66 ANNALS OF THE ROAD. 



of a Paddington and City stage-coach. That was long 

 before the 'buses came up. There used to be stage- 

 coaches on the main lines that are now worked by the 

 'buses. They were just like an old country stage-coach. 

 They were mostly in fact, old stage-coaches, only they 

 had but a pair of horses instead cf four. There is an 

 old pattern stage-coach on the stones to this day ; it 

 comes in from Brixton Hill, and you may see it crossing 

 London Bridge any morning. The coaches used to 

 carry six inside, and twelve outside, and the fare was 

 sixpence between Paddington and the City. They had 

 no conductors, the coachman managed everything along 

 with his parcel boy. The parcel traffic, which used to 

 be worth something, was a perquisite of the coachman, 

 and he had a boy to manage it, whom he paid himself; 

 eighteenpence a week was about the figure. The boy 

 rode in the boot along with the parcels ; and sometimes 

 he was paid by a share of the parcel profits. The 

 coaches were owned by private people — publicans, stable- 

 keepers and the like. The largest owner was a Mrs. 

 Nelson (the spirited Mrs. Nelson, perhaps the most 

 spirited coach proprietor that ever put a horse to a coach), 

 the landlady of the "Spread Eagle" in Gracechurch 

 Street, whose family owned the " Favourite " 'buses till 

 they were taken over by the Company. Their pace 

 wasn't very lively ; you see the roads were not so good 

 as now, and the competition wasn't very keen. About 

 four and a half miles an hour was the pace, and the 

 coaches used to stop an hour at each end of the journeys. 

 The great head-quarters for the Paddington stage-coaches 



