Identifier: stagecoachmailin01harp (find matches)
Title: Stage-coach and mail in days of yore : a picturesque history of the coaching age
Year: 1903 (1900s)
Authors: Harper, Charles G. (Charles George), 1863-1943
Subjects: Horses Coaching (Transportation) -- History
Publisher: London : Chapman & Hall, limited
Contributing Library: Tufts University
Digitizing Sponsor: Tufts University and the National Science Foundation

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possil)le to comply. On less frequentedroutes—roads leading to agricultural districts andsleepy old towns and villages that produced nothingfor distant markets and wanted little from them—the common stage waggon and the flying waggonlingered. The Kendal Plying Waggon of 1816,pictured by Rowlandson, halting at a wayside innto take up or set down goods and passengers andto change horses, lasted well on into the railwayage; but in places nearer to and in more directcommunication with the commerce of great cities,the type was early supplemented by later con-trivances. The first of these were the Ply Vans, ofwhich the swift conveyances of Kussell & Co.,van jiroprietors, trading between London and theWest of England, were typical. They were builton the model of the wooden hooded van seen inLondon streets at the jjresent time, but considerablylarger than now common. Russells had for manyyears continued a service of stage-waggons betweenthe port of Palmouth and the Metrojiolis. Drawn
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THE STAGE-WAGGONS 139 by the then usual team of eight horses, augmentedby two, or even four, more on many of the hillsthat make the Avest-country roads a constant suc-cession of ujis and downs, they had brought heavygoods and luggage that distance in twelve days, atthe rate of three miles an hour, carrying passengersat a halfpenny a mile. But with the coming ofthe nineteenth century they found the stage-coaches, with their rumble-tumbles, beginningto carry peojile at a slightly higher fare, andperforming the whole distance of 269 milesin three days and nights. Even the poorestfound it cheaper to pay the higher fare and savethe delays and expenses of the other nine days,and so Messrs. Russell found one branch of theirtrade decaying. They accordingly, about 1820,put their Fly Vans on the road, vehicles whichdid the journey in the same time as the ordinarystage-coaches of that period, and, running nightand day, continued so to set forth and come totheir journeys end until the railway cam

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