The Bristol and Portsmouth Mail Coach was established under the immediate superintendence of Francis Freeling, Secretary to the General Post Office, who travelled on the coach on its first journey about the year 1786.

In the year 1793 the Salisbury, Portsmouth, and Chichester mails went out from Bristol every morning at seven, and arrived in Bristol every evening between nine and eleven. At that period the coaches from Bristol for the Southern Counties started thus:—Bush Tavern, Corn Street, John Weeks; for Weymouth a post coach every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning at 5; for Portsmouth a post coach every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday morning at four, so that probably the mail which left at 7 a.m. daily was carried by mail cart and postboy.

In about the year 1798 a "long" coach set out from Mr. Crosse's, the Crown Inn, Portsmouth, to Southampton, Salisbury, Bath, and Bristol, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoon; and from Gosport every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, to the White Hart Inn, Bristol.

The methods of service in 1798 and the perils of the road are indicated by the following public notice, viz.:—

"General Post Office,
"October 11th, 1798.

There is no record that anyone claimed the reward.

In 1828 the mail went out from Bristol at twenty minutes past five o'clock for Salisbury, Southampton, Portsmouth, and Chichester, and arrived every day previously to the London mail—thus Chichester, in Sussex, was linked up with the Wiltshire, Dorsetshire, and Hampshire mails at that early period. The charge for the postage of a letter from Bristol to Portsmouth was at that time ninepence.

Luke Kent was the first individual who filled the place of Guard of the Chichester mail coaches. At his death he left a sum of money, on the condition of the Mail Guard always blowing the horn when he passed the place of his interment, Farlington Church, near Havant.

Prior to becoming a Mail Guard, Luke Kent kept the turnpike gate at Post Bridge, and afterwards became landlord of the Goat public house, where he amassed a good fortune. He then opened the Sadler's Wells and was assisted by James Perry, the most celebrated mimic of his time, who assumed the name of Rossignal. He was accustomed to procure a variety of birds, and, having first given his excellent imitation of the songs of each, to let them loose amongst the audience, to their no small gratification. The scheme failed.

In June, 1804, one of the Portsmouth night coaches, having six inside and fifteen outside passengers, besides a surplus of luggage, was overturned near Godalming, Surrey. Twelve of the passengers sustained considerable hurt, and nine were obliged to be left behind; the lives of two children were said to be despaired of. "We are astonished at the temerity of the public in trusting themselves to such vehicles."

A Time Bill of 1823, which gives details of a Coach Service at that period, appears on page 83.

GENERAL POST-OFFICE.
THE EARL OF CHICHESTER AND THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY, HIS
MAJESTY'S POSTMASTERS-GENERAL.
Portsmouth and Bristol:

The Portsmouth and Bristol Time Bill.

In 1826, a coachman on this road was accused of imperilling his passengers through having imbibed too freely, and the Mail Guard was called on in the following letter to report on the matter:—

"General Post Office, 29th July, 1826. Sir,—The passengers who travelled with the Portsmouth and Bristol mail on the 26th instant, having complained that the coachman who drove on that day from Bristol to Warminster was drunk and unfit to drive I have to desire you will explain the reason why you neglected to report to me so great and so disgraceful an irregularity, and also how it happened that you did not know the coachman's name when the passengers asked you for it. I am, sir, yours, etc.,

C. Johnson.—Mr. Folwell, Mail Guard, Bristol."

The explanation is not forthcoming.

In 1830, many of the public coaches started from Portsmouth and passed through Portsea and Landport, but—

In the years 1837 and 1838 the Portsmouth mail coach was despatched at 7.5 p.m., from Bristol Post Office—then located at the corner of Exchange Avenue. The posting of letters without fee was allowed up to 6.35 p.m., and, with fee, paid and unpaid letters alike up to 6.50 p.m. The coach started from the White Lion coach office, Broad Street, at 6.45 p.m., so as to be in readiness at the Post Office to take up the mails at the appointed time. The arrival of the mail at Portsmouth from Bristol was at 6.45 a.m. These times are an improvement upon the service in operation in 1836. At that time the coach left Bristol at 5.30 p.m., with a posting up to 5.0 p.m. without fee, and with fees paid, up to 5.15 p.m. On the inward journey the Coach did not arrive until 8.9 a.m.

It will be appropriate here to enumerate certain interesting incidents connected with the carrying on of the Mail Coach system.

On Saturday, Jan. 5, 1805, the London Mail of Friday se'nnight, had not arrived at Swansea where it was due early in the morning, till eleven o'clock that night, having been detained seventeen hours at the New Passage, in consequence of such large shoals of ice floating down the Severn as to render it unsafe for the mail boat to cross until Friday morning.

Thursday se'nnight, an inquest was held at Swansea on the body of John Paul, driver of the mail coach between that place and Caermarthen which on Sunday was overturned about two miles from Swansea, while proceeding with great rapidity down a hill, it being supposed the coachman's hands were so benumbed with cold that he could not restrain the horses' speed, the consequence of which was that he was so much bruised as to occasion his death on Wednesday night. The guard was slightly hurt, but the passengers escaped uninjured. Verdict, accidental death.

Very few details exist of that exceptional season, in 1806, when Nevill, a guard on the Bristol mail, was frozen to death; but the records of the great snowstorm that began on the Christmas night of 1836 are more copious.

A valuable reminiscence of that night—Dec. 27, 1836—is Pollard's graphic picture of the Devonport mail snowed up at Amesbury. Six horses could not move it, and Guard F. Feecham was in parlous plight. Pollard's companion picture of the Liverpool mail in the snow near St. Alban's on the same night is equally interesting. Guard James Burdett fared little better than his comrade on the Devonport mail:

"An accident occurred to the Worcester mail Coach on Friday evening, March 27, 1829, opposite the Bull and Mouth Office, in Piccadilly, which, we are sorry to say, has proved fatal to Turner, the coachman. Just as Turner had taken hold of the reins, and while he was wrapping a large coat over his knees, the leaders started, and, turning sharply to the right, dashed one of the fore-wheels against a post. The shock was so violent that the coachman was flung from his seat. He fell on his back, and his neck came violently against the curb-stone. Not a moment was lost in securing the assistance of a surgeon, by whom he was bled. The poor man was shortly removed to St. George's Hospital, where he died at about eight o'clock on Saturday evening. He left a wife and three infant children in a state of destitution, without even the means of buying a coffin."

As a "Caution to Mail Coachmen," the following notice was issued on June 20, 1829:—"On Friday, Thomas Moor, the driver of the London mail from Bristol to Calne and back, appeared before the Magistrates at Brislington to answer an information laid against him by Mr. Bull, the Inspector of Mail Coaches, by order of the G.P.O. for giving up the reins to an outside passenger, and permitting him to drive the mail, on May 29 last, from Keynsham to Bath, against the remonstrances of the guard. The magistrates convicted Moor in the mitigated penalty of £5 and 11s. costs. Mr. Bull presented the Bath Hospital with the amount of the fine."

On September 8th, 1837, a coachman named Burnett was killed at Speenhamland, on the Bath Road. He was driving one of the New Company's London and Bristol stages, and alighted at the "Hare and Hounds," very foolishly leaving the horses unattended, with reins on their backs. He had been a coachman for 20 years, but experience had not been sufficient to prevent him thus breaking one of the first rules of the profession. He had no sooner entered the Inn than the rival Old Company's coach came down the road. Whether the other coachman gave the horses a touch with his whip as he passed, or if they started of their own accord, is not known, but they did start, and Burnett, rushing out to stop them, was thrown down and trampled on, so that he died.

There departed this life at Bristol, in November, 1904, a somewhat notable individual in the person of Richard Griffiths, who was born at Westminster, in the year 1811, and entered the service of the Post Office as a Mail Guard on the 17th November, 1834. At the commencement of his service he was employed as Guard to the London and Norwich, via Newmarket Mail Coach, upon which duty he remained until the coach ceased running on the 5th January, 1846, when he was transferred to the London and Dover Railway, and acted as Mail Train Guard thereon. When a Travelling Post Office was established in 1860 on the Dover line of railway, and the necessity for a Guard to the Mail bags thus removed, Griffiths was ordered to the South Wales Railway, where he remained as Mail Train Guard until superannuated on the 25th August, 1870. He lived at Eastville, in Bristol, under the care at last of Mrs. Barrett, a kind old dame, who made him very comfortable, and on his demise, after being on pension for 34 years, he bequeathed his old battered Mail Coach horn to her (see illustration). It is probable that the horn was used on the last Norwich Coach out of London. The maker's name on it is "J.A. Turner, 19 Poultry."

On November 9, 1822, attention was drawn to the "Musical Coachman" thus:—"The blowing of the horn by the coachman and guards of our mail-coaches has usually been considered a sort of nuisance: now, by the persevering labours of these ingenious gentlemen, converted into an instrument of public gratification. Most of the guards of the stage-coaches now make their entrance and exit to the tune of some old national ballad, which, though it may not, perhaps, be played at present in such exact time and tune as would satisfy the leader of the opera band, is yet pleasant in comparison to the unmeaning and discordant strains which formerly issued from the same quarter."

AN OLD MAIL COACH GUARD'S POST HORN.

April, 1832:—"The Tipsy Member" finds mention thus: "An M.P. applied to the Post Office to know why some of his franks had been charged; The answer was, 'We supposed, sir, they were not your writing; the 'hand' is not 'the same.' 'Why, not precisely; but the truth is I happened to be a little tipsy when I wrote them.' 'Then, sir, you will be so good in future as to write 'drunk' when you make 'free.'"

In this book are depicted an old State Coach, the Mail Coach, the primitive Railway Train, and a Railway Engine of the latest pattern, all indicative of progress in locomotion. To complete the series, and for the purpose of historical record, subjoined is a picture of the first Motor vehicle used (1904-1905) in Bristol for the rapid transport of His Majesty's Mails by road. No doubt, in process of time, this handy little 5-horse power car, built to a Bristol Post Office design, to carry loads of 3½ cwt., and constructed by the Avon Motor Company, Keynsham, near Bristol, will have numerous fellow cars darting about in the roads and crowded thoroughfares of Bristol for the collection of letters and parcels in conjunction with larger cars of higher horse power to do the heavy station traffic and country road work.

Still, little "Mercury" will have the credit of being the pioneer car in the Bristol Post Office Service. During its trials the car did really useful service, and did not once break down.