It was about the year 1754 that a great improvement of roads began through the passing of the Turnpike Acts. The idea was that those people who actually used the roads should bear the cost of their upkeep, and companies, or "trusts", were formed to look after certain roads, have them properly made, and kept in repair. At certain distances along the road, a few miles apart, gates were set across the road with a little house by each, in which the toll-gate keeper lived, whose duty it was to open and close the gate to travellers and take the specified toll. Different kinds of vehicles had to pay different sums as toll, and so had flocks of sheep and droves of cattle when being moved from one part of the country to another. People actually living in the neighbourhood had certain rights to use the way toll free. The toll-gate keeper was usually a "crusty" person--a sort of spider lying in wait to catch flies--and very often when a traveller drove up to the gate in a hurry, anxious to get through, the toll-man would be particularly slow in opening the gates and in giving change. [Illustration: _A Toll-gate, early Nineteenth Century. From a contemporary painting_] Most of the main roads were thus improved, but not all of them. As late as the year 1797 the turnpike road through Uxbridge, which carried a very large traffic, was very bad indeed. There was only one track which could be used in winter and that was eight inches deep in slush and mud. Still, on the whole, the roads were improving and coaches were able to travel more quickly. Mail-coaches were put on the road in 1785, and they increased in speed and in numbers as the years went on, until just before the advent of railways. Over ninety coaches a day passed through Whetstone Turnpike, near Barnet; and in 1821 there were coaches which did the seventy-two miles between London and Portsmouth in ten hours. It was the same on all the great roads, and the coaches were only one part of the traffic.