the
work of Mr. J. Wright, a coachmaker in Longacre, already becoming
the home of his brother tradesmen, and it was doubtless exhibited
in London. It showed what could be done, and must have opened out
agreeable vistas. Twenty miles an hour was something to aim for, and
with the war with France concluded, people were able and willing to
give rather more attention to the peaceful arts. Amongst other things
they showed a desire for strange vehicles. I have mentioned the
rolling-carts; there were far queerer carriages, as we shall see, used
by the gentry.
The next curiosity I may speak of was seen in the streets of London
during the following year.
“An odd machine, like an English waggon, drawn by 10 horses,
after the _Danish_ manner, belonging to Baron Rosencrantz, the
new _Danish_ envoy, came to his house in _Cleveland Row_, St.
James’s, from _Harwich_; a coachman drove it and a postilion
rode upon the 4th horse.”
It suggests rather a primitive type of coach, possibly innocent of
springs. What the Baron suffered during his journey through East Anglia
must be left to the imagination.
Eight years later, on August 30th, 1758, another strange carriage was
seen.
“This day a remarkable carriage set out from
_Aldersgate-street_ for Birmingham, from which it arrived on
_Thursday_ last full of passengers and baggage, without using
coomb, or any oily, unctuous, or other liquid matter whatever,
to the wheels or axles, its construction being such as to
render all such helps useless. The inventor has caused to be
engraved on the boxes of the wheels, these words, FRICTION
ANNIHILATED, and is very positive that the carriage will
continue to go as long and as easy, if not longer and easier,
without greasing, than any of the ordinary stage-carriages
will do with it: This invention, if really answerable in
practice, is perhaps the must useful improvement in mechanicks
that this century has produced.”
[Illustration: “_The Carriage Match_”
(_From a Print by Bodger_)]
One would like to know who was the inventor of this coach, which,
however, did not prosper—I doubt if it performed another journey—for
it dropped out of history as suddenly as it had appeared. It would
seem that the inventor was a Birmingham man. Possibly he was helped in
his scheme by a very extraordinary character who lived and flourished
in that town at this time—John Baskerville, successively footman,
schoolmaster, graver, japanner, typefounder, and printer—a man
whose beautifully printed books have hardly been excelled to this
day. Baskerville had made a fortune japanning bread-baskets and the
like, and now drove about the country wonderfully dressed in a coach
apparently of his own design—he was a man who had to do everything
for himself, and being of somewhat eccentric disposition, never did
anything like anybody else—and his coach, like his house and his
printing and his religious opinions, was like nothing in the world.
He had a considerable idea of his own importance, and his coach was
a reflection of his character. With its wonderful arms—the real
Baskerville arms, to which the printer had no right whatever—it was
standing until quite recently in an old barn in a field at Manton. It
was thus described fifty years ago:—
“The body hangs by double straps, from the coachman’s seat
under the carriage, to which they are fastened, to the frame
behind.... It could be either closed or open, and when open
the leather top was rolled back upon crossed straps hung from
the coachman’s seat, and hooks secured to the front part
of the body. The whole framework of the carriage has been
elaborately carved and gilt, and the panels painted with what
appears to be a brownish green, with flowers and vases, rock
and shell-work, among which were numerous figures of boys and
emblems. In the centre panel on each side were the arms, on
the side panel the crest....”
None of the panels were identical, but all had been decorated by his
workmen. “The pattern-cart of his trade,” Hutton, the Birmingham
historian, calls this curiosity, which was once familiar to every
village in the Midlands, and his daughter, Catherine Hutton, could
remember the printer, “in his gold-laced waistcoat, and his painted
chariot, each panel a picture, fresh from his own manufactory of
japanned tea-boards.”
A most extraordinary conveyance appeared in London in 1771—this being
“Mr. Moore’s new-invented Coal-carriage,” the wheels of which were no
less than fifteen feet high.[42] A great concourse of people followed
it through the streets, and no doubt applauded its ability to draw two
caldrons and two sacks of coal, using only two horses abreast, “with
more ease and expedition than the common carts do one caldron with
three horses at length.” Unfortunately I have not been able to discover
a print of this monstrous vehicle, which, like so many of the other
mid-century freaks, disappeared almost at once.