"A melancholy accident"

Please be warned--this is not a cheerful topic today! But it is, I think, quite fascinating. I have been looking at carriage accidents.

We might tend to think longingly of the quieter life of Regency England; the slower pace of everything, including horses and carriages. But as these newspaper clippings show, carriage, cart and coach traffic was as dangerous as your local freeway and accidents could be deadly.

Inattentive drivers, equipment failure, speed and impairment all caused accidents, then as now. And there was the additional wild card of the horse--a temperamental, easily startled, sensitive creature entrusted with lives.

These clips require no explanation; they offer an interesting perspective on day to day life in Regency England.

Leicester Chronicle - Saturday 15 November 1817

Cambridge Intelligencer - Saturday 15 November 1800

Gloucester Journal - Monday 23 November 1801

Morning Advertiser - Monday 20 March 1809

Norfolk Chronicle - Saturday 10 June 1809

Oxford University and City Herald - Saturday 17 January 1807

Stamford Mercury - Friday 21 October 1814

Star (London) - Saturday 06 October 1804

Windsor and Eton Express - Sunday 04 February 1816

The facts speak for themselves--transportation traffic is dangerous and always has been. Although one hesitates to benefit from the tribulations of the people involved in these accidents, there is much material for story-telling in these newspaper clippings.

Getting from Here to There -- Post Coaches

There were no trains, no cars, no airplanes. There were no inter-city buses, but there were plenty of post coaches in Regency England. For the vast majority of people, private carriages and chaises were out of the question. Public coaches were their only means of traveling around the country.

Mail coaches were the most well-known of passenger carriers. This advertisement (my apologies for the poor scan) shows the desirability of such reliable transport:

Gore's Liverpool General Advertiser - Thursday 09 January 1800

There were books like Cary's New Itinerary or Cary's Traveller's Companion which listed the schedules of mail coaches, stage coaches and post coaches to and from major cities. If you were lucky, the route you wanted to take was listed among Cary's timetables. But if you wanted really up-to-the-minute information on the coaches leaving your town, you could turn to the newspaper. There you would find advertisements from the local coach suppliers with their routes and all the other pertinent information for road travel.

Gore's Liverpool General Advertiser - Thursday 09 January 1800

Exeter Flying Post - Thursday 09 January 1800

The advertisements often listed the number of passengers accepted; some carried only four inside riders. This no doubt was an inducement for riders to enjoy greater comfort.

Cheltenham Chronicle - Thursday 13 August 1818

Hull Advertiser and Exchange Gazette - Saturday 03 January 1807

It is worth noting the illustrations accompanying the coaching advertisements. From 1800-1820 virtually the only illustrations in newspapers were in fire insurance adverts, where they displayed the fire company's badge, and in coach advertisements where the small, hurrying coaches are beautifully illustrated. The illustrations are almost all different.

Chester Courant - Tuesday 02 January 1810

Taunton Courier, and Western Advertiser - Thursday 17 March 1814

Most advertisements carried a disclaimer stating that they accepted no responsibility for damage or loss of possessions, luggage or parcels. Later in the decade some illustrations displayed the outdoor passengers, paying less and suffering more for their transport.

Cheltenham Chronicle - Thursday 13 August 1818

Kentish Gazette - Tuesday 01 August 1815

Some advertisements employed a sort of 'hard sell' extolling their virtues with sometimes extravagant claims. But they hardly needed to--post coaches were the only means of convenient, semi-comfortable travel in a pre-railway world.

Leicester Chronicle - Saturday 24 June 1815

There are few things that underline the differences between the modern age and the Regency era as clearly as changes in transportation. It is tempting to assume private carriages were the norm; Regency fiction reinforces this belief. In fact, the post coaches made the world go round, and their confident advertisements indicate they knew the fact very well.

'Til next time,

Lesley-Anne

Credit: all newspapers excerpts from http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk

Hat Box Optional--Making Choices for your new Carriage

We are accustomed these days, when we are fortunate enough to buy a new car, to choosing from a substantial list of options. Well, there was no less choice two hundred years ago, if you were fortunate enough to purchase a new carriage.

William Felton's book of 1794 laid out all the options for the prospective buyer.

He states that he wrote the book, in the main, to educate gentlemen about the construction of their coaches, and the costs involved, so that they would not be cheated by unscrupulous tradesmen. Certainly his work is comprehensive and completely understandable by the layman.

Mr. Felton includes all aspects of coach building, from frames and springs to hammer-cloths and trimmings. It was this last that I personally found most interesting. One of the main figures of the plates shows a coach interior wall--one half left is trimmed in a basic manner, the other right in a more opulent style.

 "Holders", that is straps to grasp over rough roads, etc. have two and a half pages devoted to them.

Windows were of prime importance. Mr. Felton asserts that "...glass should always be of the best plate; but a great difficulty lies in procuring them...free from bladders or veins..." There was a wide choice of window coverings, as this illustration left shows:

Fig 5 - is a spring curtain, which we might call a roller blind.

Fig 6 - is a festoon curtain, on the left plain and on the right ornamented. Felton states they are "of no utility".

Fig 8 - shows the Venetian blind which Mr. Felton highly approves.

Fig 9 - is the 'common shutter' which could be raised and lowered in the same way as the glass window, by a strap and loop.

There are chapters on lamps, wheels, and one on coach painting with wonderful details:

Of course, many carriages were used for long distance travel and as such they required storage, and lots of it. There were all kinds of storage compartments and containers that could be included with a new coach: trunks, imperials (designed to carry light objects--placed on the roof), and wells (fixed to the bottom of the carriage body). Of particular interest were hat boxes (made of leather to the shape of the hat, and generally carried on the roof):

and cap-boxes (of various materials, according to expenditure, and fastened "resembling a sword-case" to the back of the coach's body):

When I first began my Regency research, more than twenty years ago, I struggled to find information, of the period, on coaches. This book answers all my questions. It's available for download from Google Books. There is another book available, equally informative, titled "English Pleasure Carriages". But it is from 1837, and the changes to carriage design in the forty years between the books is worth studying. The 1837 book, unlike Felton's earlier work, has illustrations of complete carriages that are excellent.

Happy travelling!

'Til next time,

Lesley-Anne