The note describes him as “The Prince of Peripatetic Informers, and terror of Stage Coachmen, when such things were. Alack! alack! the Railroads have ruined his ‘vested interest.’” Time has so dimmed the meaning of both the reference and the explanation that modern commentators are generally puzzled by both. What he was we have stated; what became of him when railways ruined coaching and his business at once, we do not know. Some few details of his career have survived. He originally seems to have been in the employ of one Johnson, an informer, in 1824, when he obtained convictions against coachmen at Dover and Canterbury, and on the Brighton Road; but by the summer of the next year he had gone into the business for himself, and presently became the Napoleon of the profession. 1825 was a busy year with him. In August he summoned a coach-proprietor named Selby for that “on the 28th day of July he did suffer and permit a stage-coach belonging to him, and drawn by two horses only, to carry more than the usual number of passengers on the roof.” Moreover, he was summoned again for not having his name painted on the door of the coach. After much cross-swearing and discussion, the Brighton bench fined the coach-proprietor £5 and 16s. costs. In Bath, in the November of the same year, Byers laid so many as thirty-four informations. The penalties to which the unfortunate coach-proprietors and others were liable in this prodigious batch were estimated at £500, but the newspaper reports of that time do not tell us the total of the fines actually inflicted, so we are unable to form any idea of the profits realised by the enterprising Byers in this Western raid. The petty and tyrannical nature of the prosecutions may be gathered from one instance before the Bathforum (for such was the style and title of the local bench) magistrates. A farmer was summoned for not having his Christian name and surname painted on the _right_ or off-side of his waggon, and mulcted in 10s. and costs, while another for the same mistake in the position was fined 5s. and costs; the magistrates, in addition, holding that the strict letter of the law required not only the name of the owner and that of the town, but the street as well.