The post office and its story an interesting account of the activities of a great government department

The mails were of course the first consideration on the coaches. The available room after the loading of the mails was given to passengers' luggage, and this had frequently to be reduced by the passenger himself before starting. The great trouble with the guards was the temptation to overload the coaches. A contributor to the Quarterly Review in 1837 said: “Yet notwithstanding the moral improvement of the drivers, the improved state of the high roads throughout the kingdom, stage-coach travelling is more dangerous than it was before owing to the unmerciful speed of the swift coaches and the unmerciful loads which are piled upon the others like Pelion upon Ossa, or suspended from them, wherever they can be hung on. 'Coachman,' said an outside passenger who was being driven at a furious rate over one of the most mountainous roads in England, 'have you no consideration for our lives and limbs?' 'What are your lives and limbs to me?' was the reply, 'I'm behind my time.'” Sometimes the driver himself suffered after a spell of bad weather which had rutted the roads. Mr. Hasker reported that “the York coachman and guard were both chucked from their seats going down to Huntingdon last journey, and coming up the guard is lost this morning, supposed from the same cause, as the passengers say he was blowing his horn just before they missed him.” These were strenuous days, and weather conditions, especially after a fall of snow, were formidable enemies to the timekeeping of the guards. Robberies of the mail were far less frequent than in the days of the post-horses, and the roads, thanks to the splendid efforts of the great engineers Telford and Macadam, were immensely improved, but snow and flood were still to be reckoned with. It was one of the sights of London to see the mail coaches start at night from the Swan with Two Necks and the Bull and Mouth in Aldersgate Street. A small crowd was usually to be seen at Hyde Park Corner watching the westward-bound coaches go by on their night journey.