George Athelstane Thrupp

“ How much better our carriages would be if we worked from drawings as carefully planned out and executed as these. Many of our artisans could, with a little instruction, draw quite as well, and by degrees would learn to draw with as much artistic taste and sense of the beautiful. Some artisans are now being instructed in the art of design, and I trust the day is not far distant when every workman will see that his son learns drawing as part of his education, and as the essential preliminary to any technical education which is to follow. ”

“ After a contest of many years it was generally acknowledged that, to oblige waggoners to carry burdensome wheels to roll the road for pleasure carriages, was an obvious hardship. Every inch added to the really necessary width for strength to the tyre of the wheels was felt by the carrier as a grievance, and the evasion of the government regulations was sympathised with by the common sense of mankind. It was left to the waggoner to keep the wheel sufficiently narrow to run lightly, and sufficiently wide to prevent its sinking with a heavy load into the road. ”

“ The Coachbuilders of the future will look to steam and hand machinery as their great assistant in cheapening the cost of first-rate carriages, in multiplying them for the probably increased demand, and in building carriages more speedily. It now takes from two to three months in building a brougham, of which at least five weeks are consumed simply in preparing the wood and iron work, a period which might easily be shortened by machinery.
With regard to the American waggons, they are so completely a carriage of themselves, there is so little to work upon, that we do not look for great beauty ”

“ The larger carriages of North America in which there is plenty of room for style and grace are, to an European eye, deficient in both. The extremely ugly straight and abrupt lines of the upper parts of the bodies, the wriggling, uncomfortable sweeps of the lower parts, the want of proportion, the scanty room for the legs of the passengers, must astonish all who have seen the carriages of other countries. American wheeled carriages seem to say, “We are made for lightness, and nothing else.” ”

“ We have thought only of the ease of turning and moving the whole vehicle in crowded or narrow ways, without observing the advantage of the long shafts over short shafts. If the shafts are considered as levers by which the horse supports and moves the weight behind him in a two-wheeled cart, it will be at once obvious that (although whilst those levers are parallel with the road) it does not so much signify whether they are long or short; yet the moment they point upwards, and especially when they point downwards, the difference between long and short levers is felt severely by the horse. ”

“ If carriages had always to move along perfectly smooth roads, such as a tramway of wood, iron, or stone, the use of wheels in overcoming friction would be their sole utility, and the height of the wheels would be of small consequence. But as carriages are drawn along roads with loose stones and uneven surfaces, wheels are further useful in mounting over these obstacles, and it is plain that a high wheel does this more easily than a low one. ”

“ There are no fittings for coachman or footman. The whole of the wood and ironwork is gilt, the panels only are in the colour of a landscape with figures.
It is a singular thing that there is a second coach of the same shape and date, but with the wheels and other fittings of a plainer description, and all black inside and out, with the Imperial arms in bronze relief on the doors. This black state coach is for funerals. ”

“ Carriages should always be built adapted to the places for which they are destined, whether for town, country, or the Continent; as a greater stress is laid upon the carriage in drawing over stones than on a smooth road. This makes it absolutely necessary to build stronger for the town than if intended for the country only, owing to the general goodness of our English roads; it is also necessary to build stronger for the Continent than even for the town, as the badness of their roads obliges them to use six horses where we should use two. ”

“ Our present omnibus is probably the lightest and strongest vehicle in the world for carrying twenty-eight persons, at a speed of nearly eight miles an hour. If tried with four horses on a country road they easily beat the old-fashioned stage coach, either in weight, capacity for carrying, durability, or safety.
Large omnibuses are in use in Glasgow and Manchester, and other towns where speed is not so much an object as it is in London, and they have been re-introduced in London between Charing Cross and Portland Road, and there are a few small one-horse omnibuses for short distances. ”

“ The Irish jaunting car, as now built, is superior to the vehicle of forty years ago. It was then on lower wheels, and being hung lower, the shafts pitched up in front, and the unfortunate passengers were huddled upon one another at every jolt in the road. This car was very light, a great benefit for the horse; it is easily turned and moved in a crowded thoroughfare, and is capable of conveying more luggage than might at first be supposed. The car is no doubt very cheap, and perhaps more Irish drivers are able to own their own cars than are the drivers of London cabs. ”

“ If the wheels of a vehicle are of equal height, the load should rest in the middle of the wheels. When the front wheels meet with an obstacle in the road the horse will only have to lift half the weight of the load, the other half being on the hind wheels. When the hind wheels come to the same obstruction again only half the load will have to be lifted, the other half being on the front wheels. But, as in English carriages, the wheels are very rarely of equal height, we should proportion the load more upon the higher wheels than upon the lower. ”

“ The eye is pleased with the proportions. The horse is eased, and upon hard roads the difference of track is of no consequence. On the other hand, in country roads, the well-worn ruts make the running of the carriage uneasy, whilst in town the driver often forgets that the curbstones will strike his hind wheels sooner than the front wheels, and lastly more mud is thrown upon the panels. ”

“ But beauty has a commercial value, and its multiplication should form part of human education. We are all still at school, both young and old. We should then endeavour to work all things into beautiful forms, as did the ancient Greeks, so that artistic skill and love of the beautiful became an inheritance with them, formed part of their nature, accompanied their daily life, and entered into every kind of production. ”

“ Another writer in 1673 opposes stages. “Is it,” he asks, “for a man’s health to be laid fast in foul ways, and forced to wade up to the knees in mire; and afterwards sit in the cold till fresh teams of horses can be procured to drag the coach out of the foul ways? Is it for his health to travel in rotten coaches, and have their tackle, or perch, or axle-tree broken, and then to wait half the day before making good their stage?”
This gives us some idea of the badness of the roads, and the imperfection of the vehicles. ”

“ It has been too much the habit in this country to regard beauty of production as something quite apart from usefulness of production, and at the same time to look upon the beauty which may result from human labour as a luxury reserved for the rich alone. ”

“ If his authorities be sound, we may be satisfied that the art of coachbuilding, as far as the under-carriage works, and the making of agricultural waggons, was as forward in the days of the Cæsars of Rome as it is to this day in central Germany.
We will, however, quit ancient carriages for those now used in Asia. In Hindostan are a great number of vehicles of native build. It has been frequently remarked that there is little change in the Eastern fashions, that tools and workmen are precisely as they were a thousand years ago, and the work they produce is precisely the same. ”

“ In England machinery for wood-shaping is used at Derby, Newcastle, Nottingham, Worcester, and other towns; and in Paris some beautiful machinery is at work in coach factories. In London, I believe, it is chiefly confined to patent-wheel factories. We use also a few steam-driven saws, some paint-grinding mills worked by hand, and drilling and punching machines. But until the use of machinery is adopted more generally in London it is probable that the trade of building carriages for export will drift more and more to the provinces and to the Continent. ”

“ I will mention one more primitive vehicle,—the cart with a tilt, with side windows, and a door behind, which is called a Coburg, and is used in the south-west of England; when on good springs, it is a very cheap and comfortable vehicle. In Belgium and Holland it is much used, and is usually built of a larger size than in England. It is, however, after all, rather like a bathing-machine on wheels. It is to be found pictured in our earliest illustrations of vehicles in old English illuminated manuscripts, differing from the modern Coburg only in the want of a door and springs. ”

“ If a horse with a heavy load, driven fast over slippery roads should stumble, it is most difficult for him to recover himself—he falls, is sometimes pushed along by the impetus of the carriage, and is more or less injured in his limbs or nerves by the accident, whilst it is difficult for him to rise again until the harness is unstrapped, and the carriage is removed from above him. We also harness our horses too closely to their work in the two-wheeled carriages. ”

“ If they are made too strong they will be rigid, and not fit with and favour the motion of the carriage and play of the springs. If a quick action is desired, the inner half of the levers on the wheels should be short, or long if a slow action is preferred. The blocks which press upon the wheels have been variously made of cast-iron, wrought iron, brass, wood, india-rubber, and leather. The wood is the best for hold on the iron tyre and freedom from noise and smell, but it wears out fast. India-rubber, especially for light carriages, seems most satisfactory. ”

“ Now the sense of beauty is not, under natural circumstances, the favoured inheritance of a few only, it is meant to be, should be, and may be the universal inheritance of civilised mankind. It ought, therefore, to be the aim of the humblest artisan to acquire by study and thought such a sense of beauty as may elevate the character of the work he performs. ”

“ I think therefore that, in future years, the growth of public opinion will be in favour of longer shafts and poles. This will also tend to preserve good carriages from the damage they at present suffer from the heat of the horses, and the quantity of mud which is thrown by their heels upon the front of the vehicle. The reins will of course have to be longer, but this cannot be of much consequence; the driver of a brougham is further from the horse than the driver of a mail phaeton, but we do not consider that the brougham is more difficult to drive than the mail phaeton on that account. ”

“ We can all of us lift a weight or support a weight more easily with a long lever than with a short one, and it is the same with a horse. Those who have travelled abroad must have noticed the great weights placed upon two-wheeled carts in France and Belgium, and the greater comparative distance at which the horse is placed from the wheels, and yet how little the horse is distressed. ”

“ It is as easy to make a stage coach as safe and nearly as light in running as an omnibus, by making it with much higher front wheels, and carrying them more forward. If it is considered essential to be able to turn in a narrow road, it would be easy to cut a small arch in the boot, which would allow the wheel to turn as far as the perch, instead of only half way to the perch as at present. ”

“ The Shampony is the usual vehicle for women, which resembles the former, but it is larger; the wheels are outside the body, and it is drawn by two bullocks; the canopy roof is furnished with curtains that are drawn all round, and the driver sits on the pole in front of the body. All these native vehicles have wooden axles, which, until recently, I am told, were used without grease, from the prejudices of the people forbidding them to use animal fat. ”

“ The reason given why drag-coaches are made with the front wheel so far back is, that it was necessary in order to bring the horses close to their work, to use a phrase that has been much misapplied, and also to bring them under the driver’s hands, who prefers the reins short, but it would be quite possible to build a coach in which the driver might be over the horses, and yet have the advantage of higher front wheels, and properly placed for carrying the load. ”

“ It is an inside car, that is, instead of sitting back to back, you sit face to face, and to most there is a hood or tilt; a very good vehicle, no doubt, for two persons at a slow pace, but with four persons at a trot it is the worst vehicle I had ever the misfortune to enter. If the Cork car was hung on higher wheels, and the shafts kept parallel to the ground, it would be a better vehicle; if, however, it cannot be balanced properly, it should be placed upon four wheels, like the inside cars of the North of England. ”