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CHAMBERS’S JOURNAL
OF
POPULAR
LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART.
CONTENTS
COACHING-DAYS.
IN ALL SHADES.
JOHN HULLAH.
THE HERRING-FISHERY AND FISHERMEN.
MY FIRST PATIENT.
FYVIE CASTLE.
BIRD NOTES.
No. 125.—Vol. III.
Price 1½d.
SATURDAY, MAY 22, 1886.
COACHING-DAYS.
The old stagecoaches, having served their dayand generation, are now a thing of the past,save such as are used for pleasure bysocieties like the Coaching Club. The relics ofthese bygone days are to be found in roomyinns, with their broad gates, their commodiousyards, and extensive stabling, which have beenrendered comparatively useless and deserted bythe diversion of the traffic that maintained them.Our fathers and grandfathers can yet interest usby relating stories of their experiences in theold slow coaches with six inside, the improvedfast coaches and flying machines running twelvemiles per hour with four inside passengers; orthe crawling, lumbering stage-wagon, which carriedmerchandise and the poorer passengers, and whichwas considered to have travelled quickly if itrolled over four miles of road per hour.
Previous to the introduction of coaches, journeyswere performed on horseback or by postchaise,and goods were carried on packhorses. Stowsays that the Earl of Arundel introduced coachesinto England about 1580; but some give thehonour to Boonen, a Dutchman, who is said tohave used this class of vehicle so early as 1564.These coaches, however, were for private use, andit was not until 1625 that they were let for hireat the principal inns. In 1637, there were fiftyhackney-coaches in London and Westminster,and soon after, stagecoaches came into generaluse. Here is a copy of an old coachbill of thatdate: ‘York Four Dayes.—Stagecoach beginson Monday, the 18th of March 1678. All that aredesirous to pass from London to York, or returnfrom York to London, or any other place onthat road, let them repair to the Black Swanin Holborn in London, and the Black Swan inCony Street in York. At both which places theymay be received in a stagecoach every Monday,Wednesday, and Friday, which performs thewhole journey in Four Days (if God permit)and sets forth by Six in the Morning. Andreturns from York to Doncaster in a Forenoon;to Newark, in a Day and a Half; to Stamford,in Two Days; and from Stamford to London,in Two Days more.’
Nearly one hundred years after, the coacheswere called ‘machines,’ and th