from the BLACK BULL, in Bishopsgate, London, and at the same time from
the GREAT WHITE HORSE, in Ipswich, and continue every day (Sunday
excepted), to be at the above places the same evening at five o'clock;
each passenger to pay threepence per mile, and to be allowed eighteen
pounds luggage; all above to pay one penny per pound, and so in
proportion. The coaches, hung upon steel springs, are very easy, large
and commodious, carry six inside but no outside passengers whatever;
but have great conveniences for parcels or game (to keep them from the
weather), which will be delivered at London and Ipswich the same night.
As these coaches are sent out for the ease and expedition of
gentlemen and ladies travelling, the proprietors humbly hope for their
encouragement, and are determined to spare no pains to render it as
agreeable as they can.
Performed (if God permits) by--
PET. SHELDON, at the Bull, Bishopsgate Street, London.
THOMAS ARCHER, at the White Hart, Brentwood.
CHARLES KERRY, at the Black Boy, Chelmsford.
GEO. REYNOLDS, at the Three Cups, Colchester; and
CHAS. HARRIS, at the Great White Horse, Ipswich.
* * * * *
_N.B._--The proprietors will not be answerable for any money, plate,
jewels, or writings, unless entered and paid for as such.
The reader will perhaps have observed that this advertisement
especially mentions a convenience for carrying game, and, as a matter
of fact, game and oysters were prominent from an early period in
the history of Norwich Road conveyances, and, by the middle of the
eighteenth century, the Norfolk and Suffolk coaches had already earned
quite a distinctive character in two seasons of the year, Michaelmas
and Christmas. East Anglia has always abounded in game, and its
broad heaths and extensive commons have been the breeding-grounds
of innumerable geese and turkeys whose careers have ended on London
dinner-tables. In those two seasons it was often difficult to secure
a seat on or in any of the "up" coaches from Norwich or Ipswich, for
while every available inch of space on the mails was occupied by
festoons of dead birds consigned by country cousins to friends in town,
the whole of a stage-coach was frequently chartered for the purpose
of despatching heavy consignments of these noble poultry to the London
market. Christmas provided extraordinary sights along the Norfolk Road,
in the swaying coaches, with parcels and geese and turkeys mountains
high on the roof; with barrels of Colchester natives in the boot, and
hampers swinging heavily between the axle-trees on a shelf called "the
cellar"; while from every rail or projection to which they could be
either safely or hazardously tied depended other turkeys or braces of
fowls, booked at the last moment before starting. It was something
in those days to be a turkey or a goose, before whose importance the
claims of human passengers faded; but it was a fleeting elevation which
the philosophic did not envy, thinking that here indeed the poet was
justified in his sounding line--
"The paths of glory lead but to the grave."
[Illustration: THE NORWICH COACH AT CHRISTMAS TIDE. _After Robert
Seymour, 1835._]
That unfortunate genius, Robert Seymour, has left us a picture of the
Norwich coach nearing London at Christmas time, with its feathered
load. The drawing was made in 1835, at the very height of the Coaching
Age, and shows from his own observation with what ingenuity every rail
and projection was used to hang the birds from.
Another highly specialised branch of traffic, which only left the road
on the opening of the railway, was the constant service of fish waggons
running between Harwich, Colchester and London, at the then express
speed of 8 miles an hour.
VII
BETWEEN the early days of coaching and the end of that period, many
changes took place on the Norwich Road. So late as 1798, the Mail, the
"Expedition," and the "Post Coach" were the only coaches to Norwich,
supplemented by three road waggons; two of them doing the journey
twice a week, the third setting out weekly. Later came the "Norwich
Times," "Gurney's Original Day Coach," the "Phænomenon," as it was
originally spelt; the "Magnet," the Ipswich "Shannon," and the Ipswich
"Blue." With the object of serving as many places as possible, and,
incidentally, securing heavier bookings, the "Times" and Gurney's
coaches took a somewhat circuitous route, leaving the direct road
at Chelmsford, and going through Braintree, Halstead, Sudbury, Long
Melford and Bury St Edmunds, rejoining the Norwich Road at Scole.
But the lord of the road was the Mail Coach, beside which the stages
were very commonplace affairs.
The first mail-coach that ever ran the road between London and Norwich
started in March 1785, and the service was from the beginning continued
daily. Before that time the mails had been carried by post-boys, who
began in 1741 to go six days a week instead of three, as they formerly
had done.
Mail-coaches are entirely things of the past, for the modern coaching
revival has only brought back the smart stages and drags of the last
years of the Coaching Age. The mails were expensive and exclusive
affairs, constructed to carry only nine persons; four inside and five
out, including coachman and guard. For the higher fares passengers paid
they had not always the satisfaction of travelling faster than on the
stages; but perhaps there was some dignity attaching to a seat on the
mail which was lacking on ordinary coaches. And certainly they were
surrounded by pomp and circumstance. The guard wore a scarlet coat
and went armed with pistol, sword and blunderbuss; not, of course,
for the protection of the passengers, but for the safe-guarding of
His Majesty's mails. And everything gave place, as a matter of right
and not merely courtesy, to the mail. Surly pikemen swung open their
gates and asked no toll, for it was one of the privileges of the mail
to go toll-free, and the highwaymen, if they walked in the ways of
caution, left the gorgeous conveyance severely alone, reserving their
best attentions for the plebeian stages. It was a much more serious
thing to rob the mail than an ordinary coach, for a conviction was more
certain to end in death, judges having hints from the Government how
undesirable it was that mails should be ransacked and the robbers live.
The rewards usually offered by the Post-office, too, were tempting to
those who could inform if they would. £200 was the sum generally to be
had for this service, together with the £40 reward by Act of Parliament
for the apprehension of a highwayman; and if the mail was robbed
within five miles of London, another £100. Courage, recklessness, and
desperation--whichever we like to call it--often nerved the night-hawks
to brave even so heavy a handicap as this, as this very road bears
witness, in the daring robbery of the Ipswich Mail in 1822, when
notes to the value of no less than £31,198 were stolen. In addition
to the usual rewards, a sum of £1000 was offered by the losing firms
of bankers, as shown in the accompanying old handbill, but without
avail. This sum was afterwards increased to £5000, and a notification
given that, in order to prevent the notes being changed, the ink on all
new ones had been altered from black to red. But the robbers had the
impudence to ask £6000 for the return of the notes. They had already
passed £3000 worth, and naively said, in the negotiations they opened
up, that the trouble they had taken and the risks they had run did
not make it worth while to accept a smaller "reward." The bankers,
however, would not spring another thousand, for by that time everyone
was too shy of an "Ipswich black note," and it was extremely unlikely
that any more could be passed. Negotiations were broken off; but a
month later notes to the value of £28,000 were returned. The thieves
were never traced, and although the bulk of their booty was useless to
them, made the very substantial haul of over £3000 by their lawless
enterprise.
=£1000 Reward.=
=STOLEN=
=FROM THE IPSWICH MAIL,=
On its way from London, _on the Night
of the 11th Sept. Inst._ the following
=COUNTRY BANK NOTES:=
Ipswich Bank, 5, & 10_l._ Notes.
_ALEXANDERS & Co._ on _HOARE & Co._
Woodbridge Bank, 1, 5, & 10_l._ Notes.
_ALEXANDERS & Co._ on _FRYS & Co._
Manningtree Bank, 1, 5, & 10_l._ Notes.
_ALEXANDER & Co._ on _FRYS & Co._
Hadleigh Bank, 1, 5, & 10_l._ Notes.
_ALEXANDER & Co._ on _FRYS & Co._
Particulars of which will be furnished at the different Bankers.
Whoever will give Information, either at ALEXANDERS and Co.
or at FRYS and Co., _St Mildred's Court, Poultry_, so that the
Parties may be apprehended, shall on his or their Conviction,
and the Recovery of the Property, receive the above REWARD.
We have said that mail-coaches were gorgeous. They were painted
in black and red. Not a shy, unassuming red, but the familiar and
traditional Post-office hue. Also they bore the Royal coat-of-arms
emblazoned upon the door panels, and the insignia of the four principal
orders of knighthood on the quarters. There was no mistaking a
mail-coach.
The Norwich Mail, which took fifteen and a half hours to do the journey
so late as 1821, was greatly improved in later years; and finally, in
the early forties, when the railway reached Norwich and superseded the
roads, performed the journey in eleven hours, thirty-eight minutes, at
the very respectable average speed of 9½ miles an hour. It was not the
only mail on the road, but shared the way so far as Ipswich with the
Ipswich and Yarmouth Mail. This coach was unfortunate on two occasions
between 1835 and 1839. On September 28th in the first year, when the
coachman was climbing on to his box in the yard of the "Swan with Two
Necks," the horses started away on their own accord, tumbling the
coachman off and knocking down the helper who had been holding their
heads. Dashing into Cheapside, they flung themselves against the back
of the Poole Mail with such force that the coachman of that mail was
also thrown off. He was taken unconscious to the hospital. Continuing
their furious rush, the horses of the Ipswich Mail at length ran the
pole of the coach between the iron railings of a house, and so were
stopped.
The second happening, in 1839, was somewhat similar. The mail had
arrived at Colchester, and the coachman, throwing down the reins, got
off the box. No one was at the horses' heads, and they started away and
galloped down the High Street, until the near leader fell and broke
his neck, stopping the team.
It was by the Ipswich and Yarmouth Mail that David Copperfield
journeyed down to Yarmouth on his second visit to Mr Peggotty. In the
ordinary course of things, he would have reached Ipswich at 3·12 a.m.
But on this occasion the weather was a potent factor in causing delay.
He occupied the box seat, and remarked upon the look of the sky to the
coachman while yet on the first stage out of London.
"Don't you think that a very remarkable sky?" he asked; "I don't
remember to have seen one like it."
"Nor I--not equal to it," said the coachman. "That's mist, sir.
There'll be mischief done at sea, I expect, before long."
The description of this stormy sky is very fine, and seems to have been
drawn from observation; just as true and as effective in its way as Old
Crome's billowy cloudscapes, in his _Mousehold Heath_, or as any of
Constable's rain-surcharged Suffolk scenes.
"It was a murky confusion--here and there blotted with a colour like
the colour of the smoke from damp fuel--of flying clouds tossed up into
most remarkable heaps, suggesting greater heights in the clouds than
there were depths below them to the bottom of the deepest hollows in
the earth, through which the wild moon seemed to plunge headlong, as
if, in a dread disturbance of the laws of nature, she had lost her way
and were frightened. There had been a wind all day; and it was rising
then, with an extraordinary great sound. In another hour it had much
increased, and the sky was more overcast, and it blew hard.
"But as the night advanced, the clouds closing in and densely
overspreading the whole sky, then very dark, it came on to blow harder
and harder. It still increased, until our horses could scarcely face
the wind. Many times in the dark part of the night (it was then late in
September, when the nights were not short) the leaders turned about,
or came to a dead stop; and we were often in serious apprehension that
the coach would be blown over. Sweeping gusts of rain came up before
this storm, like showers of steel; and at those times, when there was
any shelter of trees or lee-walls to be got, we were fain to stop,
in a sheer impossibility of continuing the struggle.... We came to
Ipswich very late, having had to fight every inch of ground since we
were ten miles out of London; and found a cluster of people in the
market-place, who had risen from their beds in the night, fearful of
falling chimneys. Some of these, congregating about the inn-yard while
we changed horses, told us of great sheets of lead having been ripped
off a high church tower and flung into a bye-street, which they then
blocked up."
At Ipswich the Yarmouth coaches left the Norwich Road, and so the
further adventures of David Copperfield do not in this place concern
us.
VIII
HERE, as on the other roads, the early advent of the Motor Car, in
1826, caused much commotion. The steam coaches of that period never
achieved any success on this route, but caricatures of what might be
expected were plentiful, and pictures of the Colchester "Dreadful
Vengeance," the Norwich "Buster," and other fanciful conveyances, in
the act of exploding and distributing their passengers in little pieces
over a wide stretch of country, were popular. The railway itself came
in for much abuse, and misguided and fanatical coach proprietors wasted
their substance in pitiful attempts to compete with it. Among these
was Israel Alexander, that Jewish hero of the Brighton Road in the
early forties, who, although a first-class whip, was perhaps chiefly
associated with the many upsettings of the Brighton "Quicksilver." He
fell out with his noble friends on that highway, and, coming to the
Norwich Road, ran a well-appointed coach to Colchester for a little
while, until even the Eastern Counties Railway, then the slowest on
earth, made the pace too quick for him. His turn-out was given the
extraordinary name of the "Duke of Beaufort's Retaliator," and might
have continued much longer to carry those who were prejudiced against
railways, had it not met with so many accidents.
One who was contemporary with the coaching age has ingeniously divided
coaching accidents into three classes:--1. Accidents to the coach; 2.
Accidents to the horses; 3. Accidents to the harness. The most common
kind of mishap to the coach was, he says, the breaking of an axle.
This was not, as a rule, due to any faulty construction of that most
essential feature of a public conveyance, but to the overloading either
of passengers or goods, to which coaches were continually subject. The
sudden snapping of an axle at a high speed or on a down grade produced
a tremendous crash which generally shot coachman, guard and "outsides"
in all directions. Happy those who, in such a case, were received into
the thorny arms of a quickset hedge or the soft embraces of a mud-heap.
Another kind of mishap, not always accidental, was that of a wheel
coming off; an incident often caused in early times, before the
introduction of patent axle-boxes, by the mischievous removal of the
lynch-pin by some unscrupulous rascal in the employ of the rival coach
proprietor.
The sudden snapping of a skid-chain while descending a hill, resulting
in the coach running on to the horses and a general overthrow, in
which horses' legs and passengers heads came into unwonted contact,
was perhaps as uncomfortable a kind of disaster as could be imagined.
Overloading, too, sometimes had the effect of rendering a coach
top-heavy, when a slight lack of caution in running round curves would
upset it.
Accidents to the horses were:--casting a shoe, involving lameness, and
perhaps a fall; tripping and stumbling on loose stones and rolling
over; slipping up in frosty weather; and kicking over the traces or the
splinter-bar.
Accidents to the harness usually happened to the traces, which commonly
snapped under an uneven strain. To cobble them up with twine, and so
complete a stage, was a common practice. In such cases, the thoughts
of passengers during the remaining miles were, like those of the poet,
"too deep for words." Most nerve-shaking of all these varied and
untoward happenings, however, was the breaking of the reins. Rotted
by age, by the sun's heat and the winter's frosts, they would "come
away" in the coachman's hands at that worst of moments;--when he was
holding in his horses downhill. In that contingency, says our ancient,
who, in the modern slang phrase, has "been there," it was the approved
thing to say your prayers first and then take a flying leap (result, a
broken neck, or fractured leg: the bone protruding over the top of the
Blucher).
"Then shrieked the timid and stood"--or, rather, sat--"still the
brave;" who had this consolation, that if they fared no better than
those who jumped, the odds were that they fared no worse.
To be dragged at hurricane pace by four runaway horses (for in such
a case they generally _did_ so run) with the broken reins trailing
helplessly after them, was to acquire the knowledge of an inner meaning
in the word "terror." In escapades of this kind the "insides" were in
the most unenviable situation; for the "outsides," including coachman
and guard, took the better, if unheroic, part of crawling over the roof
and slipping down the back of the coach into the road. The wisdom of
their doing so would, in most cases, be proved a few seconds later by
the sound of a distant crash as the coach hurtled against some roadside
tree and dissolved into matchwork, while the "insides" were stuck as
full of splinters as a "fretful porcupine" of quills.
The "human boy" was as much the terror of the old coachman as he is
of the modern cyclist. The sight of a boy with a hoop reduced him to
a state of purple indignation or of quivering anxiety, according to
temperament. Many an one of our great-grandfathers, attired in the odd
costume of boys in that period, and trundling a hoop along the road,
has felt the lash of the coachman's whip. The following little story
will show us why.
"When a very little boy," says one of our forebears, "I once upset
a four-horse coach by losing control over my hoop, which, to my
consternation, bowled among the legs of the team. I shall never
forget the horror with which I for an instant saw the spirited
horses floundering about with that hateful hoop among them, or heard
the execrations of the coachman and the shouts of the passengers.
Abandoning the wretched plaything to its fate, I took to my heels down
a bye-lane, the portentous crash that followed only accelerating my
speed."
Coach proprietors were favourite targets for Fate's worst shafts.
They were a hard-working, much-enduring class of men; up early and to
bed late, retiring in good circumstances and rising perhaps ruined
through some unforeseen accident. They were "common carriers" in law,
and bound under many Acts of Parliament to deliver goods uninjured at
their destination. As carriers of passengers, it is true, they were
only required to exercise all "due care and diligence" for the safety
of their customers, and were exempt from liability in case of mishaps
through the "act of God" or the unforeseen; but the observance of due
precautions and a daily inspection of the coach had to be proved in
case of injury to passengers, or in default they were held liable for
damages.
Thus, the carelessness of any one of his many servants might mean
a very serious thing to a coach proprietor. In those days the old
Anglo-Saxon Law of Deodand was not only in existence, but in a very
nourishing and aggressive condition. Indeed, coaching had practically
rescued it from neglect. It was a law which, in cases of fatal
injuries, empowered the coroner's jury to levy a fine, which might vary
from sixpence to a thousand pounds, upon the object that caused the
mischief.
The very multiplicity of tribunals before whom the personally
unoffending coach proprietor was liable to be haled was in itself
terrifying. There was the already-mentioned coroners jury; the jury on
the criminal side in trials at the Assizes for manslaughter, and the
other "twelve good men and true" who assessed damages in the Sheriff's
Court.
How even the most well-meaning of men might thus suffer is evident
in the case of a proprietor who was cast in damages from excess of
caution. For additional security, and in order to protect it from road
grit, he had a part of an axle incased in wood. One day this axle broke
and a serious accident happened, resulting in an action against him for
damages. He lost the day; the judge ruling that, although no proof of a
defective axle was adduced, a flaw _might_ have existed which a proper
daily examination would have detected had the extra precaution for
safety not been adopted.
IX
WHAT Aldgate might now have been had the original intention of the
Eastern Counties directorate to place their terminus there been
successful, we need not stop to inquire. But, as a good deal has
already been said on the subject of coaches and coaching, it will be of
interest to learn what were the views of the projectors of the Eastern
Counties Railway. With their original prospectus was issued a map of
the proposed railway from London to Norwich and Yarmouth, by which it
appears that, instead of going to the left of the road from London, as
far as Seven Kings and Chadwell Heath, it was originally intended to
construct the line on the right of the road so far. Between Romford and
Chelmsford the line has been made practically as first proposed, but
onwards, from Chelmsford to Lexden, it is again on the other side of
the highway; and, north of Colchester, goes wide of the original plan
all the way to Norwich.
In many ways this document is very much of a curiosity at this time,
as also are the hopes and aspirations of the directors at the first
General Meeting of the company. The chairman, for instance, confidently
anticipated dividends of 22 per cent., upon which one of the confiding
shareholders replied that the report was most satisfactory and the
prospects held out by no means overcharged. "If this understanding,"
said he, "fails in producing the dividend of 22 per cent., calculated
upon in the report, then, I must say, human calculations and
expectation can no longer be depended upon." O! most excellent man. But
better is to come.
"Should I live to see the completion of this and similar undertakings,"
he resumed, "I do believe I shall live to see misery almost banished
from the earth. From the love I bear my species, I trust that I may
not be too sanguine, and that I may yet witness the happy end that I
have pictured to myself." His was, you think, the faith that might
have moved mountains; but it did not produce that promised 22 per
cent., nor, although we now have many thousands more miles of railway
than he ever dreamed of, has the millennium yet arrived. Even the most
far-seeing have not yet discovered any heralds of its approach. Let
us drop the tribute of a tear to the sorrows of this excellent person,
whose love of his species and touching anticipation of 22 per cent.
dividends were so beautifully blended, and so cruelly disappointed.
For some years small (very small) dividends were paid. Hudson, the
"Railway King," paid them out of capital. "It made things pleasant," he
said, when charged with such financially immoral practices. Alas! poor
Hudson, you lived before your time, and went to another world before
such "dishonest" doings as yours were sanctified in principle by Acts
of Parliament which authorise payments of dividends out of capital in
the case of railways under construction.
In 1848 the Eastern Counties Railway was in Chancery, and its very
locomotives and carriages were seized for debt; while for years
afterwards its name was a synonym for delay. The satirists of that
period were as busy with the Eastern Counties as those of our own time
are with the South-Eastern Railway. Every journey has an end; "even
the Eastern Counties' trains come in at last," said Thackeray, very
charitably.