Maria's Diary 7

August 6, 1830

William has been with us again in one of Father’s groups of intelligentsia.
He met Mr. Thomason whose wife is in Paris on her own enjoying herself. I think William very much wishes he could go to Paris as the subject has often come up in discussions.

William says he had a letter from from his mother, talking about my mother
coming to Liverpool and visiting Norton in Derbyshire where her sister Alicia lives. Her sister is married to the Rev. Piper, who has gone abroad.  

Mother told me a bit about her sister and their family. Her husband is the
Unitarian minister living in the village and  besides being a minister, he runs a boarding school for the sons of gentlemen. It is three miles south of Sheffield and eight miles north of Chesterfield. Henry was originally expected to be destined for his father’s trade, that of a builder, but, because he developed a desire to enter
the ministry, he was sent to Hoxton Academy, a dissenting academy in London. In 1805 he married Alicia and they have nine children.

I wish I could go with Mother to visit them. It would be so nice to
meet my other cousins.

I’ve just asked Mother if I could go as her travelling companion and she has agreed ! So now I will research the trip for us both.

Our trip will be as follows: we go from our house to the centre of Hackney, where the boys will be staying with grandma and Aunt Harriet. Then we go down the road a bit to Flying Horse Inn, which is the landing stage for the coach into London. It’s only two miles, so shouldn’t take more than an hour or so. We
arrive at the Swan with Two Necks which is where the Coaches go cross country to Liverpool. Ours, The Express, carries four passengers inside, and 8 outside. We will make sure we have the inside ones, although they are twice the cost. The coach starts off each morning at 7.30. We decided not to go on the mail coach, because although it is a bit faster, it has to pick up the post from various places in London before it goes but after he gets the passengers. We decided not to stay overnight at an inn, but to get the trip over and done with in one go. We should arrive in Liverpool around 5 p.m.  The next day we go on to Sheffield.

August 8

We have now started our journey, and I will add bits to this diary as we go along. These are the places the coach will stop: Barnet, St Albans, Dunstable, Fenny Stratford, Stony Stratford, Towchester, Daventry, Birmingham, Wolverhampton Newport, Whitchurch, Chester, Liverpool It is 207 miles which we will do in 24 hrs.

On main roads there were inns every eight or ten miles. Their main function was to provide fresh horses for coaches and post-chaises. It took just two minutes to change a team of four, then the coach was off on its next eight-mile stage. If spare time was available a stop may have lasted a little longer, giving us
time to take refreshments and to make ourselves comfortable, but I have been told a twenty-minute stop was a rare luxury on a stage-coach journey.

Horses are owned by the innkeeper and hired by the double mile (out and
return). For a horse, an eight or ten mile stage was half a day's work. It then spends a short time eating and resting before drawing a coach travelling in the opposite direction, thus returning to its home stables. It usually rests on alternate days.

Coachmen do about one hundred  miles before another takes over. Our coach carries a guard.  He stays with the coach for the whole of its journey. On routes lasting 24 hours, the guard may not have been very alert by the end of the journey. They expect  a hefty tip from each passenger, and I have heard harass those who did not give to expectation We have budgeted for a 10shilling tip for guard and 2 5 shillings  for each of the drivers, 10 s for refreshments, and the cost of trip 4 d per 5 miles. As we are going 200 miles in one day, I reckon that it will cost 66 shillings for the trip, plus 30 shillings for tips etc., making 96 shillings which is about £5 for each of us. And of course the same
on the way home.

We had short breaks for a drink about every three stops, and our main break
for food came at the half way point, when the drivers changed. Ours happened at Towchester. We said goodbye to our driver, and gave him his tip.

The pub we stopped at is called the White Bear. The publican, Mr. James
Wilkin, was very friendly. Mother had a ploughman’s lunch but I wanted to try a cheese and onion pie, and we both had a half of lager to drink, as we were told that we shouldn’t rely on the quality of the water.

We had just half an hour’s break, so it was difficult for everyone to be served and done in that time, but they were used to having coaches, so were prepared for what was likely to be ordered. Our new driver made sure we were all back in the coach on time.

We were exhausted after we arrived in Liverpool, but luckily William's father was there to meet us. We spent a day  with them before we went on to see the others in Derbyshire

I had hoped to meet William’s fiance but we did meet his sister Theodosia, who is named the same as his mother, and also his brother John.

We took another coach from Liverpool to Sheffield.The two of us and a man were inside and five out; but the driver was far from being happy, and endeavoured to keep his spirits up by
pouring spirits down. It was supposed to take four hours. Our other passenger was fairly talkative. He said, “The motion of the carriage is so equable, that it more resembled the frictionless flight of birds or balloons through the yielding air, than the rolling of heavy bodies over a horizontal plane of cast-iron.” I wasn’t sure if he was being sarcastic or not. It was not a pleasant journey. We proceeded on our road as fast as we could. "How disgusting appeared to me the cruel practice of flogging the lame coach-horses to make them at the extraordinary speed of seven miles an hour! and the pitiful spite of the coachman was vented upon their poor hides whenever the goading thought of being suddenly cashiered came across his muddled brain," said our co-passnger, and we did agree.

We were met in Sheffield by Aunt Alicia and her brother in law, Uncle Thomas, (his wife was Alicia and mother's sister Ann)  and removed to Aunt Alicia's house which is only about four miles south-east of Sheffield. They live in a house next to the Presbyterian Church, as it is called here, but it is really a Unitarian one. Presbyterian is a sort of generic word for dissidents. Their children at the house to meet us. Their eldest daughter, also called Alicia is 24, Emily is 23, Frances is 21. Then there is a huge gap and Frederick is 12, about my age, Mary Ann is 10, Octavia 6, and Eliza 3. After five days, Uncle Thomas picked us up again and we were again in a coach back to Liverpool, and another from there back home, again spending a night with William’s family in between.