The Probert Encyclopaedia of General Information

COACH

The term coach is now generally applied to a chartered or long distance, usually single-decker bus. However, traditionally coach was a general name for all covered carriages drawn by horses and intended for the rapid conveyance of passengers.

The earliest carriages appear to have been all open, if we may judge from the figures of Assyrian and Babylonian chariots found on the monuments discovered amidst the ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, At Rome both covered and uncovered carriages were in use. After the fall of the Roman Empire they went out of use again, and during the feudal ages the custom was to ride on horseback, the use of carriages being considered effeminate. They do not appear to have become common until the 10th century, and even then were regarded exclusively as vehicles for women and invalids. Later on they became, especially in Germany, part of the appendages of royalty.

Coaches seem to have been introduced into England about the middle of the 16th century, but were for long confined to the aristocracy and the wealthy classes. Hackney-coaches were first used in London in 1625. They were then only twenty in number, and were kept at the hotels, where they had to be applied for when wanted. In 1634 coaches waiting to be hired at a particular stand were introduced, and had increased to 200 in 1652, to 800 in 1710, and to 1000 in 1771.

Stagecoaches were introduced into England about the same time as hackney-coaches. The first stage-coach in London appears to have ran early in the 17th century, and before the end of the century they were started on three of the principal roads in England. Their speed was at first very moderate, about 3 or 4 miles an hour. They could only run in the summer, and even then their progress was often greatly hindered by floods and by the wretched state of the roads generally. In 1700 it took a week to travel from York to London; in 1754 a body of Manchester merchants started a conveyance, the Flying Coach, of an improved kind, which did the journey to London in the unusually short period of four days and a half, and thirty years later a Mr. Palmer of Bath, after a considerable amount of opposition, succeeded in inducing the government to put in practice certain suggestions which he made, by which he showed that great saving both of time and money in the conveyance of passengers and letters would be effected. The result was the establishment of the system of mail-coaches, which continued to be the means of travelling in England until their place was taken by the railways. The first mail-coach started between London and Bristol on the 8th of August, 1784. The manufacture of elegant carriages was a proof of much wealth and mechanical skill in a place, many different workmen being employed in their construction, and both the materials and the workmanship requiring to be of the best. British-built carriages, especially those made in London, held the first place for a combination of strength and elegance.
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