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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h its attendant competition, opened about 1820, and from that time the Defiances, the Celerities, the Rapids, Expresses, Reindeers, Darts, Stags, and Antelopes increased; while fiercely militant titles, such as those of the Retaliator, the Spitfire, Vixen, Pear-less, Dreadnought, and Invincible reflected the extraordinary bitterness and animosity with which that competition was conducted. The reverse of this unamiable feature is seen in the names — breathing a spirit of goodwill, or at least of meekness, reliability, and inoffensiveness — of the Amity, the Live and Let Live, Hope, Endeavour, the Give and Take, Reliance, Safety, Regulator, Perseverance, Good Intent, and Pilot coaches. It is probable that some of these titles were given by small proprietors, anxious to disclaim rivalry with more powerful men. Others were intended to secure the patronage of the old ladies and the timorous, and all those to whom coach travelling, with its many accidents and hairbreadth escapes, was a disagreeable necessity.
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HOW THE COACHES WERE NAMED 309 To reassure the old ladies of both sexes such coaches as the Patent Safeties were introduced. Many of those so called were neither safe nor patent, but an excejition must be made in the case of the coach invented and patented in December 1805 by the Reverend William Milton, Vicar of Heckfield, near Reading. This gentleman, who yearned for a larger sphere of action than that provided by his rural parish, and apparently did not find his duties sufficient to occupy his time, studied the subject, and produced a book in whose pages he sets forth the design of his coach and its superiority over anything that had hitherto appeared on the road. His principle not only consisted in lowering the body of the vehicle upon its axles, so reducing the centre of gravity, but in addition provided a luggage box in the rear of the coach, hung so low that it was only fourteen inches from the ground. His idea was to carry the luggage thus, instead of on the roof, so rendering it less top-h

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