AN OLD MAIL-GUARD 31 



fitly supplemented by those of Moses James Nobbs, 

 who died in June 1897, at the age of eighty years, 

 and was one of the last of the mail-guards on the 

 Exeter Road. To say that he was actually tlm last 

 would be rash, for coachmen, postboys, and guards 

 were a long-lived race, and it would not be at all 

 surprising to learn that some ancient veterans still 

 survive. Nobbs entered the service of the Post Office 

 in 1836, and was transferred from the Bristol and 

 Portsmouth to the London, Yeovil, and Exeter Mail 

 in 1837. 



Retiring at the close of 1891, he therefore saw 

 fifty -five years' service, and vividly recollected the 

 time when the mails were conveyed in bags secured 

 on the roof of the coach. At Christmas-time the 

 load was always heavy ; but although the corre- 

 spondence of that season sometimes severely strained 

 the capacity of the vehicle, it is not recorded that 

 the mail had to be duplicated, as had to be done 

 sometimes in after years when railways had super- 

 seded coaches. 



When the Great Western Railway was opened 

 through to Exeter in 1844 and the last mail coach 

 on this route had been withdrawn, Nobbs was given 

 the superintendence of the receiving and despatching 

 of the mails from Paddington, and often spoke of 

 the extraordinary growth of the Post Office business 

 during the railway era. At one Christmas-tide he 

 despatched from Paddington in a single day no less 

 than twenty tons of letters and parcels. 



He had not been without his adventures. ' We 

 had a very sad accident,' he says, ' with that mail 



