466 SPEED CH. XX 



London and Manchester, ran 186 miles in iSj4 hours, 

 — 10 miles an hour ; the Edinburgh and Aberdeen, 

 Captain Barclay's 'Defiance,' 129*4 miles in 12 

 hours and 10 minutes (with a 2-mile ferry at which 

 30 minutes were lost and 30 minutes out for breakfast 

 and lunch, making the driving distance 127^ miles in 

 1 1 hours and 10 minutes), — 1 1.4 miles an hour.* A 

 part of this road was travelled at the rate of 1 3 miles 

 an hour. The London and Bristol, 121 miles, and 

 the London and Shrewsbury, 153 miles, were timed 

 at 10 miles an hour, and the same speed was kept 

 up all the way to Holyhead by the Irish mail. The 

 London and Devonport was also a fast mail. 



An interesting table of the mails and the coaches 

 of those days is given in Corbett's Old Coachman s 

 Chatter, p. 300. 



These speeds over long routes meant going very 

 fast in some places ; ' Nimrod,' Road, speaks of the 

 'Regulator' as doing 5 miles in 23 minutes, that is, 

 13 miles an hour, and of the Devonport mail doing 

 4 miles in 12 minutes, equal to 20 miles an hour! 

 This was in 1832. Reynardson, p. 84, speaks of 

 having driven 14 or 15 miles in the hour. 



The French malle poste (see Plate VIII.) was 

 timed at 10 to 10^2 miles an hour;f it had short 

 stages of only 5 miles. 



In more modern times Mr Tiffany's Brighton 



* Harris, Coaching Age, p. 382. 



f Beaufort, p. 327, and Morix, Report, p. 410. 



