THE “DEFIANCE”

Up to 1821 there had been comparatively little coaching competition along the Manchester Road. In that year there ran along the Coventry, Atherstone, Lichfield, and Congleton route to Manchester (which is not the Manchester Road as considered in these pages) the “Prince Cobourg” coach, which set out from the “Swan with Two Necks,” and was at Manchester in exactly twenty-six hours; but the “Defiance” was in the first flight upon the route adopted here. It was not very swift, for it set out at half-past two every afternoon from the “Swan with Two Necks,” Lad Lane, and did not arrive at the “Bridgewater Arms,” Manchester, until 5.30 the next afternoon: twenty-seven hours. That was just before the era of the great Chaplin, and at that time the “Swan with Two Necks” was still kept by one Kingsford, while the Coach Office in its yard remained in the hands of William Waterhouse, who had carried on business there as a mail contractor and coach proprietor since 1792, and was well content with the old leisurely ways. Such as it was, the “Defiance” was only equalled in that year by the “Regulator,” which, running from the same establishment, was no competitor, having a slightly different route, taking it through Buxton. It also performed the journey in twenty-seven hours. The “Manchester Telegraph” at that time took thirty hours.

But in 1822, probably nerved to great deeds by the establishment of a smart rival, the “Independent,” which worked on alternate days from Nelson’s “Bull” inn, Whitechapel, and the “Spread Eagle,” Gracechurch Street, and leaving London every evening at 6 p.m. reached Manchester in twenty-four hours, he did manage to expedite the “Defiance” by two hours and a half. In that year it made the journey in twenty-four and half hours. In 1826 it had become the “Royal Defiance,” and, starting at 6.30 p.m., was at Manchester in twenty-four hours.

These successive accelerations were probably due to William Chaplin, who seems to have become interested by degrees in the business so long carried on by Waterhouse, and to have finally succeeded him about 1825.

The “Defiance” had in its earlier years very little to contend against. In 1821 there was a “Manchester Telegraph” from the “Castle and Falcon,” Aldersgate Street, also starting at 2.30 p.m., but taking no less than twenty-nine and half hours to perform the journey: a very modest pace of some six miles an hour. But in 1823 a powerful rival appeared in Edward Sherman, who then established himself at the “Bull and Mouth,” St. Martin’s-le-Grand, as a coach proprietor. He had come up to London as a boy, from Wantage, Berkshire, with the traditional half-crown in his pocket; and found work in Oxford Market as a boy-porter, earning 8d. a day. Out of this scanty wage he saved a daily 2d. According to some accounts, he found his way on to the Stock Exchange, in some connection with one Levy, a wealthy farmer of the turnpike tolls, who helped to establish him at the “Bull and Mouth.” He was a tall, dark, fine-looking man; one of the very few who at that time wore a moustache, the mark then of the fast, wild young fellow. He married the wealthy widow proprietress of the “Oxford Arms,” Warwick Lane. She soon died, and was not long afterwards followed by her sister, who left him her property. He then married his wife’s niece.

Eventually he raised himself to the first rank of coachmasters; almost rivalling the great Chaplin himself, and running several coaches in keen competition with him. He rebuilt the “Bull and Mouth,” and in his prime owned seven hundred horses. Over fifty mail and stage-coaches, chiefly for the northern and north-western roads, left his capacious yard every twenty-four hours. The great stables were likened to a small town.

He was not a horsey man, but his horses and coaches were of the best. The coaches were easily distinguishable among all others, their lower panels and wheels being painted a light yellow, and the upper quarters black.

The famous “Manchester Telegraph” day coach, established by Sherman in 1833, left the “Bull and Mouth” at 5 a.m. and reached Manchester at half-past eleven o’clock the same night. As competition with Chaplin’s “Defiance” grew hotter, its speed was accelerated by a half, and then by one whole hour; when the pace, allowing for twenty minutes at Derby, where “the coach dined,” and reckoning the various changes, worked out at just under twelve miles an hour.

To safely negotiate this, in parts, hilly road at so high an average rate of speed, the “Telegraph” coach was especially designed and constructed with flat springs, which gave it a comparatively low centre of gravity.

The strict conduct of coaching business may readily be perceived by a glance at the appended time-sheet carried on every journey:

Sherman’s “Estafette” was a great advance in coaching luxury, and was a product of the keen competition in the last few years of coaching. The interior was lighted with a reflector lamp, illuminating an elegantly engraved ivory tablet, showing a table giving all towns on the route, distances, and intermediate times.

A very prosperous coach in later years, always loading well, was the “Peveril of the Peak,” competing with the “Telegraph” and the “Defiance” by dint of leaving London at a somewhat later hour. Another fast night coach was the “Red Rover,” by Robert Nelson, of the “Belle Sauvage,” Ludgate Hill. It started at 7 p.m. and accomplished the journey, by way of the comparatively level Holyhead Road to Birmingham and Wolverhampton, and thence by Newcastle-under-Lyme and Congleton, in twenty hours. There was no mistaking the “Red Rover,” for not only was the coach itself red, but the guards wore red hats and red coats. Sherman soon bought out Nelson, and took the “Red Rover”; but Nelson immediately put on another along the same route, calling it the “Beehive.” It went to the other extreme, and set out at 8 a.m., arriving at Manchester at 4 o’clock the next morning. It sounded the last note in coaching convenience, for not only was it fitted inside with a reading-lamp, and the inside seats provided with spring cushions, but every seat was numbered in order to avoid disputes.

In 1834, competition between coach proprietors on the chief routes grew so keen that a war of extermination broke out; the stronger men striving to crush the smaller by reducing fares below a paying level. On this road it became possible for a while to travel at half the former fares, and to journey the 186 miles to Manchester for 40s. inside, and 20s. out; but cheap travel was dearly bought in the accidents occasioned through this extravagant rivalry. In addition, were the usual and inevitable mischances of the highway. Thus the Manchester “Defiance” was upset in August 1835 at Brailsford, through the horses shying at a white gate, when a Mr. Holbrook was killed; and the “Peveril of the Peak” was overturned in September 1836, a passenger and the coachman being crushed to death.

Those coach proprietors with the longest purses would, of course, in time have crushed the smaller men in this war of cheap prices; and already, before the railway came to sweep big men and little into one common limbo, those with slender resources were feeling the pinch of daily expenses, and could sometimes hardly settle their turnpike accounts—especially heavy on this road.

The onerous burden of the tolls payable by stage-coaches can scarcely be realised, save by stating a specific example. The amount incurred on a single journey to Manchester was no less than £5 13s. 5d., and this was by no means exceptional. Of course, the coach did not stop to pay toll at every gate, the practice being to settle monthly. The burden seems a heavy one for coach proprietors, but was, like every other tax, levied in the end upon the consumer, being finally paid by the coach passengers in their fares, calculated on the basis of the coach proprietors’ expenses.

At last, in 1837, with the opening of the London and Birmingham Railway to Manchester, this petty warfare was stilled, and the business of the coach proprietors seemed to be ended. In 1836, when the railway had been opened as far as Birmingham, Chaplin and Benjamin Worthy Horne, two of the largest proprietors, had been induced to withdraw from the road, and to throw their interest on the side of the new methods; but Sherman refused to hear anything of the kind. He was the most courageous, not to say the most obstinate, of men; thoroughly British in the characteristics of doggedness and unwillingness to own himself beaten. He did not believe in railways, until the stern fact of his coaches running empty along the road convinced him, at a considerable loss; and when in 1837 temporary trouble arose between the public and the railway, and some were already regretting the old days, he dashed in and re-established his “Red Rover” coach, which lasted a year or more, losing money heavily when the Manchester people and the railway had composed their quarrel.

The character-sketch of Sherman, here begun, may here be fitly concluded. Without doubt a man of strong character, he had many peculiarities, among them a decided taste for extravagance in dress and jewellery, remarkable even at that time, when dress was very exuberant indeed. Instead of sporting a shirt front, his chest displayed an expanse of black satin, plentifully covered with diamond pins. One day a thief came behind him in the street, reached a hand over his shoulder, and made off with a valuable specimen. Sherman afterwards had them all attached to a chain.

His fighting temper, if it stood him in good stead among his fellow coach proprietors, certainly, as we have seen, involved him in heavy losses in quarrelling with railways, before he found them too strong for him. To lose money was to him an especial grief. The very sight of sovereigns was a solace to him, and he kept a hundred in a tankard, deposited in his safe at the “Bull and Mouth,” so that he might always have the pleasure of handling the gold.

He had—according to private information—a number of children “that he ought not to have had,” whatever that may mean. His last years were sad, for his relatives exploited his temper and some eccentricities he had developed, and procured his committal, as a lunatic, to Bethlem Hospital, where he died in 1866. There are those yet living who remember him there, and tell how he was put away with little legitimate excuse.

The “Bull and Mouth” was carried on by his executor, E. Sanderson, until 1869, when it was purchased by the late Quartermaine East, and re-named the “Queen’s Hotel.”

Nowadays, the most ruinously low coach fares of that competitive time before railways are made to look absurdly high by even the ordinary third-class railway fare, 15s. 5½d., to Manchester: and excursions are frequently run at the price of a few shillings.