94 THE COACHING ERA 



coachman's motto, so that it is little wonder that 

 accidents became distressingly frequent and the news- 

 papers contained harrowing accounts, of which the 

 following taken from the Oxford Journal for July 26th, 

 1 817, is a typical example: 



"On Thursday last Spencer's opposition Gloucester 

 coach, on its way to London, was overturned near 

 Burford, by which Mr. Thomas Heath of this city had 

 his leg so dreadfully fraftured as to be obliged to suffer 

 amputation. There were four inside and three outside 

 passengers, most of whom were severely bruised; and 

 the coachman was left in a dangerous state. 



"We cannot deprecate in too strong terms the present 

 infamous practice of coaches racing each other, by which 

 the lives of the passengers are put in imminent danger, 

 merely from the caprice of the drivers. The above coach 

 was going at the rate of twelve miles an hour." 



May-Day was the great time for racing and trials of 

 speed, and by tacit agreement rules and penalties were 

 suspended, it being understood that passengers who were 

 foolhardy enough to get on a coach on May-Day did so 

 at their own peril. The coaches, done up in honour of 

 the occasion, were brilliant with red, yellow, blue, and 

 green paint, or whatever happened to be their pre- 

 dominant colour, for, unlike the mails, the stages were 

 not uniform in shape or design, but painted and decked 

 out according to the fancy of their proprietors. 



On May-Day, then, the stage-coaches appeared in all 

 their glory, with horses groomed to perfection, resplen- 

 dent in new sets of brown harness and embroidered 



