Part 3

As time went on, a certain degree of security was found in the coaches that began to make an appearance with the second half of the seventeenth century. They travelled at first no more quickly than a man could walk, but they provided company, which was, under the circumstances, highly desirable. Soon, however, they found it possible to do the journey in two days. Strype, we have already seen mentions the "Saracen's Head" in Aldgate as the centre of a considerable trade, and to it in 1681 a Norwich coach was running; an innovation which aroused the indignation of innkeepers on the way to almost as great a height as that of their descendants when, two hundred and forty years later, railways were depopulating the roads. When travellers began to go by coach instead of on horseback, and to reach London or Norwich in two days instead of three or four, those antique tapsters thought they saw their living going, and, strange to say, there were not wanting men who raised their voices against the innovation of being carried on a journey, instead of riding; although, for the most part, their outcry was the result only of innate conservatism.

"Travelling in these coaches," said an anonymous pamphleteer, "can neither prove advantageous to men's health or business. For what advantage is it to men's health to be called out of their beds into these coaches an hour before day in the morning, to be hurried in them from place to place, till one hour, two, or three within night; insomuch that after sitting all day in the summer time stifled with heat, and choked with the dust, or the winter time starving and freezing with cold or choked with filthy fogs, they are often brought into their inns by torchlight, when it is too late to sit up to get supper; and next morning they are forced into the coach so early that they can get no breakfast. What addition is this to men's health or business? to ride all day with strangers, oftentimes sick, ancient, diseased persons, or young children crying; to whose humours they are obliged to be subject, forced to bear with, and many times are poisoned with their nasty scents, and crippled by the crowd of the boxes and bundles."

Yet "these coaches" (one can almost hear the intonation of contempt in that phrase) were from the first a success. The greater that success the louder for a time was the outcry against them. Taylor, the Water Poet, was one of those who wrote vehemently against the new methods of travel. To him a coach was "a close hypocrite; for it hath a cover for knavery and curtains to vaile and shadow any wickedness. Besides, like a perpetual cheater, it wears two bootes, and no spurs, sometimes having two pairs of legs to one boote, and oftentimes (against nature) it makes faire ladies weare the boote; and if you note, they are carried back to back, like people surprised by pyrats, to be tyed in that miserable manner and thrown overboard into the sea. Moreover, it makes people imitate sea-crabs, in being drawn sideways as they are when they sit in the boot of the coach; and it is a dangerous kind of carriage for the commonwealth, if it be considered."

The boot of which he speaks so contemptuously, was a method of packing the "outsides," of which we still find a survival in the Irish jaunting-car. There are those who trace the origin of the term from the French "_boîte_," a box. Even now the coachman's seat is "the box," and the modern fore-boot is under it.

Writers of that time seem almost unanimously to have taken sides against coaching; with, however, no effect; for, somewhat later than Taylor, that doughty Conservative, John Cresset, is found exclaiming furiously against the multitude of them. He favoured the suppression of all, or, at least--counsels of moderation prevailing--of most. They were, he said, mischievous to the public, destructive to trade and prejudicial to the land. Not only did they injure the breed of horses, but also that of watermen; which last objection goes further than the complaints of Taylor himself, who, writing at the same time, does not speak of his breed being debased, but only of his trade being crippled. Cresset thought the stage-coaches tempted the country gentry to London too often, and he accordingly proposed that these conveyances should be limited to one for every county town in England, to go backwards and forwards once a week.

Vain hope! Coaches of sorts must already have appeared on the road to Norwich by the middle of the seventeenth century, for in a proclamation of July 20th in the plague year, 1665, when all places were dreading infected London, it is ordained, that "from this daie all ye passage coaches shall be prohibited to goe from ye city to London and come from thence hither, and also ye common carts and wagons." Already, in 1696, the "Confatharrat" coach was a well-known conveyance between London and Norwich, and the name of Suggate, the London and East Anglian carrier, a household word. Unhappily, nothing can be gathered as to when Suggate first began to jog along the road, or when the "Confatharrat" started to ply between Norwich and the "Four Swans," Bishopsgate Street. All particulars are lost. The odd name of that coach was probably a seventeenth-century way of spelling the word "confederate," and the selection of such a name proves both that it was carried on by an alliance or co-partnership, and that "confederate" had not then acquired its sinister modern connotation. Besides these aids to travel, a stage-waggon began to ply from the "Popinjay," Tombland, Norwich, at an early date; and another from the "Angel," in the Market Place, to the "Blossoms" Inn, Laurence Lane, London, was advertised in the _Norwich Mercury_, of March 29th, 1729, to "now go regularly every Thursday night," setting out on the following Wednesday from London, on the return journey. It will thus be seen that it was a five or six days' journey for those primitive affairs, and that they apparently did not run at regular intervals until that year.

A London and Beccles coach was running in 1707, but the first regular Norwich coach of which particulars remain was the "Norwich Machine," which in 1762 set out for London three times a week from the "Maid's Head," according to the advertisement still extant. There is nothing in that old coaching bill to show that 1762 was the first season of the "Norwich Machine." It may have been established some years before that date.

_Norwich, March 26, 1762._

SUSAN NASMITH and JAMES KEITH,

Proprietors of the

NORWICH MACHINE,

Give Notice

that their Machine will set out from the MAID'S HEAD Inn, in St Simon's Parish, in Norwich, on Monday, the 5th day of April next, at half-past eleven in the forenoon, and on the Wednesday and Friday in the same week, at the same time; and to be continued in like Manner, on those Days weekly, for the carrying four inside Passengers, at Twenty-five Shillings each, and outside at Twelve Shillings and Sixpence each. The inside Passengers to be allowed twenty pound Weight, and all above to be paid for at three half-pence per pound; and to be in London on the Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday Evenings weekly.

* * * * *

_N.B._--A Machine will set out on the same days, at the same time, from the GREEN DRAGON, in Bishopsgate Street, London, for Norwich.

In the following year, the "Widow Nasmith" and James Keith advertised that they had built large and commodious machines, to carry six inside, and reduced the fares to twenty shillings and ten shillings respectively; but they had apparently not succeeded in performing the journey in less time than a day and a half, for no mention is made of speed being accelerated. But a remarkable feature in that announcement is the extraordinary cheapness of the fares, little over twopence and a penny a mile for inside and outside passengers, at a time when prices on other roads ruled from twenty-five to fifty per cent. higher. This tells a tale of competition; but Time, the thief, has robbed us of all knowledge of those competitors.

A year later the London and Ipswich Post Coaches were advertised to set out every week-day, and to perform the 69¼ miles in ten hours, an average pace of almost 7 miles an hour; a marvellous turn of speed for that age. As to whether those Post Coaches ever _did_ cover that distance in ten hours, we may reasonably express a doubt; but there was the promise, and 011 the strength of it the proprietors charged threepence a mile. As will be seen by the advertisement, these coaches carried no outside passengers:--

_Ipswich, August 17th, 1764._

THE LONDON AND IPSWICH POST COACHES

Set out on Monday, the 27th of August, at seven o'clock in the morning 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."

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.