152 STAGE-COACH AND MAIL IN DAYS OF YORE 



possibilities, and long observation at Bath had 

 displayed how far short of these the postboys' 

 journeys always fell. Thirty-eight hours were 

 generally taken to perform the 109 miles between 

 the General Post Office and Bath, at a time when 

 travellers posted down in post-chaises in one day. 



Other objections to postboys existed than on the 

 score of insufficient speed. It was, he declared, 

 in the last degree hazardous to entrust the mail- 

 bac^s— as inevitablv Avas often done — to some idle 

 boy, without character, and mounted on a worn-out 

 hack, who, so far from being able to defend him- 

 self ascainst a robber, was more likely to be in 

 league with one. 



Post Office postboys, it should here be said, 

 were, like the postboys who drove the post-chaises, 

 by no means necessarily boys or youths. They 

 included, it is true, in their ranks all ages, but 

 the great majority of tliem were grown-uji, not to 

 say aged, men. Some people, indeed, recognising 

 the absurdity of calling a decrepit old man a 

 " postboy," preferred to give him the title of 

 "mailman," by which name a postal servant Avho 

 got drunk and delayed the Bath mail in 1770 is 

 styled in a contemporary newspaper, which says, 

 " The mail did not arrive so soon by several hours 

 as usual on Monday, owing to the mailman getting 

 a little intoxicated on his way between Newbury 

 and Marlborough and falling from his horse into 

 a hedge, where he was found asleep by means of 

 his dog." 



Instead of exposing letters to these and other 



