Coaching, with Anecdotes of the RoadLennox, William Pitt, Lord
History
Coaching, with Anecdotes of the Road
Lennox, William Pitt, Lord
Coaching (Transportation)
In July, 1827, the Bath mail-coach was overturned on its way from
London, between Reading and Newbury, in consequence of the horses
taking fright and bolting from the road into a gravel-pit. The
coachman was thrown from the box among the horses, and received
several contusions from being trod upon. The guard and a foreigner,
who were on the top, were precipitated by the shock to such a
distance, and with such violence, as would probably have proved fatal
to them had not the earth and gravel on which they lighted been
saturated with the rain that fell in the course of the day; and
to the same cause may be ascribed the trifling injury done to the
horses and the coach. In a few minutes after the accident took place
a Bath coach came up. The passengers rendered every assistance in
their power, and, with some difficulty, succeeded in extricating the
inside passengers from the mail. Among them was a naval officer who
was going to join his ship at Plymouth, but he had suffered so much
from the concussion that he was speechless and unable to move. He was
conveyed to a small cottage on the roadside, but died the following
day.
In December of the same year, as the Salisbury coach was on its
journey to London, the fog was so thick that the coachman could not
see his way, and on entering Bedfont, near Hounslow, the horses
went off the road into the pond called the King's Water, dragging
the coach along with them. One of the passengers, Mr. Lockhart
Wainwright, a young man of five-and-twenty years of age, belonging to
the Light Dragoons, was killed on the spot. The water was about two
feet deep, with a soft bottom of mud about two feet more. Whether he
was suffocated in the mud or killed by a blow was not ascertained.
In the inside of the coach were four females--the wife of the
deceased, her maid, a Swiss governess in the family of the Marquis
of Abercorn, and another lady. They all narrowly escaped drowning.
Nothing but the speedy assistance from Bedfont could have saved them.
Above one hundred persons were assembled in a few moments, most of
them soldiers from Bedfont. The soldiers leaped into the water and
extricated the ladies from their perilous situation; the body of the
coach lying on its side, with one of the horses drowned, and the rest
kicking and plunging violently. The inside passengers were bruised,
but not dangerously. Mr. Wainwright owed his death to his humanity.
The night being very severe he had given his place inside to his
wife's maid, and mounted the box beside the coachman, with whom he
was conversing at the time of the accident.
In April, 1826, the Dorking coach left the "Elephant and Castle" at
nine o'clock, full inside and out, and arrived safe at Ewell, when
the driver and proprietor, Joseph Walker, alighted for the purpose of
delivering a parcel from the back part of the coach, and gave the
reins to a boy who sat on the box.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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