But he evidently travelled the kingdom pretty extensively with his machines, for he agreed with one Mr. Hanning to grant him the right of working them on a royalty on the West of England roads, and entered into similar arrangements on the routes between London, Manchester, and Liverpool, London and Brighton, London and Southampton, and London, Birmingham, and Holyhead. Their price was agreed upon--to be hired at 6d. a mile, or to be sold by Gurney at £1000 each. During four months at the beginning of 1831, Sir Charles Dance, who had bought some of the carriages, established a steam service on the road between Cheltenham and Gloucester. Three double journeys a day were made, 396 regular trips in all, covering 3644 miles, and conveying 2666 passengers, who paid £202 4s. 6d. in fares. The enterprise was just beginning to show a profit when the local Trusts secured an Act under which they raised the tolls against steam-carriages to a prohibitive height, and even went so far as to obstruct the roads with loose gravel and stones, with the result that the axle of one machine was broken. In June 1831 the “philosophical” boiler of one of Gurney’s steam-carriages, warranted not to burst disastrously, exploded at Glasgow, and seriously injured two boys. Tom Hood wrote:-- Instead of _journeys_, people now May go upon a _Gurney_, With steam to do the horses’ work By power of attorney; Tho’ with a load it may explode, And you may all be undone; And find you’re going up to Heaven, Instead of up to London. Yet a Select Committee of the House of Commons, which had been appointed to consider the question of steam-carriages, reported, four months later, that such carriages could be propelled at an average rate of ten miles an hour; that they would become a cheaper and speedier mode of conveyance than carriages drawn by horses, and that they were perfectly safe (!). Between 1832 and 1838 there were no fewer than seven important Steam-Carriage Companies in existence, and probably, had it not been for the hostility of Turnpike Trusts all over the country, the roads would have been peopled with mechanically-propelled vehicles. But tolls were raised to such a height against the new-fangled inventions that it became commercially impossible to run them. Between Liverpool and Prescot the 4s. toll for a coach became £2 8s. for a steam-carriage; between Ashburton and Totnes the 3s. impost became £2. Evidently, from a coloured print published in 1833, Goldsworthy Gurney projected a London and Bath service, but the turnpike authorities crushed that also. An inscription under the original print obligingly tells us all about this type of Gurney’s carriages:--