l82 ON THE TRACK OF THE MAIL-COACH 



Office. Eight p.m. from London, and even later from 

 Liverpool, were hom's of departm'e as immutable as 

 the laws of the Medes and Persians. Eight o'clock 

 from London is still the hour of despatch ; half-past 

 ten, or, at the earliest, a quarter to it, was always the 

 mail-coach time at Liverpool. 



Eight 3^ears later matters had got worse. Again 

 there were complaints from Lad Lane and all along 

 the line. In 1816 there were four London and 

 Liverpool coaches, other than the mail, running 

 chiefly by day, and spending but one night on the 

 road ; still, the passengers by mail were two nights on 

 the coach. Only three inside passengers were booked 

 at Liverpool for London by the mail-coach during the 

 whole month of June. The contractors could retrieve 

 the lost traffic only by quickening the running and 

 shortening the stops. 



They did both, the public necessarily gaming by 

 the competition. In 1818, long before Telford had 

 finished his work, the down Liverpool mail ran to the 

 Eoebuck, in the High Street of Newcastle-under- 

 Lyme, by six o'clock in the evening, and so made 

 Liverpool about midnight instead of three or four 

 o'clock in the morning. 



On one occasion, when the up Liverpool mail, which 

 passed through the Potteries, had changed horses at 

 Monks' Heath, after leaving Congleton for Newcastle, 

 a pack of hounds ran by in full cry. The horses 

 which had just performed the stage, harnessed as 

 they were, started after them, took every leap, and, 



