OHAPTEE, V 



THE STAGE-WAGGONS AND WHAT THEY CARRIED : 

 HOAY THE POOR TRAVELLED 



We have now arrived at the time when the goods 

 traffic became a prominent feature of the road. 



The precursor of all public vehicles was the 

 carrier's waggon, a conveyance of hoary antiquity, 

 intended in the first instance for the carriage of 

 heavy goods, but finding room for those Avayfarers 

 who Avere too poor to own or hire a horse, or 

 possibly too infirm to sit one even if their means 

 sufficed. At least a hundred and fifty years before 

 the earliest stage-coach was put on the road, the 

 Avaggon, the poor man's coach, Avas creaking and 

 groaning on its tedious Avay at a pace of little 

 more than tAA^o miles an hour. The stage-Avaggon, 

 in fact, came into use about 1500, and the first 

 glimpse and earliest notice of the carrier's and 

 stage-waggon business introduces us to a very 

 celebrated Avaggoner indeed, by far the most 

 notable of all his kind^^none other, in fact, than 

 Thomas Hobson, the carrier betAA^een Cambridge 

 and London, the grand original of the Chaplin & 

 Homes, the Pickfords, the Carter Patersons, and 

 Suttons of succeeding generations. Hobson's 

 London place of call was the " Bull/' Bishopsgate 



