Stage-coach and Mail in Days of Yore, Volume 2 (of 2): A picturesque history of the coaching ageHarper, Charles G. (Charles George)
History
Stage-coach and Mail in Days of Yore, Volume 2 (of 2): A picturesque history of the coaching age
Harper, Charles G. (Charles George)
Coaching (Transportation) -- History
William Clements, of Canterbury, who had driven the “Tally-Ho” and
“Eagle” coaches between Canterbury and London before the nineteenth
century had grown out of its teens, died in 1891, aged ninety-one. He
was “the last of the coachmen,” yet, two years later, in the early part
of 1893, we find the death recorded of Philip (commonly called “Tim”)
Carter, aged eighty-eight. He it was who drove the “Red Rover” on June
19th, 1831, from the “Elephant and Castle” to Brighton in 4 hours 21
minutes--a pace then greatly in excess of anything before accomplished
on that road. The occasion was the opening of William IV.’s first
Parliament, and the haste was for the double purpose of speedily
carrying the King’s Speech to Brighton and of advertising the “Red
Rover” itself, then a newly-established coach. He did not run light, as
many of the record-making coaches used, but carried fourteen passengers
on that trip.
A year after Carter’s death Harry Ward passed away, August 4th, 1894,
aged eighty-one. He was one of a family of ten, and the last, except
his elder brother Charles, of whom mention will presently be made.
Their father had himself been a coachman on the Exeter Road, and lived
at Overton at the time Charles was born. He afterwards became landlord
of the “White Hart,” Hartford Bridge, on the same great highway,
eighteen miles nearer London. Harry Ward’s career is partly told on
page 247, Vol. I. In after years he drove coaches started in the
revival on the Brighton Road and elsewhere.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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