COACH PROPRIETORS. 125 



of a livery yard in Knightsbridge. He left the 

 "White Horse" cellars at eight o'clock every even- 

 ing ; but after a time Air. Chaplin removed his offices 

 to Reo-ent Circus, and it was from there the coach 

 afterwards started. 



The railroad does not seem to have penetrated to 

 the far west so quickly as it did in other directions 

 about England ; consequently coaches continued to 

 run until a very recent date in the West of England. 

 Coachmen who had been driven off the road elsewhere 

 hy the advent of the railroad and the locomotive, 

 Hocked to the west, amongst whom were four noted 

 coachmen, named Johnson. They were four brothers, 

 sons of a tailor at Alarlborough. 



The " Telegraph," a celebrated Exeter coach, was 

 first put on the road by Stevens, proprietor of an inn 

 in London called the " Halfmoon." This coach left 

 Exeter at 6.30 a.m. ; the passengers dined at the 

 " Star " at Andover, and reached Hyde Park Corner 

 at 9.30 p.m., doing the one hundred and sixty-five 

 miles in fifteen hours, including stoppages.'" 



A writer, of whom I have before spoken, observes 

 that a stage-coach was excellent property in those 

 days. The " Quicksilver" and Dorchester mail alone 

 paid the rent [£1200) of the new "London Inn;" 

 the profits of the " Quicksilver " mail, which ran from 

 London to Exeter, was ^1000 per annum ; but the 

 profits of the Dorchester mail only ^200. 



Haworth, in his " Road Scrapings," says that the 

 mails from London on the second day of each month 

 were frequently behind time, being loaded with 

 magazines and periodicals ; and at Christmas and Easter 

 the coaches were heavily loaded with parcels contain- 

 ing presents ; and when the shooting season com- 



* See pages 73 and 76. 



