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| Later model of Coach with Seat-Box higher & safer |
Riding in a
coach sounds romantic. I certainly would like to climb into a 17th
century ‘chariot’ as Pepys says on occasion. It would be cool.
I’ve read a
few historical fiction novels where the hero seduces the heroine in a carriage
as it rolls down a neat cobblestone lane, the coach lanterns slightly swaying.
The visual is pretty. It is clean. Flowers scent the air. Unfortunately, some things
in these novels aren’t quite correct.
Most of the middling sort of society did not own horses and until the latter half of Queen Elizabeth I’s reign, my sources say there were no coaches (carts, yes). Everyday folk foot-slogged wherever they wanted to go. When they finally came onto the scene, you had to be rich to own one.
Coaches of the late 16th & early 17th centuries were not like what we see in movies and television. They were heavy, cumbersome boxes attached to solid frames with wheels. They made for a teeth rattling trip.
Coaches of the late 16th & early 17th centuries were not like what we see in movies and television. They were heavy, cumbersome boxes attached to solid frames with wheels. They made for a teeth rattling trip.
Sometimes
leather flaps covered the windows. When doors were attached, they were generally
ill-fitted. Cold, rain and dirt found their way inside. Travel was uncomfortable
and unwieldy. Eventually, the heavy coach was suspended by great leather straps
but the swaying this produced caused terrible motion sickness.
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| 17th century Coachman |
During most
of the 17th century, the coach had no box-seat. The coachman was
forced to sit or stand on a low platform attached to the coach pole. If he sat,
there was no place to rest his feet. This put his head very close to the horses’
hooves where a coachman could easily be kicked or splattered with mud and
waste. The coachman’s foot could snag a root or an object and be pulled under
the chassis, breaking a leg.
If you think
of a coachman and postilions in plush livery with lace and shiny boots as they
jaunt down a country lane, don’t. They would be mud splattered, the lace, their
faces, hats and clothes fouled by the time they reached their destination.
The old
Roman roads were in disrepair. Other highways were mud tracks or scratched
paths. In springtime, farmers plowed across roads then people, carts and horses
brazenly trod over this, crushing seed and new growth. Wheel ruts were deep. Great
holes pockmarked thoroughfares that could break a horse’s leg, do irreparable
damage to a cart or coach.
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| Coach with low, unsafe seat-box |
The actual
city of London resided within its walls, an area of approximately one square mile.
Everything beyond was considered the Liberties or suburbs. City lanes were
narrow. As years went by coaches were built taller, wider. (Seat boxes were
placed higher, equipped with foot rests.)Their sides and roofs scraped along cantilever houses,
destroyed the edges of jutting eaves, knocked off butchers’ displays of hanging
meats, pushed over vegetable stands. In London,
iron clad wheels were outlawed due to the ear splitting noise and road
destruction, but for the most part, this law was ignored.
By 1636, it
is suggested upwards to 6,000 coaches rumbled up and down the lanes of London,
(which seems excessively over the mark). Gridlock! Another source stated
300-700, which is still pretty darn crowded.
Coaches
fought with pedestrians, merchants with loaded carts, sedan chairs and men and
women on horses. They rolled down lanes that were a combination of pavers,
cobblestones and dirt, piles of muck and filthy mud running down center
kennels. [Men were allowed to urinate on fires and empty their bladders in the
street.] Cattle and sheep were herded through town. There were no fenders on
the coach wheels. This allowed mud and other foul substances to wash onto the
coachman and passengers.
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| Waterman plying his trade on the Thames |
Another mode
of dirty travel:
Watermen
plied their boats for hire up and down the River Thames. They had a strong
guild. They were tough and ornery. You never wanted to cross a wherriman. When
they were pressed into service during the 2nd Anglo/Dutch war,
soldiers were sent to keep them subdued. Considering the crush of coaches in
London, taking a wherry where you wanted to go probably proved to be much
faster.
But there
were issues. The Thames is a tidal river. When the tide was out, oftentimes you
had to walk to the boat on planks of wood spread over mud that held centuries
of filth. London Bridge on the Southwark side of the river held heads of beheaded traitors on pikes. Once the flesh was eaten away, the caretaker would fling the skulls off the Bridge where they sank into river mud.
The river
was used for suicides. Men and women jumped off the Bridge to land willy-nilly
on anything flowing beneath. Bodies would bloat up and float for days before
the city scavengers could retrieve them. Dogs and rats had a tendency to find their
way there, too, where they’d be left to rot.
The Thames
was also a dumping ground, from the Fleet River that was a sewer to anyone who
wanted to get rid of something. Your wherriman guided the boat through this
sludge to your destination.
Then there
was the sedan chair.
Like a fly
or a gnat, these little guys buzzed underfoot and added to the congestion. Cramped
and closed in, it was a cleaner way to travel once you got into the chair.
Attached by
two hefty poles, men at each end of the chair carried you to where you wanted to go.
They were the ones who got dirty during the journey, not you, unless somehow a
man tripped and the whole chair fell to the ground. I don’t want to go into all
the hazards this would cause especially if it had been raining.
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| Sedan Chair carried by mules. Nifty way to go. |
So, no
matter what you did in the 17th century, where you went in London,
prepare to get dirty. If you go back in time, go with an open mind.
You’ll find
yourself in a rollicking loud place, filled with all sorts of people. Your mind
will stagger from the myriad of visuals and powerful scents. Just hope you can safely
return to the present where you can take a bath in warm, clean water.
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Many thanks to:
Wikicommons, public domain for sedan chairs
Other pictures taken from the book Travel in England, 1925
Travel
in England in the 17th century by Joan Parkes,
Oxford University Press, London 1925
Old
and New London: Westminster and the western suburbs By Walter Thornbury, Edward Walford, Vol IV, London
1891
