A practical treatise on coach-building historical and descriptive — Background and Themes

The origin of the word coach has not yet been accurately determined. Menage says it is taken from the Latin _vehiculum_, which most people will take the liberty of doubting; Wachten, from the German _kutten_, to cover; Lye, from the Belgic _koetsen_, to lie along, or, as it really means, a couch or chair; it has also been tried to prove that the word is of Hungarian origin, and that it took its name from _Kotsee_, the old name of the province of Wiesellung, where various kinds of carriages were made; and in Beckmann’s “History of Inventions” it is mentioned that “when the Archbishop received certain intelligence that the Turks had entered Hungary, not contented with informing the king by letter, he speedily got into one of those light carriages of the place they call _kotcze_, and hastened to his majesty.” This, in addition to the fact that some years previously the King of Hungary presented to the Queen of Bohemia a vehicle that excited great wonder and admiration, by reason of its trembling (_branlant_), showing clearly that it must have been suspended, is strongly in favour of the Hungarian coachmakers; but we must leave it to the philologists to determine the exact truth, for what with the _caroche_ of France, the _caroce_ of Italy, the _carri-coche_ of Spain, and our own coach, the head gets somewhat bewildered, and is fain to take refuge in the simple _carruca_ of ancient Rome, from which these appellations most probably had their rise. In any case the honour must be a divided one, as the _caretta_, _chare_, car, _charat_, &c., must have been the earliest forms of the derivation, as such were the names given to the first vehicles; later, we have the Hungarian _kotcze_, the German _kutsche_, &c., and adding both form and name to what had gone before, produced a mixed vehicle with a mixed appellation. Dr. Johnson defines coach as a “little carriage.” The _large_ carriage that he had in his mind’s eye at the time must have been a marvellous vehicle.

The progress of the art of coach-making, like the progress of most inventions and discoveries, has been rather slow, we may say remarkably slow; sometimes it made a sudden start, but a reaction in the other direction generally settled it before much advance had been made; but seeing that the early portions of the Old Testament contain references to wheel carriages, it does seem rather strange that perfection should take so long to arrive at. This may be partly accounted for by the fact that the nations of the earth were always at war with one another, and consequently had no time to foster inventive power. And this has unfortunately been the case until comparatively recent times.

The first land carriages were doubtless very primitive contrivances. Though the “chariot” and the “waggon” are mentioned in Genesis, no description is given of their construction. Joseph rode in the second chariot of Pharaoh as a mark of great honour and dignity. “Waggons” were dispatched from the court of Egypt to convey thither the wives and little ones of the family of Jacob. From this, as well as the fact of the brethren of Joseph bearing their corn away on asses, we may infer that wheel carriages, even of the most simple construction, were not in general use at this time. It is very probable that the common vehicle of the period was an embryo sledge, drawn by man or beast along the ground.

The Bible and the hieroglyphics on the various ruins of ancient Egypt furnish us with the earliest authentic records. In the case of Egypt this is particularly valuable to us, because of the great degree of culture arrived at in the civilised arts. In fact it is the chief country of which we have any record of the progress of these arts, and though not actually established, it is extremely probable that to the Egyptians we owe the invention, or at least the introduction of the wheel. These people were early engaged in the erection of large buildings and monuments, of which the pyramids and sphinxes are such striking examples; and in order to convey the enormous blocks of stone and granite to their ultimate destination, the roller would be the first thing to suggest itself as a means of facilitating transit. The next step would be the formation of a truck, to which these rollers could be attached, and on which could be placed the materials to be moved. Progression with a contrivance of this kind would necessarily be rather slow, but it would soon become apparent that if a larger roller were used the motion could be accelerated. The next improvement would be an endeavour to lighten the rollers by sawing them into thick slices, and connecting them by a horizontal roller of smaller dimensions, giving a rude representation of a wheel and axle. The agricultural carts used by the peasantry of Chili, in South America, were made in this fashion until very recently. The further lightening of these cars would follow almost as a matter of course, by cutting the slices of the trunk to form the wheel, thinner, and further by cutting away portions of this slice, forming spokes. The wheel having arrived at this stage of perfection, the axle would call for a little attention. Up till the present, they would be fixed firmly to the wheels and revolve with them. This arrangement would cause great inconvenience in turning, for one wheel would revolve more rapidly than the other, by reason of the circle described by one wheel in turning round being greater than that of the other, and the vehicle would be liable to overturn. The next step was to arrange that the wheels could revolve independently of the axle. This being done, we have the wheel, in its principles, the same as at present.

The paintings and sculptures upon the walls of the temples and tombs of Egypt show that wheeled carriages were in use in that country at an early period (Figs. 1 and 2). In the Bible they are usually translated “chariot.” They are of great interest to us, as they formed the chief means of conveying man for 2,000 years before Christ, and were more or less the type of all the other vehicles of the ancient world. We find certain words used in describing them, both by Homer, who lived 1,000 years B.C., and by Moses, who lived at least 500 years earlier; and these words are the technical terms in use at the present day, such as axles, wheels, naves, tyres, spokes, &c. It is reasonable to infer from this, that the art to which these terms apply must have existed prior to the writers’ description; so that any doubt as to the correctness of the Egyptian sculptures must be dispelled by the references of the above authors. In the fifth book of the Iliad “The awful Juno led out the golden-bitted horses, whilst Hebe fitted the whirling wheels on the iron axle of the swift chariot. The wheels had each eight brazen spokes, the felloes were of gold, secured with brazen tyres all round, admirable to the sight. The seat was of gold hung by silver cords, the beam or pole was of silver, at the end of which were hung the golden yoke and the golden reins.”

The car was greatly used by the Romans, being adopted from the one used by the Etrurians (Fig. 3), a neighbouring country on the Italian peninsula. These latter people were traditionally the first to place a hood or awning over the open two-wheeled car, and they showed great taste in decorating their vehicles in the manner familiar to us by the remains of their pottery. A very fine copy of one of the Roman cars is in the museum at South Kensington, cast from the original in the Vatican.

Herodotus (450 B.C.) mentions that the Scythians used a vehicle which consisted of a rough platform upon wheels, on which was placed a covering like a beehive, composed of basket work and covered with skins. When they pitched anywhere these huts were taken off, and served them as dwellings in lieu of tents. Fig. 4 shows one of their chariots.

The war chariots used by the Persians were much larger than those used by contemporary nations. The idea seems to have been to form a sort of turret on the car to protect the warriors in action. These vehicles were provided with curved blades, like scythes, which projected from the axletrees, for the purpose of maiming the enemy as they drove through them.

At the period of the invasion of this country by the Romans, a car or chariot seems to have been in use which they had not met with before. It was larger than the Roman car, and possessed a seat, from which feature it was called _essedum_. It was doubtless an improved vehicle of its kind, for Cicero, writing to a friend in Britain, says “that there appeared little worth bringing away from Britain except the chariots, of which he wished his friend to bring him one as a pattern.”

Sir William Gell, in his work on Pompeii, which was destroyed A.D. 79, mentions that three wheels had been dug out of the ruins in his day, very much like our modern wheels—a little dished, and 4 feet 3 inches high, with ten spokes rather thicker at each end than in the middle. He also gives an illustration of a cart used for the conveyance of wine in a large skin or leather bag; it is a four-wheeled cart, with an arch in the centre for the front wheel to turn under. The pole appears to end in a fork, and to be attached to the axle bed.

On the decline of the Roman power, many of the arts of civilisation which they had been instrumental in forwarding fell into disuse. The skilled artisans died and left no successors, there being no demand for them. This will account for no mention being made of carriages or chariots for some centuries. Of course there were various primitive contrivances in use to which the name of cart was given, but the great and wealthy moved about the cities or travelled on horseback, or if they were incapable of this, they used litters carried by men or horses. The great bar to the general adoption of wheeled carriages was undoubtedly the very bad state of the roads.

An evident improvement in construction was made by the Saxons. In the Cotton Library there is a valuable illuminated manuscript, supposed to be the work of Elfricus, Abbot of Malmesbury. The subject is a commentary on the Books of Genesis and Exodus, with accompanying illustrations. In one of these is represented the first approach to a slung carriage; and it may be interesting to the lovers of historical coincidence that it is given in an illustration of the meeting of Joseph and Jacob, and in that part of the Bible which first makes mention of vehicular conveyance. The chariot in which Joseph is seated is a kind of hammock (most probably made of leather, which was much used by the Anglo-Saxons), suspended by iron hooks from a framework of wood. It moves upon four wheels, the construction of which is not clear, owing to the decorative license taken with them by the artist. The father of Joseph is placed in a cart, which we doubt not, from its extreme simplicity, is a faithful type of those of the time. This proves the illuminator to have been true to his subject and the custom of the period in which he lived, as the chariot was monopolised by the great men, while the people rode in carts.

With the Normans came the horse litter, a native originally of Bithynia, and from thence introduced into Rome, where it is still used by the Pope on state occasions, and also among the mountain passes of Sicily, as well as in Spain and Portugal. Malmesbury records that the dead body of Rufus was placed upon a _rheda caballaria_, a kind of horse litter. King John, in his last illness, was conveyed from the Abbey of Swinstead _in lectica equestre_. These were for several succeeding reigns the only carriages in use for persons of distinction. Froissart writes of Isabel, the second wife of Richard II., as “La june Royne d’Angleterre en une litieré moult riche qui etoit ordonèe pour elle.” These litters were seldom used except on state occasions. When Margaret, daughter of Henry II., went into Scotland, she is described as journeying on a “faire palfrey,” but after her was conveyed by two footmen “one very riche litere, borne by two faire coursers vary nobly drest; in which litere the sayd queene was borne in the intryng of the good towns or otherwise to her good playsher.”

Carriages proper were first introduced on the continent. Italy, France, Spain, and Germany contend with each other for the honour of the first introduction. The earliest record we have is on the authority of Beckmann, who says that, when at the close of the thirteenth century Charles of Anjou entered Naples, his queen rode in a _caretta_, the outside and inside of which were covered with sky-blue velvet interspersed with golden lilies.

The English were not long before they adopted this new innovation. In an early English poem called the “Squyr of Low Degree,” supposed to be before the time of Chaucer, the father of the Princess of Hungary thus makes promise:—

“To-morrow ye shall on hunting fare, And ride my daughter in a _chare_. It shall be covered with velvet red, And cloths of fine gold all about your head, With damask white and azure blue, Well diapered with lilies new: Your pomelles shall be ended with gold, Your chains enamelled many a fold.”

The pomelles were doubtless the handles to the rods affixed towards the roof of the “chariette,” and were for the purpose of holding by when deep ruts or obstacles in the roads caused an unusual jerk in the vehicle.

On the continent, there seems to have been a great deal of opposition to the use of carriages. In 1294, Philip, King of France, issued an ordinance prohibiting the citizens’ wives the use of cars or chars; and later on, Pope Pius IV. exhorted his cardinals and bishops not to ride in coaches, according to the fashion of the time, but to leave such things to women; and it really was thought _infra dig._ for a man to travel other than on horseback. Even his Holiness the Pope rode upon a grey horse; though to indemnify him for the exertion, his horse was led, and his stirrup held by kings and emperors.

These exhortations had about the same effect as James I.’s “Counterblast to Tobacco;” they created an increased demand, and the people showed their sense in preferring the ease that does no injury to the self-denial that does no good, in spite of the opposition of their superiors.

The first coach made in England was for the Earl of Rutland, in 1555, and Walter Rippon was the builder. He afterwards made one for Queen Mary. Stow’s “Summerie of the English Chronicle” is the authority upon which this statement is made.

In a postscript to the life of Thomas Parr, written by Taylor, the Water Poet (and a mortal enemy to land carriages), we find the following note: “He (Parr) was eighty-one years old before there was any coach in England (Parr was born in Edward IV.’s reign in 1483); for the first ever seen here was brought out of the Netherlands by one William Boonen, a Dutchman, who gave a coach to Queen Elizabeth, for she had been seven years a queen before she had any coach; since when they have increased with a mischief, and ruined all the best housekeeping, to the undoing of the watermen, by the multitudes of Hackney coaches. But they never swarmed so much to pester the streets as they do now till the year 1605; and then was the gunpowder treason hatched, and at that time did the coaches breed and multiply.” Taylor is to be thanked, not only for his information, but for his capital though unconscious burlesque upon those fancied philosophers who talk of cause and effect, where events, because they happen in sequence, are made to depend one on the other, when the fact of their being two things apart makes them independent existences.

We have not space to dwell upon these old specimens at length. Queen Elizabeth’s coach is called by an old author “a moving temple.” It had doors all round, so that when the people desired, and the virgin queen was agreeable, they might feast their eyes on the beauty of its trimming or linings.

The following entry in Sir William Dugdale’s diary may be interesting: “1681. Payd to Mr. Meares, a coachmaker in St. Martin’s Lane, for a little chariot w^{ch} I then sent into the country, £23 13s. 0d., and for a cover of canvas £01 00s. 00d.: also for harness for two horses £04 00s. 00d.”

The opposition on the part of the watermen to the introduction of coaches assumed rather serious proportions, more especially as the populace sided with them; to such a height did the antagonism run that a movement was made to introduce a Bill into Parliament to prevent the increase of coaches; the apology for its introduction being, that in war time it would be a matter of great difficulty to mount the troops if so many horses were monopolised for these coaches. Luckily, however, it came to nothing, and the antipathy gradually died out.

Coaches and vehicles of all descriptions now became general, and in 1635 a patent was granted to Sir Saunders Duncombe for the introduction of sedans; their purpose being “to interfere with the too frequent use of coaches, to the hindrance of the carts and carriages employed in the necessary provision of the city and suburbs.” A rivalry now sprung up between coach and sedan, and gave rise to a humorous tract, in which they hold a colloquy as to which should take precedence, a brewer’s cart being appointed umpire.

The coaches at this period were fearfully and wonderfully made. There are several examples of them scattered about in the various museums. The people who used them at this time had no great ideas of them, for so formidable an affair was the undertaking of a journey reckoned, that even from Birmingham to London a departure was the signal for making a will, followed by a solemn farewell of wife, children, and household!

Towards the end of the seventeenth century improvements began to take place. In Wood’s diary mention is made of a machine called the “Flying Coach,” which performed the journey between Oxford and London in thirteen hours! This was express rate for that age, especially as there was some talk of making a law to limit the ground covered by a coach to thirty miles a day in summer, and twenty-five miles a day in winter. Oh, those good old times! The outcry lessened, and the imperfect vehicles and bad roads were left to passengers unmolested. What the latter were may be imagined from the fact that, when Charles III. of Spain visited England, and Prince George of Denmark went out to meet him, both princes were so impeded by the badness of the roads that their carriages were obliged to be borne on the shoulders of the peasantry, and they were six hours in performing the last nine miles of their journey.

In the eighteenth century improvements were made in the construction of coaches, but they were still heavy lumbering contrivances, so that little or no progress was made in the rate at which they travelled. Even so late as 1760 a journey from Edinburgh to London occupied eighteen days, a part of the roads being only accessible by pack horses. There is a very good specimen of the vehicle of the early part of the eighteenth century in the South Kensington Museum, belonging to the Earl of Darnley’s family, and is well worthy of study as being one of the lightest examples known of this period.