Part 4

One who was contemporary with the coaching age has ingeniously divided coaching accidents into three classes:--1. Accidents to the coach; 2. Accidents to the horses; 3. Accidents to the harness. The most common kind of mishap to the coach was, he says, the breaking of an axle. This was not, as a rule, due to any faulty construction of that most essential feature of a public conveyance, but to the overloading either of passengers or goods, to which coaches were continually subject. The sudden snapping of an axle at a high speed or on a down grade produced a tremendous crash which generally shot coachman, guard and "outsides" in all directions. Happy those who, in such a case, were received into the thorny arms of a quickset hedge or the soft embraces of a mud-heap.

Another kind of mishap, not always accidental, was that of a wheel coming off; an incident often caused in early times, before the introduction of patent axle-boxes, by the mischievous removal of the lynch-pin by some unscrupulous rascal in the employ of the rival coach proprietor.

The sudden snapping of a skid-chain while descending a hill, resulting in the coach running on to the horses and a general overthrow, in which horses' legs and passengers heads came into unwonted contact, was perhaps as uncomfortable a kind of disaster as could be imagined. Overloading, too, sometimes had the effect of rendering a coach top-heavy, when a slight lack of caution in running round curves would upset it.

Accidents to the horses were:--casting a shoe, involving lameness, and perhaps a fall; tripping and stumbling on loose stones and rolling over; slipping up in frosty weather; and kicking over the traces or the splinter-bar.

Accidents to the harness usually happened to the traces, which commonly snapped under an uneven strain. To cobble them up with twine, and so complete a stage, was a common practice. In such cases, the thoughts of passengers during the remaining miles were, like those of the poet, "too deep for words." Most nerve-shaking of all these varied and untoward happenings, however, was the breaking of the reins. Rotted by age, by the sun's heat and the winter's frosts, they would "come away" in the coachman's hands at that worst of moments;--when he was holding in his horses downhill. In that contingency, says our ancient, who, in the modern slang phrase, has "been there," it was the approved thing to say your prayers first and then take a flying leap (result, a broken neck, or fractured leg: the bone protruding over the top of the Blucher).

"Then shrieked the timid and stood"--or, rather, sat--"still the brave;" who had this consolation, that if they fared no better than those who jumped, the odds were that they fared no worse.

To be dragged at hurricane pace by four runaway horses (for in such a case they generally _did_ so run) with the broken reins trailing helplessly after them, was to acquire the knowledge of an inner meaning in the word "terror." In escapades of this kind the "insides" were in the most unenviable situation; for the "outsides," including coachman and guard, took the better, if unheroic, part of crawling over the roof and slipping down the back of the coach into the road. The wisdom of their doing so would, in most cases, be proved a few seconds later by the sound of a distant crash as the coach hurtled against some roadside tree and dissolved into matchwork, while the "insides" were stuck as full of splinters as a "fretful porcupine" of quills.

The "human boy" was as much the terror of the old coachman as he is of the modern cyclist. The sight of a boy with a hoop reduced him to a state of purple indignation or of quivering anxiety, according to temperament. Many an one of our great-grandfathers, attired in the odd costume of boys in that period, and trundling a hoop along the road, has felt the lash of the coachman's whip. The following little story will show us why.

"When a very little boy," says one of our forebears, "I once upset a four-horse coach by losing control over my hoop, which, to my consternation, bowled among the legs of the team. I shall never forget the horror with which I for an instant saw the spirited horses floundering about with that hateful hoop among them, or heard the execrations of the coachman and the shouts of the passengers. Abandoning the wretched plaything to its fate, I took to my heels down a bye-lane, the portentous crash that followed only accelerating my speed."

Coach proprietors were favourite targets for Fate's worst shafts. They were a hard-working, much-enduring class of men; up early and to bed late, retiring in good circumstances and rising perhaps ruined through some unforeseen accident. They were "common carriers" in law, and bound under many Acts of Parliament to deliver goods uninjured at their destination. As carriers of passengers, it is true, they were only required to exercise all "due care and diligence" for the safety of their customers, and were exempt from liability in case of mishaps through the "act of God" or the unforeseen; but the observance of due precautions and a daily inspection of the coach had to be proved in case of injury to passengers, or in default they were held liable for damages.

Thus, the carelessness of any one of his many servants might mean a very serious thing to a coach proprietor. In those days the old Anglo-Saxon Law of Deodand was not only in existence, but in a very nourishing and aggressive condition. Indeed, coaching had practically rescued it from neglect. It was a law which, in cases of fatal injuries, empowered the coroner's jury to levy a fine, which might vary from sixpence to a thousand pounds, upon the object that caused the mischief.

The very multiplicity of tribunals before whom the personally unoffending coach proprietor was liable to be haled was in itself terrifying. There was the already-mentioned coroners jury; the jury on the criminal side in trials at the Assizes for manslaughter, and the other "twelve good men and true" who assessed damages in the Sheriff's Court.

How even the most well-meaning of men might thus suffer is evident in the case of a proprietor who was cast in damages from excess of caution. For additional security, and in order to protect it from road grit, he had a part of an axle incased in wood. One day this axle broke and a serious accident happened, resulting in an action against him for damages. He lost the day; the judge ruling that, although no proof of a defective axle was adduced, a flaw _might_ have existed which a proper daily examination would have detected had the extra precaution for safety not been adopted.

IX

WHAT Aldgate might now have been had the original intention of the Eastern Counties directorate to place their terminus there been successful, we need not stop to inquire. But, as a good deal has already been said on the subject of coaches and coaching, it will be of interest to learn what were the views of the projectors of the Eastern Counties Railway. With their original prospectus was issued a map of the proposed railway from London to Norwich and Yarmouth, by which it appears that, instead of going to the left of the road from London, as far as Seven Kings and Chadwell Heath, it was originally intended to construct the line on the right of the road so far. Between Romford and Chelmsford the line has been made practically as first proposed, but onwards, from Chelmsford to Lexden, it is again on the other side of the highway; and, north of Colchester, goes wide of the original plan all the way to Norwich.

In many ways this document is very much of a curiosity at this time, as also are the hopes and aspirations of the directors at the first General Meeting of the company. The chairman, for instance, confidently anticipated dividends of 22 per cent., upon which one of the confiding shareholders replied that the report was most satisfactory and the prospects held out by no means overcharged. "If this understanding," said he, "fails in producing the dividend of 22 per cent., calculated upon in the report, then, I must say, human calculations and expectation can no longer be depended upon." O! most excellent man. But better is to come.

"Should I live to see the completion of this and similar undertakings," he resumed, "I do believe I shall live to see misery almost banished from the earth. From the love I bear my species, I trust that I may not be too sanguine, and that I may yet witness the happy end that I have pictured to myself." His was, you think, the faith that might have moved mountains; but it did not produce that promised 22 per cent., nor, although we now have many thousands more miles of railway than he ever dreamed of, has the millennium yet arrived. Even the most far-seeing have not yet discovered any heralds of its approach. Let us drop the tribute of a tear to the sorrows of this excellent person, whose love of his species and touching anticipation of 22 per cent. dividends were so beautifully blended, and so cruelly disappointed.

For some years small (very small) dividends were paid. Hudson, the "Railway King," paid them out of capital. "It made things pleasant," he said, when charged with such financially immoral practices. Alas! poor Hudson, you lived before your time, and went to another world before such "dishonest" doings as yours were sanctified in principle by Acts of Parliament which authorise payments of dividends out of capital in the case of railways under construction.

In 1848 the Eastern Counties Railway was in Chancery, and its very locomotives and carriages were seized for debt; while for years afterwards its name was a synonym for delay. The satirists of that period were as busy with the Eastern Counties as those of our own time are with the South-Eastern Railway. Every journey has an end; "even the Eastern Counties' trains come in at last," said Thackeray, very charitably.

In 1862 it was amalgamated with several minor undertakings, and re-named the "Great Eastern Railway"; "great in nothing but the name," as the spiteful said.

When matters were at their worst, the Lord Cranborne of that time was invited to accept the position of chairman and to help extricate the company from its difficulties. He accepted the post in January 1868 and held it until December 1871. In April 1868 he had succeeded to the title of Marquis of Salisbury. Thus the statesman and prime minister of later years was once a great figure in the railway world. His financial abilities helped to put the Great Eastern line on a firm basis, and when he left it the railway was already greatly improved in every respect. To-day, instead of being a "shocking example," it is a model to be copied by other lines.

X

ALTHOUGH the last of the old coaches was long ago broken up, and the Norwich Road is no longer lively with mail and stage travellers, it has, in common with several other roads out of London, witnessed a wholly unexpected revival, in the shape of the Parcel Mail service between London and Ipswich. When the Parcel Post came into being on the 1st August 1883, it was speedily discovered by the General Post-office authorities that in paying, according to contract, 55 per cent. of the gross receipts to the railway companies for the mere carriage of parcels, they were paying too much. Accordingly, a system of Parcel Mail coaches was established on several of the old roads, commencing with the London to Brighton Parcel Mail, in June 1887. A London and Chelmsford four-horse mail was soon added, and this was shortly afterwards extended to Colchester, and thence to Ipswich by cart. This curious enterprise of the Post-office was immediately successful, and it has ever since been found to effect a large saving over the railway charges. Nor is time lost in delivery. The down mail leaves London at a quarter to ten o'clock every night and the parcels arrive at Colchester and Ipswich in time for the first delivery the next morning; while the country parcels come up to London by an equally early hour. The way in which the service is worked will be gathered from the accompanying official way-sheet of the down mails.

GENERAL POST OFFICE

THE MOST NOBLE THE MARQUIS OF LONDONDERRY Postmaster-General

LONDON, CHELMSFORD, COLCHESTER, & IPSWICH ROAD PARCEL SERVICE. This Guard's Remarks as Proper Actual Column to Delays, &c. Times Times to be left Date 190 . H. M. H. M. blank

Coach Service Mount Pleasant P.M. between Distance Parcel Office dep. 9 45 London and M.F. Colchester. 3 0 Eastern District {arr. 10 8 Contractor-- P.O. {dep. 10 10 C. Webster, 279 Whitechapel Road, E. 11 3 Romford {arr. 11 40 {dep. 11 42 Cart between A.M. Colchester & 6 2 Brentwood {arr. 12 29 Ipswich. {dep. 12 31

Contractor-- 5 0 Ingatestone {arr. 1 9 F. W. Canham, {dep. 1 11 Ipswich. 6 0 Chelmsford {arr. 2 0 {dep. 2 5

8 6 Witham {arr. 3 13 {dep. 3 15

3 2 Kelvedon {arr. 3 41 {dep. 3 43

9 6 Colchester {arr. 5 0 {dep. 5 5

Stratford St. {arr. 5 58 Mary {dep. 6 0

18 2 Ipswich arr. 7 20 Signature of Guard 71 5

T. E. SIFTON, Inspector-General of Mails.

The Guard in charge of the Coach must report the cause of any Delay. He must enter all Remarks and Times in the proper Columns. This Bill to be sent, as addressed, by First Post.

TIME-BILL OF THE CHELMSFORD, COLCHESTER AND IPSWICH PARCEL MAIL.

The up service, starting with the mail-cart from Ipswich at 7·9 p.m. and continued from Colchester by four-horse van at 9·30 p.m., brings the country parcels to Mount Pleasant at 4·30 a.m., throughout the year. Up and down mails meet at Ingatestone at 1·9 a.m. On this service, as on all others, the vans go through, but the drivers and guards exchange places; the London men changing on to the van from Colchester at Ingatestone, and returning to London; the Colchester men taking over the down van and similarly returning whence they came.

It is a curious and unexpected revival of old methods, but an entirely successful one. No highwayman has ever attempted to "hold up" the Parcel Mail, for the last of that trade has for generations mouldered in his grave; but should any amateurs essay to complete this revival of old coaching days by waylaying the mail, the guards would be found well armed. Their virgin steel and untried pistols have for years been carried without any excuse for using them; but there need be no doubt that, were the occasion to arrive, they would defend their parcels--the pounds of country butter, the eggs, and wild flowers, or the miscellaneous consignment from London--with their hearts' blood. There are more romantic things in the world to die for than postal parcels of eggs, cheese and butter, but the ennobling word DUTY might glorify such a sacrifice for the sake of a pound's weight of "best fresh," or a dozen of "new laid."

But although the possibility of attack is remote, a spice of danger and romance savours the conduct of the parcel mails.

The up Colchester Parcel Mail had a mishap on the night of October 11, 1890, when, owing to the prevailing fog, it was driven into a ditch near Margaretting. Happily, both coachman and guard escaped injury, the heavy vehicle resting against the hedge. The coachman, mounting one of his team, and hurrying back to Chelmsford, succeeded in overtaking the down coach, which, returning to the scene of the accident, unloaded and transferred the parcels, and continued to London, leaving the down mail to be forwarded with local help. It eventually arrived at Colchester four hours late.

XI

COACHING days, old and new, having now been disposed of, we might set off down the road at once, were it not that our steps are at once arrested by the sight of the "Red Lion" Inn, at the corner of Whitechapel Road and Leman Street, which, together with the "Old Red Lion," adjoining, stands on a site made historic by Dick Turpin's lurid career.

It was in the yard of the old house that Turpin shot Matthew King in 1737. He had stolen a fine horse belonging to a Mr Major, near the "Green Man," Epping, and had been traced by means of the animal to the inn, where he was found by the Bow Street runners in company with Matthew and Robert King, birds of like feather with himself. The landlord endeavoured to arrest King, who fired at him without effect, calling to Turpin, "Dick! shoot him, or we are taken, by God!"

Turpin had his usual extensive armoury on his person--three brace of pistols and a carbine slung across his back. He fired, and shot Matthew King, whether by accident or design is not known. King first exclaimed, "Dick! you have shot me; make off," but is said afterwards to have cursed him as he went, for a coward. King died a week later of his wounds, Turpin fleeing to a deserted mansion in Essex, and thence to a cave in Epping Forest. It is usually said that it was the more famous Tom King who met so dramatic an end, but original authorities give Matthew; and certainly we find _a_ Tom King, highwayman, decorously executed at Tyburn eighteen years later.

We have met Turpin before, notably at York, where he made an end, two years after this exploit. This especial hero of the Penny Dreadful and the romantic imagination of the average errand boy belongs especially to this road, for he was an Essex man, born at Hempstead in 1705. Apprenticed to a Whitechapel butcher in his youth, he commenced his career of low villainy by stealing some cattle from a Plaistow farmer, and then joined a band of smugglers and deer-stealers and housebreakers in Epping Forest, where they set up a storehouse of stolen goods in the cave just mentioned. This band became so notorious that a sum of fifty guineas was soon offered for their arrest; but it was not until the amount had been doubled that two of the ringleaders were caught and hanged. The gang thus broken up, Turpin was reduced to scouring the roads singly, and pursued a solitary career until one dreary February night in 1735, while patrolling the Cambridge Road, he saw a horseman approaching through the mist. At the time-honoured demand, "Your money or your life!" the stranger simply laughed.

"What!" said he, "should dog eat dog? We are of a like trade."

Thus Turpin and Tom King met, and struck up a partnership. If only one quarter of the deeds assigned to Turpin were true, his would be a very gallant, as well as phenomenally busy, figure on the roads of England. Although by no means a mythical person, the stories told of him nearly all belong to the regions of romance, and his true history shows him to have had few redeeming qualities. Many of the old knights of the road were courageous, and hand in hand with their courage went a humour not seldom kindly; but Turpin was a bloodthirsty ruffian whose courage is not an established fact, and whose humour, like the "tender mercies of the wicked," was cruel, not to say ferocious. It is quite hopeless to attempt to finally destroy the great Turpin myth after this lapse of time: Harrison Ainsworth's romance has enjoyed too great and too long a popularity for that; but let the attempt here be made to paint him as the cowardly ruffian he was.

Whitechapel, quite apart from memories of Turpin, owns an unenviable repute, and its very name is a synonym for villainy. Its bad savour, however, goes back no greater distance in time than the first half of the eighteenth century, for until that period it was not built upon, and indeed "Whitechapel Common" was spoken of so late as 1761, maps proving the old church to have been quite rural at that date. Originally a chapel-of-ease to the great mother-parish of Stepney, the district was erected into a separate parish so far back as the fourteenth century and the original "white chapel"--doubtless so called from its mediæval coats of whitewash--made a church. But old names cling, and although it has been a church for over six hundred years, it has not been able to confer its more dignified title upon the parish itself. Thus the name of Whitechapel is doubly misleading nowadays, for it is no longer a chapelry and its stately church is in red brick; so that there is some force in the argument for re-christening the borough and dignifying it by a revival of the old name of Eastminster, owned by that not very fortunate Abbey of St Mary Grace, founded by Edward the Third in 1348, which formerly stood on the site of the Royal Mint.

St Mary's, Whitechapel, is a beautiful church, built in 1877, burnt August 20, 1880, and since restored. It replaced the ugly old building, which was "taken down for the simple reason that it would not stand up." The ancient wrangling over its full title of St Mary Matfelon is not yet done, and rash would be he who voted for any particular one among the rival derivatives of the name. Matfelon, holds one school, was the name of a forgotten benefactor, whose particular benefactions are not stated. Who, then, would found, since benefits are thus forgot? "_Mariæ, matri et filio_," an ancient dedication, say others; while yet different parties find its source in a Syriac word meaning "mother of a son" = the Virgin Mary. Perhaps the most entertaining legend, however, is that which tells how it originated in the killing of a murderer, in 1429, by the women of Whitechapel. "Between Estren and Witsontyd, a fals Breton mordred a wydewe in here bed, the which find hym for almasse withought Algate, in the suburbes of London, and bar away alle that sche hadde, and afterwards he toke socour of Holy Chirche in Suthwark; but at the last he took the crosse and forswore the kynge's land; and as he went hys waye, it happyd hym to come be the same place where he had don that cursed dede, and women of the same parysh comen out with stones and canell dong, and ther maden an ende of hym in the hyghe strete." These things seem quite in keeping with Whitechapel's evil fame.

The old church, as it stood until well into the nineteenth century, is shown opposite this page, with one of the old road-waggons crawling past. In another view of the same date the High Street itself is seen, its long perspective fully bearing out the old description of spaciousness. At the same time, it is seen to be empty enough to resemble the street of a provincial town. The houses are exceedingly old, the road paved with knobbly stones, and the shop windows artfully constructed with the apparent object of obstructing instead of admitting the light. Very few of these old shop-fronts are now left, but a good specimen is that of a bell-founding firm at No. 34 Whitechapel Road.