The King's Post: Being a volume of historical facts relating to the posts, mail coaches, coach roads, and railway mail services of and connected with the ancient city of Bristol from 1580 to the present timeTombs, Robert Charles
History
The King's Post: Being a volume of historical facts relating to the posts, mail coaches, coach roads, and railway mail services of and connected with the ancient city of Bristol from 1580 to the present time
Tombs, Robert Charles
Postal service -- England -- Bristol
It will be appropriate here to enumerate certain interesting incidents
connected with the carrying on of the Mail Coach system.
On Saturday, Jan. 5, 1805, the London Mail of Friday se'nnight, had not
arrived at Swansea where it was due early in the morning, till eleven
o'clock that night, having been detained seventeen hours at the New
Passage, in consequence of such large shoals of ice floating down the
Severn as to render it unsafe for the mail boat to cross until Friday
morning.
Thursday se'nnight, an inquest was held at Swansea on the body of John
Paul, driver of the mail coach between that place and Caermarthen which
on Sunday was overturned about two miles from Swansea, while proceeding
with great rapidity down a hill, it being supposed the coachman's hands
were so benumbed with cold that he could not restrain the horses' speed,
the consequence of which was that he was so much bruised as to occasion
his death on Wednesday night. The guard was slightly hurt, but the
passengers escaped uninjured. Verdict, accidental death.
Very few details exist of that exceptional season, in 1806, when Nevill,
a guard on the Bristol mail, was frozen to death; but the records of the
great snowstorm that began on the Christmas night of 1836 are more
copious.
A valuable reminiscence of that night--Dec. 27, 1836--is Pollard's
graphic picture of the Devonport mail snowed up at Amesbury. Six horses
could not move it, and Guard F. Feecham was in parlous plight. Pollard's
companion picture of the Liverpool mail in the snow near St. Alban's on
the same night is equally interesting. Guard James Burdett fared little
better than his comrade on the Devonport mail:
"An accident occurred to the Worcester mail Coach on Friday evening,
March 27, 1829, opposite the Bull and Mouth Office, in Piccadilly,
which, we are sorry to say, has proved fatal to Turner, the coachman.
Just as Turner had taken hold of the reins, and while he was wrapping a
large coat over his knees, the leaders started, and, turning sharply to
the right, dashed one of the fore-wheels against a post. The shock was
so violent that the coachman was flung from his seat. He fell on his
back, and his neck came violently against the curb-stone. Not a moment
was lost in securing the assistance of a surgeon, by whom he was bled.
The poor man was shortly removed to St. George's Hospital, where he died
at about eight o'clock on Saturday evening. He left a wife and three
infant children in a state of destitution, without even the means of
buying a coffin."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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