324 STAGE-COACH AND MAIL IN DAYS OF YORE 



nine or ten, or from three o'clock in the afternoon 

 until nine at night, they were the scenes of bustling 

 activity. Any reference to old coaching time- 

 bills will show that the majority of the clay stage- 

 coaches to places distant a hundred miles or more 

 from London started about C a.m. Thus in 1821, 

 among the coaches from London to Birmingham, 

 eifi^ht are found timed from London between five 

 and a quarter to eight in the morning ; leaving 

 the rest of the day blank until 3 p.m., when 

 the earliest of the night coaches set out. The 

 " Sovereign " went in 1821 from the " Bull," 

 Whitechapel, at 5 a.m. Half an hour later went 

 the " Crown Prince" from the " Belle Sauvage," 

 and the " Aurora," from the " Bull and Mouth " ; 

 followed by the " Courier," from the " Swan with 

 Two Necks," and the "Light Coach" from the 

 " Cross Keys " and " Golden Cross " at 6. At 

 6.30 went the " Oxonian Express " from the 

 "Bull and Mouth"; the "Independent Tally-Ho," 

 from the " Golden Cross," while " Mountain's 

 Tally-Ho," from the " Saracen's Head," Snow 

 Hill, left at 7.15. In the same year the three 

 early coaches for Bath left London at 5, 5.15, 

 and 6.15 a.m. These hours, which we should 

 nowadays regard as extravagantly early, were 

 necessary if those coaches were to proj^erly serve 

 the roads they travelled, for even a fast coach, 

 doing its 9 or OJ miles an hour, including sto2)pages, 

 would not reach Bath or Birmingham before the 

 day had nearly closed. 



These unseasonable hours meant, of course, 



