TIPS 2 1 



could not aftord it, and others who regarded it as an 

 imposition. But they tij^ped all the same, because, 

 as Mr. Chaplin, the great coach proprietor in those 

 palmy days, observed, if they did not the guard and 

 coachman " would look very hard at them." Better 

 to face a lioness robbed of her cubs than a coachman 

 defrauded of his tip. Passengers, therefore, resigned 

 themselves with a sigh to the expenditure, and 

 travelled as little as they possibly could. There can, 

 indeed, be no doubt that tipping, grown to a regular 

 system, injured the coach proprietors' business; and 

 it was eventually, if not abolished entirely, at least 

 shorn of its more grandiose proportions. The first 

 man to tackle the question was Thomas Cooper. He 

 was proprietor of a line of coaches running between 

 London and Bristol from 1827 to 1832. "Cooper's 

 Old C'Ompany," he called his business. He had 

 originally been landlord of the " Castle Hotel " at 

 Marlborough, but gave it up and removed to Thatcham, 

 where he took a cottage and built stables for his coach- 

 ing stud. Here he was practically halfway between 

 London and Bristol, and his day and night coaches 

 stopped to dine and sup at " Cooper's Cottage," as, 

 with a sense of the value of alliteration, he called it. 

 All his advertisements bore the announcement, " No 

 fees," and the same pleasing legend was writ large 

 on the backs of his coaches. 



Cooper paid his coachmen and guards considerably 

 higher wages, to compensate them for the loss of 

 their tips. He became bankrupt in 1832, and sold 

 his business to Chaplin, who afterwards, through his 

 interest in the railway world, obtained him the post of 



