WHAT BECAME OF THE COACHMEN 299 



open-handedness of the passengers of old, and inci- 

 dentally that travellers hv 'bus were " not worth 



a d n " ; not, perhaps, a tactful or ingratiating 



manner, hut " out of the fulness of the heart the 

 mouth sjieaketli . ' ' 



When the London and South-Western Raihyay 

 Avas opened to Hichmond, in 18 ^3, the first station- 

 master was a former coachman and coach-jiro- 

 prietor, and a very notable one : no less a man, 

 indeed, tlian Thomas Cooper, who had in his 

 time run a service of coaches between London, 

 Bath and Bristol, and had been landlord of that 

 very fine old inn, the " Castle," at Marlborough, 

 now and for many years past a part of Marl- 

 borough College. Cooper's varied enterprises on 

 the Bath Road at last led him direct into the 

 Bankruptcy Court. When he emerged from the 

 official whitewashing process, Chaplin had acquired 

 his line of coaches, and to that highly successful 

 man he became a local manager. It Avas Chaplin 

 who obtained him the position of station-master, 

 as doubtless he had, in his influential position 

 of director and chairman of the L. & S.W.B., 

 already found many posts on that line for 

 coachmen, guards, and others. 



Jo Walton, tlie famous Avhip of the " Star 

 of Cambridge," became a messenger at Poster's 

 Bank in that town, after the railway had run 

 him off. At an earlier date Dick Vaughan, of 

 the Cambridge " Telegrajih," had been killed by 

 l)eing thrown out of a gig ; but of him Ave knoAV 

 little. Of Tliomas Cross, Avho Avas intimately 



