Highway robbery was still practised at this time, but the armed horseman with crape mask and pistols had gone out of fashion, and thefts were accomplished by craft. 'The Stirling mail has been robbed of notes to the value of £13,000 in the following manner:--A man took his seat at Stirling as an outside passenger. The mail was followed closely from Stirling by a gig containing two men. When the mail arrived at Kirkliston the guard stopped to take out the customary bags to leave there. The gig also stopped there, and the two men in it went into the house. The guard had left the mail box open, in which the parcels were, and the outside passenger easily abstracted the one containing the notes. He then left the coach. The gig with the two men took the Queensferry Road. The parcels were not missed until the mail reached Edinburgh. On the Queensferry Road the two men were joined by their accomplice, the outside passenger. They left the gig and took a post chaise for Edinburgh. They discharged the chaise before entering the city and gave the post-boy £3.' (_Bell's Life_, 2nd January 1825). Great improvements in all matters connected with coaching were made during the first two decades of the nineteenth century: these were due to the rage for driving that prevailed about this time. The King was deeply interested in coaching, was himself no mean whip, and he set the fashion. It did not last very long. Nimrod, writing in 1835, remarks that about 1825 'thirty to forty four-in-hand equipages were constantly to be seen about town: _one_ is stared at now.' The driving clubs held 'meets' in George the Third's time much as they do at present, but the vehicles used were 'barouche landaus,' and the drive taken was much longer than that in vogue to-day. Bedfont beyond Hounslow, and Windsor were favourite places whither the coaches--'barouche landaus'--drove in procession to dine. Very particular attention was paid to dress. This was the costume in which members of the Whip Club, founded in 1808 as a rival to the Benson, mounted their boxes on 6th June 1808, in Park Lane, to drive to Harrow:-- 'A light, drab-colour cloth coat made full, single breast with three tier of pockets, the skirt reaching to the ancles; a mother of pearl button the size of a crown piece; waistcoat blue and yellow stripe, each stripe an inch in depth; small clothes corded silk plush made to button over the calf of the leg, with sixteen strings and rosettes to each knee. The boots very short and finished with very broad straps which hang over the tops and down to the ancle. A hat three inches and a half deep in the crown only, and the same depth in the brim exactly. Each wore a large bouquet at the breast, thus resembling the coachmen of our nobility who, on His Majesty's birthday, appear in that respect so peculiarly distinguished.'[12] Grimaldi the clown, then at the zenith of his fame, burlesqued this get-up so mercilessly that a less conspicuous garb was adopted.