Robert Charles Tombs

“ One of the greatest buyers is an old pardoned convict of the name of 'William,' or, as he is there [Pg 131] more commonly called, 'Bill' Nash, who robbed the Bristol mail, of which he was the guard. His wife followed him—as some say, with the booty—and set up a fine shop in Pitt Street in the haberdashery line. Under the old system he was assigned to her as a servant. Her own husband her domestic! What a burlesque on transportation as a punishment! ”

“ We rejoice in the abundant evidence that you have thoroughly appreciated the absolute necessity for continual advance and adaptation, and that you are labouring with such zeal to keep the complicated machinery of the General Post Office up to date and equal to the immense and ever increasing strain it has to bear, whilst the Council think it only right to acknowledge the marked and unvarying urbanity with which, at all times, you and your officials receive and discuss any suggestions for the improvement of the services, emanating from Chambers of Commerce and other sources. ”

“ The pace of the trains has been vastly increased, and even goods trains accomplish the journey from London to Bristol in three hours. There is no such thing as finality in speed, as the Great Western Railway Company has been trying a French engine, with a view to beat all previous records. One of these engines was tried in France with the equivalent of fifteen loaded coaches behind it. It was brought to a dead stop on a steep incline, and when started again it gathered speed, so that before the summit was reached it was travelling at its normal speed—74.6 miles an hour. ”

“ It was twenty years after Allen's death that Palmer's Mail Coach system was started. Its advantage soon made itself apparent, and the improvement of roads at the end of the 18th Century enabled the mail coach service to be brought to great perfection. It lasted less than 60 years, but in those years correspondence and the revenue of the Post Office multiplied many times, and when Rowland Hill turned his attention to postal questions he found a rapid and efficient service, which was at the same time so cheap that the cost of conveyance was only a small item in the expenses of the Post Office. ”

“ There was no mail coach—no driver in scarlet—no mail guard—no passengers, but only a ramshackle iron mail cart—a "postboy" as driver and carrying no arms. What a contrast is this old mail cart with a single horse, carrying the mails for all the places enumerated [Pg 129] in the Notice, to the splendidly appointed four-horse mail coaches of a period thirty years later on, or to the present time, when on the Great Western Railway one whole train is used to carry only a moiety of the King's mail to Bristol and the West! ”

“ Travellers from North and East to the West of England and vice versa are aware that the Bristol Joint Great Western and Midland station is a busy railway centre. At a recent Christmas season, there was much remark on the part of the railway passengers with respect to the platforms being blocked up with barrows containing mails and the large stack of parcel baskets to be met with at every point. Said one traveller, "It's all blooming Post Office on the platform and no room for travellers to get about." ”

“ On September 8th, 1837, a coachman named Burnett was killed at Speenhamland, on the Bath Road. He was driving one of the New Company's London and Bristol stages, and alighted at the "Hare and Hounds," very foolishly leaving the horses unattended, with reins on their backs. He had been a coachman for 20 years, but experience had not been sufficient to prevent him thus breaking one of the first rules of the profession. He had no sooner entered the Inn than the rival Old Company's coach came down the road. ”

“ In 1637 letter posts were established by Charles I. King Charles stopped in the building that stood on the site of their local St. Martin's-le-Grand, but little could he have thought that the day would come when it would be possible for a man to stand on that spot and speak to a friend and recognise his voice, as far away as Wexford. Sir Francis Freeling had been named. He became secretary to the Post Office. He served in the Bristol office two or three years before being translated to London to become the associate of Palmer, of mail-coach renown. ”

“ Nothing can tend more to increase and consolidate the power of the empire than to give the greatest possible facility of intercourse between its distant points. When the London and Bristol railway shall be completed, it will be very possible, in connexion with the Irish steam-boats from the latter port, for cattle and other Irish produce to be conveyed to the London market within 32 hours from the time of shipment at Cork, Waterford, &c., and thus, at a cheap rate, will the London market be thrown immediately open to the Irish agriculturist ”

“ Indeed, the first traceable illustration of a Bristol Post Office is the engraving, a copy of which is here reproduced, depicting the building erected in 1750, at the corner of the Exchange Avenue as it appeared in 1805, when it was described as "a handsome freestone building, situated on the west side of the Exchange, [Pg 10] to which it forms a side wing, projecting some feet forward in the street; on the east side being another building answerable thereto." These premises served as the Post Office for the long period of 118 years. ”

“ The directors of the Bristol and West of England Bank purchased the premises on December 31st, 1880. Lloyd's Bank now stands on the site.
The White Lion, Bristol, was one of the most [Pg 102] famous coaching houses in England, east, west, north, or south. It stood in Broad Street, a thoroughfare which belied its name as regards breadth, and could only be considered broad by comparison with the even narrower Small Street, which ran parallel with it. Yet at one time there were as many coaches passing in and out of Broad Street as any street in Bristol, or even in London! ”

“ Mr. J.W. Arrowsmith, the world-wide known Bristol Publisher, recently reprinted Arrowsmith's Railway Guide of 1854, the year of its first issue. It is interesting to note from the re-publication that the shortest time in which Mails and passengers were conveyed between London and Plymouth was 7 hours, 25 minutes, and between Plymouth and London 7 hours, 35 minutes. What a change a half-century has brought about! ”

“ Quite recently a machine of the kind has been introduced into the Bristol Post Office. The machine, which is of modern invention, goes by the name of the "Columbia" Cancelling Machine, and is manufactured by the Columbia Postal Supply Company, of Silver Creek, New York, U.S.A. It is said to be in use in many Post Offices in the large towns of America and other countries. The public will no doubt have noticed the new cancelling marks on the postage stamps, as the die and long horizontal lines are very striking. ”

“ On Monday next the experiment for the more expeditious conveyance of the mails will be made on the road from London to Bath and Bristol. Letters are to be put in the London office every evening before 8 o'clock, and to arrive next morning in Bath before 10 o'clock, [Pg 31] and in Bristol by 12 o'clock. The letters for London, or for any place between or beyond, to be put into the Bath Post Office every evening before 5 o'clock, and into the Bristol office before 3 o'clock in the afternoon, and they will be delivered in London the next day. ”

“ He looks what he is and has been. In a little cupboard-looking shop in King Street he may be seen in shirt sleeves spreading a tray full of sovereigns in the shop front and heaping up bank-notes as a border to them, inviting anyone [Pg 132] to sell their gold to him. We believe he is now among the wealthiest men of New South Wales."
By the year 1830 the terror inspired by highwaymen had no doubt diminished, but the coach proprietors thought it prudent to guard themselves against loss, and so they put increased charges on the articles of value they had to carry. ”

“ Northern parts of the United Kingdom generally. Thus in the two important elements of speed and safety Bristol has paramount advantages as a terminal port for the transatlantic mail service. There is evidence generally that Bristol trade and commerce have revived, and are now indicating a vigorous growth. The Bristol post office statistics show a phenomenal progress during the last decade. In the year 1837, before the introduction of the penny postage system, and when people had to pay for their missives on delivery, Bristol could only boast of 1,040,000 letters delivered in a year ”

“ J. Paul Bush, who ungrudgingly gave up his large and fashionable practice as a surgeon in Clifton, and, at very brief notice, hurried off to South Africa to occupy the position of senior surgeon to the Princess Christian Hospital. [Pg 174]
He was mentioned by Lord Roberts in despatches, and the Companionship of the Order of St. Michael and St. George was conferred on him.
Small wonder then, that on Mr. Lansdown's retirement from the Bristol Medical Officership at the end of 1903, Lord Stanley should have selected Mr. Paul Bush to fill the appointment. ”

“ In the year 1793 the Salisbury, Portsmouth, and Chichester mails went out from Bristol every morning at seven, and arrived in Bristol every evening between nine and eleven. At that period the coaches from Bristol for the Southern Counties started thus:—Bush Tavern, Corn Street, John Weeks; for Weymouth a post coach every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning at 5; for Portsmouth a post coach every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday morning at four, so that probably the mail which left at 7 a.m. daily was carried by mail cart and postboy. ”

“ Mist's Journal of Apl. 30, 1720, states:—"Last week the Oxford Stage Coach was robbed between Uxbridge and London, by the same highwaymen as is supposed who robbed the Bristol Mail, one of them having a scar on his forehead."
"A man lately taken up near Maidenhead Thicket, and charged with robbing the Cirencester Stage Coach, has been examined by a Justice of the Peace, who has committed him to Reading Gaol. He is said to be a butcher's son of Thame, in Oxfordshire." ”

“ If he that night extolled Bristol above her other rivals, it would be said of him that he was a verbose individual, who had called in past years Leeds a beautiful and inspiring city, Liverpool a rising seaport, and Glasgow a town where urbanity and sweet reasonableness prevailed. It might be remembered of him that he had praised the Birmingham man for his childlike humility, and the Edinburgh man for his excessive modesty. It was his first visit to Bristol, and it was presumption on his part to speak on the subject at all. Silence was the better part when a man was [Pg 217] situated as he was. ”

“ EARLY BRISTOL POST MARKS.
The mail services in the rural districts are not free from danger. The pitcher may have been carried to the fountain year after year without mishap, but it not infrequently becomes broken at last. In like manner the contractor for the Portishead, Clevedon, and Yatton mail cart service, after having driven over this route with immunity from accident for forty years, yet came to grief in the last week of his connection with His Majesty's mails, January, 1902. ”

“ The father of Sir Thomas Lawrence was host of the White Lion before he removed to the Bear Inn, Devizes. In 1684, it appears to have been the occasional hostelry of a Duke of Beaufort, for in that year, during Monmouth's rebellion, His Grace of Badminton was in Bristol, where he commanded several regiments of militia [Pg 103] against the insurgents; and on that occasion "the backward stables of the White Lion, in Brode Street, were set on fire, and therein were burnt to death two of the Duke of Beaufort's best saddle horses. ”