Edwin A. Pratt

“ Mail coaches had the further good effect of stimulating great improvements in coach construction. The use of springs, in particular, allowed of a more compact vehicle, carrying luggage and outside passengers on the roof instead of relegating them to a basket "conveniency" behind. The competition, or, at least, the example of the mail-coaches had the further result of increasing the speed of the "flying" coaches, which now generally aimed at doing their eight or nine miles an hour; but here, again, much depended on the state of the roads. ”

“ In 1747, however, Birmingham got a coach of its own, and this vehicle, it was announced, would run to London in two days "if the roads permit," [2] but the roads around Birmingham were still in a deplorable condition when William Hutton published his "History" of the town. He says that from Birmingham, as from a grand centre, there radiated twelve roads to as many towns; but on most of them one could not travel with safety in times of floods, the water, owing to the absence of causeways and bridges, flowing over the road higher than the stirrup of one's horse. ”

“ The roads between Liverpool and Warrington being still impassable for coaches, the Liverpool passengers had to go on horseback to Warrington the day previous to the departure of the coach from that town. Manchester got a three-day coach to London in 1760. Seven years later communication by stage-coach was opened between Liverpool and Manchester, six or even eight horses being required to drag through the ruts and sloughs a heavy, lumbering vehicle which, going three days a week, then took the whole day to make the journey. In 1782 the time between Liverpool and London was 48 hours. ”

“ The three coaches a week between London and York, Chester and Exeter, spoken of by John Cressett as running in 1673, carrying their six passengers apiece on each journey, went, at that time, only in summer, on account of the roads; and even in the summer it was no unusual thing for the passengers to have to walk miles at a time because the horses could not do more than drag the coach itself through the mire. The usual speed was from four to four and a half miles an hour. ”

“ But now I think a man may dayly see
More than the wherrys on the Thames can be."
In the following year he published another work, "The World Runnes on Wheeles," in which he dealt further with the woes of the watermen. But the coaches continued to increase alike in number and in public favour, and the position of the watermen became still worse in 1625, when the already numerous private carriages were supplemented in London by hackney carriages let out for hire, though these did not, at first, exceed twenty in number, while they had to be hired direct from the stables of their owners. ”

“ The hackney coaches are so many in number that they pester and incumber the streets of London and Westminster, and, which is worst of all, they stand and ply in the terme tyme at the Temple gate, and at other places in the streets, and doe carry sometymes three men for fourpence the man, or four men for twelvepence, to Westminster or back again, which doing of this doth undoe the Company of Watermen. ”

“ As to a complaint of the stoppage of the streets by the carriages of persons frequenting the play-house of the Blackfriars, their lordships, remembering that there is an easy passage by water unto that play-house, without troubling the streets, and that it is much more fit and reasonable that those which go thither should go by water, or else on foot, do order all coaches to leave as soon as they have set down, and not return till the play is over, nor return further than the west end of Saint Paul's Church Yard, or Fleet conduit ”

“ That of late some rich men about the city, keep very many hackney coaches to the great prejudice, as your petitioners humbly conceive, of the Commonwealth, in that they make leather dear, and their horses devour so much hay and corn ”

“ Supplementary to the coaching there was the system of "posting," favoured by those who did not care to patronise public vehicles, and could afford the luxury of independent travel. In the earliest form of the posting system, that is, in the days when wheeled vehicles had not yet come into general use, and people did their journeys on horseback, travellers hired horses only at the recognised posting places ”