A More Expeditious Conveyance: The Story of the Royal Mail Coaches by Bevan Rider

by Bevan Rider

During the summer of 1784 an announcement appeared in Farley's Bristol Journal: "Monday next the experiment for the more expeditious conveyance of the mails will be made...which will be delivered in London the next day."

This book tells the story of that first Mail run and how it was to grow into a service which created standards and a tradition still admired to this day.  The book is published to conicide with the bi-centenary celebrations of the "experiment," which took place on 2nd August 1784.

The state of the postal service in the 1780s had deteriorated to such an extent that letters were often lost, valuables stolen and journeys which a private post-chaise made in a day took the postal service twice as long.

The coming of the Mail coach was to change all that- although complacent officials at the General Post Office were slow to realize it.  From this small experiment - the idea of one John Palmer, citizen of Bath, entrepreneur and manager of the Theatres Royal in Bristol and Bath - grew an industry which employed jobmasters, coachmen, guards, ostlers, clerks, stablemen, innkeepers and the like.  As the service improved with the introduction of, and strict adherence to, timetables, so did the roads, the traffic that used them and people now began to embark on journeys which until then had been "not advisable."