Mail coach

“ MAIL-GUARDS When Palmer first introduced his plan of mail-coaches he proposed that, while the contractors supplied coaches and horses and the men to drive them, the guards should be the servants of the Post Office, and should, considering the dangers of the roads, be retired soldiers, who, from their past training and habits of discipline, would be reliable servants and men capable of defending the mails against attack. ”

“ Five years of life it was worth paying down for the privilege of an outside place on a mail-coach, when carrying down the first tidings of any such event. And it is to be noted that, from our insular situation, and the multitude of our frigates disposable for the rapid transmission of intelligence, rarely did any unauthorised rumour steal away a prelibation from the first aroma of the regular despatches. ”

“ We have known ourselves so firmly frozen to the leathern ceiling of the mail-coach, that it required the united strength of coachman, guard, and the other three outsides, to separate us from the vehicle, to which we adhered as part and parcel. ”

“ There were no smart coachmen before the introduction of mail-coaches. Before coaches carried the mails and the drivers became, in a sense, officials and persons of importance, wreathed around with a vague atmosphere of authority, your average driver took no sort of pride in himself. ”

“ The mail-coach, leisurely and tedious as it seems in these days of hurry, had a charm of its own in that it enabled its passengers to enjoy the fresh air—since most of them, by preference, travelled outside—and the beauties of our then comparatively unspoiled country and of our then picturesque old towns, mostly sleepy or only slowly awakening, it is true, and, doubtless, deplorably dull to live in. ”

“ When the coach is so broke down that it cannot proceed as it is on its way to London, if you have not above two passengers, and you can procure a post-chaise without [44] loss of time, get them and the mail forward in that way, with the horses that used to draw the mail-coach, that they may be in their places (till you come to where a coach is stationed) ; and if you have lost any time, you must endeavour to fetch it up, which may be easily done, as the chaise is lighter than the coach. ”

“ 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! ”

“ The night-mail was very preferable to a day coach—first, because you seldom met any seedy old fellows outside the mail enveloped in stuff cloaks, with cotton umbrellas, which on a rainy day acted as a spout to convey the water down your neck, and who, on seeing the coachman give up the ribbons would instanter bawl out. ”

“ But whilst all this progress had been made, many helpful suggestions had been made by men of moderate position. Take, for instance, a time so long ago as 1784: the credit of first suggesting the mail coach was made by a Mr. Palmer, who was then the manager of the theatre in their neighbouring city of Bath. This was a great improvement as to speed and safety of delivery when compared with the old postboy; but think of the mail coach when compared with the mail trains that covered now over three millions of miles per [Pg 209] annum. ”

“ There is a model of an old mail coach at the General Post Office, St. Martin's-le-Grand, London, popularly supposed to be the model of the first mail coach which was built, but such is not the case, for, as already stated, the first mail coach ran between Bristol and London, and the model has upon it the inscription "Royal Mail from London to Liverpool."
The expense of horsing a four-horsed coach running at the speed of from nine to ten miles an [Pg 24] hour was reckoned at £3 a double mile. Mails were exempt from turnpike tolls. ”

“ It needs no great imaginative powers to picture that guard embarking upon a colossal smuggling scheme after finding himself thus secured from being searched.
Although the mail-guards were as a body a brave and devoted class of men, determined to do their duty and to carry his Majesty’s mails in the face of all difficulties of snowstorms, winds, and floods, yet they gave Thomas Hasker, Chief Superintendent of Mail-coaches, a good deal of trouble. ”

“ The name of each particular mail appeared in unobtrusive gold letters. The under-carriage and wheels were scarlet, or “Post Office red,” and the harness, with the exception of the Royal cypher and the coach-bars on the blinkers, was perfectly plain.
One at least of the mail-coaches still survives. This is a London and York mail, built by Waude, of the Old Kent Road, in 1830, and now a relic of the days of yore treasured by Messrs. Holland & Holland, of Oxford Street. Since being run off the road as a mail, it has had a curiously varied history. ”

“ There were many such, but the traditional coachman was a bulky person, helped up to his seat by the combined efforts of the stable-helpers; and Dickens, in picturing Tony Weller, fell in with the public humour, although already the type was become somewhat out of date.
The stage and mail coachmen were no exotics, but, like every one else, the product of their country and their times; and as those times changed, so did they. The evolution of the smart coachmen of the ’thirties can be followed, step by step, until progress, in the shape of railways, extinguished the species. ”

“ The larger night vans can take a load of 21⁄4 tons as compared with 11⁄2 tons, the carrying capacity of the old horse coaches.
Most of these motor mail coaches travel during the night. In the case of the long-distance services, such as London and Brighton, two vehicles are used, starting from each end of the journey, meeting half way. It is remarkable how little the place of meeting varies each journey. De Quincey, in a footnote to his essay on The English Mail Coach, remarks upon this same feature in the early years of the last century. ”

“ The Christmas postal traffic on the Great Western Railway necessitated the running of the Night Mail train in two portions between London and Penzance, the first part taking the passengers, and the second being reserved exclusively for the Mails. Strangely enough, the despatch of the Mails from Paddington Station was superintended by the only p. 8Mail Coach Guard now in the service, Mr. James Nobbs, who for over fifty years has most faithfully looked after Her Majesty’s Mails. ”

“ It appears that the regular mail-coach from Worcester to Barre, left the former place on the afternoon of January 8, about half past four, full of passengers, and ornamented, as well as distinguished, by the words "U. S. Mail," painted in conspicuous letters on both sides of the foot-board.
The passengers were beginning to develope those sparks of sociability which are elicited by the collisions with one another, and the stimulus to the brain resulting from sundry jolts inseparable from the vicissitudes of stage-coach traveling. ”

“ Persons of the first distinction travel by the mail coaches. I don't mean amateur whips, but persons who depend upon the regularity, security, and comfort of the mail coach, and being less likely to meet with disagreeable passengers. ”

“ Nobbs has been in the service of the Post Office fifty-five years. He commenced life as a Mail Guard, and for years worked on Mail coaches. When the old coach system was superseded by railway service Mr. Nobbs did postal duty for some years as Mail Guard on the London and Exeter Railway, and was afterwards appointed to superintend the receipt and despatch of Mail bags at Paddington Station. ”

“ 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. ”

“ MAIL COACHES.
The letters, Mr. Palmer proposed, should be carried in strong and well-guarded coaches made expressly for the purpose, while the post-horses should be the finest England could supply; each coach should be accompanied by a man carrying firearms, and the post-boys should be well equipped for any dangers they might encounter: the coaches laden with the London mails were all to start from London at the same hour every evening, and their departure from the country should be so regulated as to ensure as far as possible their simultaneous arrival in London every morning. ”

“ The modern modes of travelling cannot compare with the mail-coach system in grandeur and power. They boast of more velocity, but not however as a consciousness, but as a fact of our lifeless knowledge, resting upon alien evidence ”

“ On May 1st, 1791, the first Brighton Mail coach was established. It was a two-horse affair, running by Lewes and East Grinstead, and taking twelve hours to perform the journey. It was not well supported by the public, and as the Post Office would not pay the contractors a higher mileage, it was at some uncertain period withdrawn. ”

“ The mail coaches destined for the transport of letters are carriages with four inside and six outside places. Behind the coach the guard is seated, with a blunderbuss and a pair of pistols before him. These coaches travel at the rate of ten miles, or four leagues an hour; but their small size (for the English, in general tall and thick, appear to have little regard to their personal proportions in the size of their carriages) , and the short time they stop to refresh, render them very unpleasant modes of conveyance. ”

“ Henry Cole knew so well how to strike the public eye. Probably the reader will not be displeased at its reproduction. The Edinburgh mail coach, it will be seen, is depicted, with its guard, coachman, and two outside passengers; the letter bags—which, as all the [340] world knows, or then knew, usually occupied the hind boot, so as to lie under the guard’s foot—are by an artistic liberty placed on the roof, the whole being arranged in divisions of franks, newspapers, Stamp-office parcels, and chargeable letters ”

“ Passengers who had booked from his City offices were carried to this point by omnibuses he established, and the mails were conveyed, with the guards, in two-wheeled mail-carts from the General Post Office. In the great number of coaches he ran there were, of course, included some of the very best. His were those famous coaches, the Manchester “Defiance,” a rival of Sherman’s even more famed Manchester “Telegraph,” the Birmingham “Greyhound,” the Cambridge “Telegraph,” Liverpool “Red Rover,” Bristol “Emerald,” Cheltenham “Magnet,” and many others doing their ten miles and more an hour. ”

“ In the hall of the Coachmakers’ Company, in Noble Street, Cheapside, is a picture of Hyde Park Corner in 1796, painted by Dagaty, in which is an old stage coach; the hinder part has a boot and guard’s seat attached to the body as in modern stage coaches, but the box is detached from the body and on the beds, as described above; the panels of the body are very deep, and on the upper quarters are painted two large stars, from which we may conjecture that it is a mail coach. ”

“ Many people seem to have an p. 34idea that the stoppage of Mail Coaches by Dick Turpin and his followers was an event of frequent occurrence. All I can say is that in my experience of the road nothing of the kind ever happened to my coach except once, and then I was like to have done myself more injury than the highwaymen did. It was in the year 1836, when I was travelling on the Bristol and Portsmouth Mail. One night, between Bath and Warminster, two men jumped out of the hedge; one caught hold of the leaders, and the other the wheelers, and tried to stop the coach. ”

“ The contractors had no choice in the matter. Palmer, the autocrat, had seen that Besant’s coaches were good, and willed it that they should use none others, and so to that fortunate patentee they were obliged to resort. He entered into partnership with Vidler, a practical coachbuilder; and thus at Millbank, Westminster, was established that mail-coach manufactory which for forty years supplied the mail-coaches to the mail-contractors. Besant and Vidler’s terms were twopence-halfpenny a double mile. For this price the coaches were hired out to the contractors and kept in repair. ”