He had—according to private information—a number of children “that he ought not to have had,” whatever that may mean. His last years were sad, for his relatives exploited his temper and some eccentricities he had developed, and procured his committal, as a lunatic, to Bethlem Hospital, where he died in 1866. There are those yet living who remember him there, and tell how he was put away with little legitimate excuse. The “Bull and Mouth” was carried on by his executor, E. Sanderson, until 1869, when it was purchased by the late Quartermaine East, and re-named the “Queen’s Hotel.” Nowadays, the most ruinously low coach fares of that competitive time before railways are made to look absurdly high by even the ordinary third-class railway fare, 15_s._ 5-1/2_d._, to Manchester: and excursions are frequently run at the price of a few shillings. VII [Sidenote: _THE COACHMEN_] We cannot well leave the subject of coaching without some fleeting reminiscences of the coachmen and guards who worked up and down the road. Not all of them have earned a measure of fame. They formed, indeed, a very considerable body of men, and there were some generations of them; beginning with the poor old red-nosed and many-caped Tobys who, wrapped up in many wrappings and swathed about the feet and legs with hay-and-straw bands, sat on the box like partly animated mummies; and ending with coachmen who were in many attributes considered gentlemen. A love of strong spirits was common to the earlier and later generations, but those of the earlier were merely “drivers,” if you please, and the later were “coachmen.” The old Tobys drove chiefly through the night, and in times when speed did not exist and skill was not essential: the rather flashy “swell” coachmen of a later era cut a dash in the daytime, with a cigar between their teeth, and had extraordinary skill with the reins. These were the two chief classes, subdivided again and again by individual peculiarities; and then there were the guards. Coaching experts were never tired of sounding the praises or noting the peculiarities of the fine coachmen on this road. Bob Snow, of the “Telegraph,” was, according to “Nimrod,” who took his position as a coaching critic very seriously indeed, “all right—a pink in his way, and as well dressed for the road as a gentleman ought to be for Almack’s.” Great, too, was his admiration for Harry Douglas, another coachman on the “Telegraph.” He was “about the size of two ordinary men.” Not only could he gallop a coach without it swinging, but he could drink as much as would scald a porker. As Dibdin sang of Tom Bowling, “his virtues were so rare.” He was, moreover, “a great favourite with the Manchester gentlemen, and an artist of the first order. His right arm”—for taking it out of the horses in tender places with the whip—“was terrible. Jovial, singing many excellent songs,” he appears to have been a prominent figure.