COACHING DAYS AND WAYS 



prietors to direct their servants, when the coach 

 has been overturned, *not to drag the passengers 

 out at the window, but to replace the coach on its 

 wheels first, provided it can be accomplished with 

 the strength they have with them.' 



After coaches began to carry the mails, accidents 

 grew more numerous. We can trace many to the 

 greater speed maintained, others to defective work- 

 manship which resulted in broken axles or lost 

 wheels, many to top-heaviness, and not a few to 

 carelessness. The short stage drivers, on the whole, 

 were the worst offenders. For sheer recklessness 

 this would be hard to beat : — 



* During the dense fog on Wednesday last, as a 

 Woolwich coach full of inside and outside passengers 

 was driving at a furious rate, just after it had 

 passed the Six Bells on its way to town, the coach- 

 man ran against a heavy country cart. The stage 

 was upset, and those on the roof were pitched 

 violently against an empty coal waggon ; two of 

 them fell on the shafts, one of whom had a shoulder 

 badly dislocated ; the other had his jawbone broken, 

 with the loss of his front teeth. A Greenwich 

 pensioner, with a wooden leg, had an arm broken, 



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