Stagecoach
In addition to the stage driver or coachman who guided the vehicle, a shotgun messenger armed with a coach gun might travel as a guard beside him.
At first unsprung or dead axle, but later hung on braces, elbow and finally Telegraph springs, as with the Mail Coach.
Most stage coaches were named and painted in special liveries.The American mud wagon was an earlier, smaller, and cruder vehicle, being mostly open-sided with minimal protection from weather, causing passengers to risk being mud-splashed.
[1]: 120 A canvas-topped stage wagon was used for freight and passengers, and it had a lower center of gravity, making it harder to overturn.
[9] A string of coaching inns operated as stopping points for travellers on the route between London and Liverpool.
The stagecoach would depart every Monday and Thursday and took roughly ten days to make the journey during the summer months.
[10] Another writer, however, argued that: Besides the excellent arrangement of conveying men and letters on horseback, there is of late such an admirable commodiousness, both for men and women, to travel from London to the principal towns in the country, that the like hath not been known in the world, and that is by stage-coaches, wherein any one may be transported to any place, sheltered from foul weather and foul ways; free from endamaging of one's health and one's body by the hard jogging or over-violent motion; and this not only at a low price (about a shilling for every five miles [8 km]) but with such velocity and speed in one hour, as that the posts in some foreign countries make in a day.The speed of travel remained constant until the mid-18th century.
Reforms of the turnpike trusts, new methods of road building and the improved construction of coaches led to a sustained rise in the comfort and speed of the average journey - from an average journey length of 2 days for the Cambridge-London route in 1750 to a length of under 7 hours in 1820.
It was advertised with the following announcement - "However incredible it may appear, this coach will actually (barring accidents) arrive in London in four days and a half after leaving Manchester."
[11] Palmer made much use of the "flying" stagecoach services between cities in the course of his business, and noted that it seemed far more efficient than the system of mail delivery then in operation.
He met resistance from officials who believed that the existing system could not be improved, but eventually the Chancellor of the Exchequer, William Pitt, allowed him to carry out an experimental run between Bristol and London.
Within the month the service had been extended from London to Norwich, Nottingham, Liverpool and Manchester, and by the end of 1785 services to the following major towns and cities of England and Wales had also been linked: Leeds, Dover, Portsmouth, Poole, Exeter, Gloucester, Worcester, Holyhead and Carlisle.
A service to Edinburgh was added the next year, and Palmer was rewarded by being made Surveyor and Comptroller General of the Post Office.
The diligence, a solidly built stagecoach with four or more horses, was the French vehicle for public conveyance with minor varieties in Germany such as the Stellwagen and Eilwagen.
The inside, which is capacious, and lofty, and will hold six people in great comfort is lined with leather padded, and surrounded with little pockets, in which travellers deposit their bread, snuff, night caps, and pocket handkerchiefs, which generally enjoy each others company, in the same delicate depository.
From the roof depends a large net work which is generally crouded with hats, swords, and band boxes, the whole is convenient, and when all parties are seated and arranged, the accommodations are by no means unpleasant.
Upon the roof, on the outside, is the imperial, which is generally filled with six or seven persons more, and a heap of luggage, which latter also occupies the basket, and generally presents a pile, half as high again as the coach, which is secured by ropes and chains, tightened by a large iron windlass, which also constitutes another appendage of this moving mass.
The body of the carriage rests upon large thongs of leather, fastened to heavy blocks of wood, instead of springs, and the whole is drawn by seven horses.
[22] The English visitor noted the small, sturdy Norman horses "running away with our cumbrous machine, at the rate of six or seven miles an hour".
At this speed stagecoaches could compete with canal boats, but they were rendered obsolete in Europe wherever the rail network expanded in the 19th century.
In France, between 1765 and 1780, the turgotines, big mail coaches named for their originator, Louis XVI's economist minister Turgot, and improved roads, where a coach could travel at full gallop across levels, combined with more staging posts at shorter intervals, cut the time required to travel across the country sometimes by half.
Beginning in the 18th century, crude wagons began to be used to carry passengers between cities and towns, first within New England by 1744, then between New York and Philadelphia by 1756.
Describing a journey he took in 1861, in his 1872 book, Roughing It, Mark Twain wrote that the Concord stage was like "an imposing cradle on wheels".
Kinnear's mail and express line: That day's stage ride will always live in my memory – but not for its beauty spots.
Jammed like sardines on the hard seats of an old time leather spring coach – a Concord – leaving Pantano, creeping much of the way, letting the horses walk, through miles of alkali dust that the wheels rolled up in thick clouds of which we received the full benefit ...
[29] Stagecoaches, often known by the French name "Diligence" - a smaller model with room for six passengers and a bigger one for ten, drawn by two horses (in the city, on the plain or on a good road) or three (on intercity and elevated roads) - were the main means of public transportation in Ottoman Palestine between the middle of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century.
The first stagecoaches were brought to Palestine by the German religious group known as the "Templers" who operated a public transportation service between their colonies in the country as early as 1867.
The stagecoach was required to work six times a week (except for the Shabbat) and to carry free of charge the mails and medicines of the Rehovot pharmacy.
More than one steed must Delia's empire feel,Who sits triumphant o'er the flying wheel; And, as she guides it through th' admiring throng, With what air she smacks the silken thong; Graceful as John she moderates the reins, and whistles her sweet diuretic strains.
They drive, row, run, with love of glory smit; Leap, swim, shoot flying, and pronounce on wit.
