To reassure the old ladies of both sexes such coaches as the “Patent Safeties” were introduced. Many of those so called were neither safe nor patent, but an exception must be made in the case of the coach invented and patented in December 1805 by the Reverend William Milton, Vicar of Heckfield, near Reading. This gentleman, who yearned for a larger sphere of action than that provided by his rural parish, and apparently did not find his duties sufficient to occupy his time, studied the subject, and produced a book in whose pages he sets forth the design of his coach and its superiority over anything that had hitherto appeared on the road. His principle not only consisted in lowering the body of the vehicle upon its axles, so reducing the centre of gravity, but in addition provided a luggage box in the rear of the coach, hung so low that it was only fourteen inches from the ground. His idea was to carry the luggage thus, instead of on the roof, so rendering it less top-heavy, and indeed, according to his theory, making the luggage act as ballast, so that the heavier the coach loaded, the safer it would be. Nor was this all. As a protection against overturning in the case of a wheel coming off, he provided what he called a small “idle wheel,” fitted to the axle a short distance inside each running wheel. In the event of a wheel flying off, the coach would only dip slightly, and run on the “idle wheel” until the coachman could bring the whole affair to a stop. Of course this inventive clergyman found the greatest indifference among coach-proprietors towards his patent safety coach. His book reflects the disappointment he felt, and he enlarges upon the folly of men who had, time and again, been heavy losers in paying compensation claims by injured passengers, and yet would not try the merits of a vehicle which would save them in pocket and in anxiety. He at last gave an order to a firm of coach-builders, had one built to his own design, and prevailed first upon one of the London and Reading proprietors, and then the owners of a Stroud coach, to try it. The general feeling seems to have been that it was safe, but slow, and did not possess so easy a draught as that of the usual build. To these arguments he replied by saying that his luggage-box, providing room for more goods and luggage than carried on ordinary coaches, was generally filled with heavy consignments sent by the Stroud clothiers, and that the heaviness of draught was due to that cause. But explanations of weight, demonstrations of safety, and even the recommendations he had procured from a Parliamentary Committee, were useless, and Milton’s Patent Safety Coach was never more than a fugitive occupant of the road.