Travelling from Glasgow before the Railway Age

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Travelling from Glasgow before the Railway Age

Postby Anorak » Fri Nov 29, 2013 9:58 am

Been having look at long-distance travel to and from Glasgow before the age of the railways.

Just a few years before the arrival of fast efficient rail travel and the “penny post” travelling any distance was pretty primitive using stage-coaches that required frequent changes of horses. It was also exceedingly expensive.

Before the widespread introduction of mail coaches in the 1780's, letters were carried by pony, with the post office serving as a stable with the postmaster dealing with both the letters and the livestock to carry the mail.

The arrival of the mail coach required the use of rail guards and coachmen, who earned much more in tips than in wages. They were fined if caught carrying goods on their own account. The guards also had to defend the coach from the everyday danger of highwaymen intent on robbery.

The coaches carried newspapers from town to town which were always in demand in local hostelries en-route. In Glasgow the place for the well-to-do to catch up on the latest news and gossip was the Tontine Coffee Room in Trongate.

Here is a view from the late 1700's of a four horse stage-coach sitting outside the Tontine Hotel.
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The passengers sitting inside the coaches had to pay considerably more than the poor souls on the outside. This notice from October 1808 for a coach from Glasgow to Edinburgh shows that you had to pay an extra 5 shillings for the privilege of sitting inside!
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According to the Post Office Directory, Joseph Bain was the proprietor of the Mail Coach Office at 164 Trongate at the time of this notice.



A new “fast” mail coach from Carlisle to Glasgow was introduced in 1832, carrying just 4 passengers. It travelled at 11mph and required a change of horses every 6 miles!
This was an addition rather than a replacement for the “slow coach”.
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I've got lots more trivia on this topic which needs sorting out into some kind of logical order.
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Re: Travelling from Glasgow before the Railway Age

Postby sandabound » Fri Nov 29, 2013 12:55 pm

Thanks Anorak, interesting stuff
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Re: Travelling from Glasgow before the Railway Age

Postby moonbeam » Fri Nov 29, 2013 9:30 pm

I had a relation who in the 1830's was a mail coach guard. He sat outside and seemed to be armed with what I don't know but his duty was to stop highwaymen and footpads! Note left by my relative. He seemed to be on the mail coaches in the Dunfermline area. According to the note left by my relative it was a very competitive business. With a lot of "poaching" of staff by a rival stage coach firm. Another relation was involved in supplying "stage" horses. Seems they bred special horses for these stage coaches. The horses were pretty expensive by all accounts. The same relation was "exporting" horses to the USA and Canada by the 1850s.
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Re: Travelling from Glasgow before the Railway Age

Postby Monument » Sat Nov 30, 2013 11:49 am

Splendid thread. Thank you anorak.
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Re: Travelling from Glasgow before the Railway Age

Postby Anorak » Sat Nov 30, 2013 12:36 pm

Cheers guys. Still sifting through all the bits and pieces I've discovered.

The 1830's were the peak time for the horse drawn coaches. Moonbeam's relative would be looking for another job pretty soon afterwards. New steam-powered technology in manufacturing and transportation was changing the world a bit like our digital revolution is doing today.
The early guards on the mail coaches were armed with “two short guns or blunderbusses”.

The formal organisation of the long distance mail coaches goes all the way back to the 1780's, credited to John Palmer, Surveyor and Comptroller General of the Post Office.
In 1789, Palmer was presented with 50 guineas by the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce for a silver plate, in gratitude for his improved design for the carriages used for the London mail coach which could then achieve "brain addling" speeds of six to seven miles an hour!

Here is a comparison of the speeds in 1788 and in 1837 when Queen Victoria came to the throne. In the space of a whole human lifetime the average speed had gone up all the way from 6mph to 9mph!
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In 1812 the cost of a journey for a gentleman travelling from London to Glasgow was £10.8s, exclusive of tips to coachmen and guards and the cost of food, drink and overnight accommodation. The fare for his manservant travelling on the outside was £6.5s. The total cost was £19.10s, excluding the expense of 3 overnight stops at roadside inns.
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In 1837 passengers on the the more efficient Glasgow to London mail coaches were charged nearer £40 for the journey.
That year marked the beginning of the end for the stage-coaches to and from London, when on 20th July 1837 the London & Birmingham Railway opened from Euston to Boxmoor, near Hemel Hempstead, creating one of London's earliest commuter suburbs.
Britain's mail coach mileage peaked at 6,643,217miles in 1837. There was a steady year-by-year decrease as the railway network was developed.
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Re: Travelling from Glasgow before the Railway Age

Postby moonbeam » Sat Nov 30, 2013 8:07 pm

Explains why my relative moved into exporting horses to the US and Canada.
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Re: Travelling from Glasgow before the Railway Age

Postby Anorak » Sun Dec 01, 2013 8:59 am

Moonbeam's ancestor may well have been hanging around with lots of undesirables!
The coachmen with their whiplashes and the guards with their blunderbusses got a lot of bad press.

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I love the old-fashioned language in these reports. There is a lot of unconscious humour in the antiquated lingo of the time. Don't know if it would be better to be winged or killed!

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It required an Act of Parliament in 1811 to get the coachmen and the guards to behave themselves and use the blunderbuss only for defence.
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Re: Travelling from Glasgow before the Railway Age

Postby Dexter St. Clair » Mon Dec 02, 2013 7:47 am

The privilege of shooting passers by without much consequence has been passed on to the specialist firearms command.
"I before E, except after C" works in most cases but there are exceptions.
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Re: Travelling from Glasgow before the Railway Age

Postby DavidMcD316 » Mon Dec 02, 2013 8:50 am

excellent wee thread.
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Re: Travelling from Glasgow before the Railway Age

Postby Anorak » Mon Dec 02, 2013 11:14 am

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The last coach carrying the London mail arrived in Glasgow on 14th February 1848. The extension of the Caledonian Railway from Beattock to Glasgow came into operation the following day.

The railway is described here as “the enemy”.
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The writer of the article was obviously not very much in favour of the railways replacing the horse-drawn coaches. In the footnote he personifies the last mail coach as a female who “had the grim satisfaction” of seeing the Caledonian Railway's financial troubles a few years later.
He wasn't too chuffed at the rail passengers having the "brutality" to greet the last coach with ironic cheers!

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Last edited by Anorak on Mon Dec 02, 2013 8:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Travelling from Glasgow before the Railway Age

Postby Alycidon » Mon Dec 02, 2013 12:59 pm

For a good while the recognised route from Glasgow to London was train from Glasgow to Ardrossan, steamer from Ardrossan to Heysham, then train from Heysham to London
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Re: Travelling from Glasgow before the Railway Age

Postby Lucky Poet » Mon Dec 02, 2013 8:08 pm

Good stuff, Anorak.

There's a part of Dickens' The Uncommercial Traveller that's always stuck with me, where he describes the coaching inns in provincial England at the point where they were just about to finally keel over and die out due to the railways. Worth a read, as I recall, though not quite so gun-laden as some of what you've posted. Surprisingly humorous, considering Dickens' reputation.
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Re: Travelling from Glasgow before the Railway Age

Postby edward carolan » Mon Dec 02, 2013 9:47 pm

What was Glasgow to Oban ? Was it more likely by sea?
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Re: Travelling from Glasgow before the Railway Age

Postby Icecube » Mon Dec 02, 2013 9:50 pm

A snippet on the subject:

"Until 1803 the Royal Mail was carried on horseback between Glasgow and Edinburgh. In April of that year it was started to be conveyed by carriage. Some of the names of the coaches over the years were;
Prince of Wales, Star, Royal Telegraph, True Briton, Royal Eagle, Queen Charlotte, Duke of Wellington, Waterloo, Sir William Wallace, Tally Ho etc."

Sourced from the Mitchell archives a few years ago.

Very good thread Anorak.
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Re: Travelling from Glasgow before the Railway Age

Postby Anorak » Tue Dec 03, 2013 10:59 am

Thanks for your contributions!

Could see how the route suggested by Alycidon via Ardrossan and Heysham in the first decade of the rudimentary railway network would have been a better alternative for London travel than using the roads, which were by all accounts pretty awful.

The Glasgow “powers that be” were blackmailed by the Post Office to maintain the road to Carlisle well after it had passed outside the city boundary. The city fathers wanted to keep a direct mail to Glasgow from England rather than using the “Great North Road” via Edinburgh and Newcastle, which would become the modern A1.
Glasgow “contributed large sums for the improvement of the existing road” which would be known in various times as the London Road/ A74/ M74. Unless the road was kept in a satisfactory condition there was always the fear that the Post Office would establish an indirect mail via Edinburgh.
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The demise of the coaching inns in provincial England referred to by Lucky Poet was certainly not welcomed by the locals. The end of the coaching era was seen as “destructive upon all towns that were formerly thriving and prosperous”.

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Not just Lucky Poet's Dickens' novel, but a lot of the serious reports I have uncovered contain a lot of unintended humour to our sophisticated modern minds. The writers would have been unaware of how the passengers with “addled brains” and the mail guards getting an easy fiver for every Frenchman “winged or killed” appears so ridiculous to us!


Was unable to help with edward carolan's query out about how the mail got to Oban in the coaching era. It would be more likely to be delivered by sea?

The very last horse-drawn mail coach in Britain ran from Wick to Thurso on 1st August 1874, the day that the Highland Railway opened.
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