HOW THE COACHES WERE NAMED 283 



more attractive fashion. But when an opposition 

 took the road, the vehicles so curtly named hecame 

 "commodious," "easy," "elegant," and anything 

 else you like in the commendatory kind. The 

 next stage in this development was to appeal to 

 the sentiment of old customers and to endeavour 

 to retain their favour, not usually hy increased 

 speed, loAver fares, or hotter accommodation, hut 

 hy descrihing an old-estahlished coach as " the 

 original." Passengers, who did not lay so much 

 stress upon sentiment as upon personal comfort, 

 were generally well-advised to hook seats hy 

 the new opposition coaches rather than hy the 

 "originals," which had the defect of heing old- 

 fashioned, and perhaps, in many cases, worn out. 

 Surely in no other husiness was rivalry so hitter 

 and unrelenting as in that of coaching, and the 

 annals of the road afford occasion for a sigh or 

 a smile as one reads the furious denunciations 

 levelled hy one coach-master against another in 

 their old advertisements. This contention started 

 in the very first years of the Brighton Boad. In 

 1757 James Batchelor extended his old Lewes 

 stage to Brighthelmstone (as Brighton then was 

 known). He took two days to perform the journey. 

 Five years later appeared a certain J. Tuhh, allied 

 in partnership with S. Brawne, with intent to 

 drive Batchelor off the road. They advertised, 

 in May 1762, a " Lewes and Brighthelmstone 

 Elying Machine, hung on steel springs, very neat 

 and commodious," to do the journey in one 

 day. This presumption aroused Batchelor, the old 



