Sepia Saturday's May theme is "Travel" with the first prompt photograph a happy group relaxing outside their coach. Cue for me to look a look back at how groups got around in the past - from coaches and charabancs, to horse drawn carriages and stagecoaches.
A happy group of people in Earlston, Scottish Borders, looking forward to their coach trip to Carlisle, the city just over the border into England. The year is 1947 - so it must have been a much welcomed event , just after the restrictions and rigours of wartime life.
Here I am at the start of a big adventure - taking a jounrey around the USA on a Greyhound Bus, on the offer their offer of "99 days travel for $99". The date - summer 1966, as I finished my year long stay in Cambridge, Mass. as a trainee librarian on an exchange scheme.
Looking back to the age of the Charabanc
I like the image as a happy holiday
photograph, (notice the little girl standing up to be photographed), though again I wonder how safe I would find the vehicle
with so many people on board I could imagine someone might need to get
out and push, if going up hills!
I knew
next to nothing about this photograph. It was in the collection of my
Great Aunt Jennie Danson of Poulton-le-Fylde, Lancashire, and judging by the
style of dress e.g. cloche hats it must have been taken in the 1920's.
There was no inscription on the reverse, but the photographer/publisher
was identified as Arthur Hadley, Photographer, Ramsey, Isle of Man.
This could be a clue, as one
of Jennie's eight brothers, Albert, worked on the Isle of Man ferry
between Fleetwood, Lancashire and the Isle of Man. And on the side of
the charabanc is the famous three legged man that became the island's
badge.
Another charabanc of the same period in the collection of my local heritage group, Auld Earlston. To me it has an air of a vehicle cobbled together from various spare parts and indicates an even more precarious jounrey for its passengers on crowded seats!
To go back some twenty years earlier to a horse-drawn carriage.
The date is 1907 and Earlston Parish Church Choir is setting
off from the Red Lion Hotel in the village to drive to Yarrow Manse in Selkirkshire - according to the Distances website a distance of some 29 miles over what would be a hilly, twisting route.
Hopefully it would be a dry day
as there was no protection from the elements. rk for part of the route and and then by waggonette to Yarrow.
The road today through the Yarrow valley
They must have got there safely, for here they are relaxing, with some hats off, outside Yarrow Manse.
Stagecoaches - Romantic v. Reality,
When we look at the Images of stagecoaches on Christmas cards, they look colourful, dashing and rather romantic, but what was the reality like for our ancestors traveling 180 years ago?
This image of stagecoach travel has been perpetuated by many
writers including Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer. However Charles Dickens, in "David Copperfield" published in 1850, painted a rather different picture of the reality of a winter stagecoach journe
"How well I recollect the wintry ride! The frozen particles of ice brushed from the blades of grass by the wind and borne across the face; the hard clatter of the horses' hoofs beating a tune upon the ground; the stiff-tilted soil, the snowdrifts, lightly eddying in the chalk pit as the breeze ruffled it; the smoking team stopping to breathe on the hill top and shaking their bells musically,.........."
A pub sign taken at at Greenwich, London
Stagecoaches
were public service vehicles designed specifically for passengers and
running to a published schedule. Eight passengers could be packed
inside, with others sitting at the back of the coach and the poorest
passengers atop along with the luggage.
Contemporary newspaper reports of the time present a graphic picture of the perils facing passengers and (and pedestrian) alike.
"The Border Watch" - 19 November 1846:
"The Kelso Chronicle" - 4 October 1844:
But the iconic image of the stagecoach as a mode of travel still captures our imagination. especially at Christmas time.
“A SLOW COACH. – The Edinburgh and Hawick coach, which left Princes Street, Edinburgh on Saturday afternoon at 4pm did not reach the Bridge Inn, Galashiels, until about 10pm; thus accomplishing the distance of thirty-two miles in the astonishing period of six hours!
The coachman did his duty well with whip and voice, constantly urging forward his jaded steeds, and employing the box seat passenger to assist him with a spare thong.
But it was all of no avail. The animals would not move one foot faster than another. Up hill or down hill there was little perceptible difference, and several times the vehicle came to a dead halt, almost on a level.
The coach was full from Edinburgh, but a passenger having been let down on the road, another person was taken up. In spite of the loud remonstrances of the passengers, a second was buckled on behind, and a third was allowed standing room beside him. It appears there is now no restriction as to the number a stage coach may carry, and consequently three poor miserable horses were forced to drag, throughout a weary stage of fifteen miles, a heavy coach loaded with eighteen or twenty persons."
"The Kelso Chronicle" - 16 June 1837:
"ACCIDENT. – On Tuesday evening when the coach from Kelso had passed Ord, the reins broke, and the driver left his seat, and went along the pole to recover them. His foot slipped, and he fell between the pole and the horses to the ground. Fortunately, the wheels passed on both sides of him, and he escaped with no other injury than a slight blow to the head.The horses set off at rapid pace, and ran through Tweedmouth. The passengers kept their seats, and the horses while running furiously along the bridge, were stopped by a young man who, with great personal risk, seized the horses’ head. Had they not been stopped, in all probability, from the speed with which they were proceeding, the coach would have been upset at the turn of Bridge Street. The conduct of the young man deserves great praise.”
“WONDERFUL ESCAPE. – As the Defiance Coach was leaving the town on Friday last, a girl, about 10 years of age, who was hastily crossing the High Street, and not perceiving the coach, ran in betwixt the fore and hind horses, by which she was struck down, when the horses and coach went over her, to the horror of the spectators, who could do nothing to save her. The wheels on the one side passed over one of her legs, bruising it most severely in two places, while the opposite wheels went over the top of her bonnet, close to the head, but without doing any injury. The poor girl’s thigh was also much bruised, apparently by one of the horses’ feet. We are glad to state that she is recovering from the effects of her injuries.”.
And Finally
| We were on holiday in Warsaw when this stage-coach drove into a square - but we never found out what it was all about! |
But the iconic image of the stagecoach as a mode of travel still captures our imagination. especially at Christmas time.
********************
Sepia Saturday give bloggers an opportunity
to share their family history through photographs.
Postscript - I have had trouble formatting this post - I have no idea why some of the body text has come out in red, although I had it in my Blogger draft as black.
One of my father's earliest memories was hearing a noisy vehicle on the road below his home. Running to the edge of the hill in the garden he saw it was a loaded charabanc on its way from Hawick to Denholm c.1908
ReplyDeleteGood to hear from you, Enid. Thank you for your father’s memory.
ReplyDeleteA neat take on the prompt with some interesting and fun photos & clips from newspaper accounts of stagecoach traveling and accidents. We think of stagecoaches & carriages as having traveled so slowly in comparison to today's speeds, we don't realize there were plenty of ways people could be injured or even die from carriage accidents. My great great grandfather perished in a carriage accident.
ReplyDeleteI love the photo of you with the Greyhound bus. I feel like I grew up on one, since I went round trip on one every summer during childhood to visit my grandparents. You're right, as romantic as stage travel is often portrayed, it was bumpy and dusty and dangerous -- for passengers and drivers alike. I like your conclusion showing the group arriving safely after their precarious ride.
ReplyDeleteI sure wouldn’t want to push that bus up a hill. I bet it was done though.
ReplyDeleteSusan
Well done! I remember several of the photos of coaches and charabancs from your earlier stories. They inspired my own story on coaches and British roads this weekend as I'm fascinated by how people once traveled. The romance of stagecoaches, partly the fault of Hollywood, is not the reality and I expect people in the olden days did not enjoy it. Sitting in a cheap seat on top must have been very risky for a bad fall if anyone managed to fall asleep. And the life of a draft horse must have been very short for all the toil and abuse they endured.
ReplyDelete