54 History of Inland Transport 



do these things (besides having the further advantages of the 

 telegraph and the long-distance telephone) think of the business 

 conditions in 1754, when the quickest communications be- 

 tween London and Manchester were by a coach doing the 

 journey in the then " incredible " time of four days and a 

 half? 



The enterprise of Manchester naturally stimulated that of 

 Liverpool, and three years later it was announced that from 

 June 9, 1757, "a flying machine on steel springs " would 

 make the journey between Warrington and London in three 

 days. The roads between Liverpool and Warrington being 

 still impassable for coaches, the Liverpool passengers had to 

 go on horseback to Warrington the day previous to the 

 departure of the coach from that town. Manchester got a 

 three-day coach to London in 1760. Seven years later com- 

 munication by stage-coach was opened between Liverpool 

 and Manchester, six or even eight horses being required to drag 

 through the ruts and sloughs a heavy, lumbering vehicle which, 

 going three days a week, then took the whole day to make the 

 journey. In 1782 the time between Liverpool and London 

 was 48 hours. 



Down to the middle of the eighteenth century there was no 

 direct communication by coach between Birmingham and 

 London. The Birmingham merchant or resident who wanted 

 to travel to London by coach, instead of on horseback, had 

 to go four miles by road to Castle Bromwich, and there 

 await the coach from Chester to London. In 1747, however, 

 Birmingham got a coach of its own, and this vehicle, it was 

 announced, would run to London in two days " if the roads 

 permit," x but the roads around Birmingham were still in a 

 deplorable condition when William Hutton published his 

 " History " of the town. He says that from Birmingham, 

 as from a grand centre, there radiated twelve roads to as many 

 towns ; but on most of them one could not travel with safety 

 in times of floods, the water, owing to the absence of cause- 

 ways and bridges, flowing over the road higher than the 

 stirrup of one's horse. At Saltley in the year 1779 he had had 

 to pass through what was really a dangerous river. A mile 

 from Birmingham, on the Lichfield road, a river remained 



1 The journey between Birmingham and London can now be done by 

 train in two hours. 



