Four or six draught animals were needed to pull a coach and they had to be changed every 6 to 12 miles, depending on the condition of the roads. In England it was calculated that one horse was needed for every mile of a journey on a well-maintained turnpike road. So, for the 185 miles from Manchester to London, 185 horses had to be kept stabled and fed to deal with the seventeen changes required by the stagecoaches which traveled the route. Those horses in turn required an army of coachmen, postillions, guards, grooms, ostlers and stable-boys to keep them running. As a coach could carry no more than ten passengers, fares were correspondingly high and out of reach of the mass of the population. A journey from Augsburg to Innsbruck by stagecoach, although little more than 60 miles as the crow flies, would have cost an unskilled laborer more than a month’s wages just for the fare.
That is from new and excellent The Pursuit of Glory, Europe 1648-1815, by historian Tim Blanning. The best parts of this book — which are very good indeed — are the early sections on the economic history of transportation.
Here is a previous installment of The World We Have Lost.
The World We Have Lost?
Sounds more like The World We Threw in the Trash, and rightly so.
I love progress.
And the feet of manure in the street are also lost.
In the US farmers had to allocate about 20% of their crop land to raising food for draft animals.
Irreversibility of time is really a disappointment. If I had a “Time Machine” I would have visited those Kingdoms and ancient cities many times;I would have visited people during the “Tulipmania” period,Emperor Vikramaditya’s court and the prosperous Vijaya Nagar Empire.I would have seen Emperor Shahjahan and his loveliest Mumtaz Beegum.
But what about poor Jo? In Bleak House, Jo swept the streets at the street corners so all those wealthy people could cross without getting their pant legs dirty…he’s so poor and ignorant, there’s no other job he can do! If we let these cars keep coming through, Jo’s going to be even worse off than he is now.
Because of the railways and automobiles, all those coachmen, postillions, guards, grooms, ostlers and stable-boys were about to lose their jobs.
Paging Dr. Rodrik!
GVV- but you would come back to our time for your medical care, especially the dental work, wouldn’t you?
GVV- but you would come back to our time for your medical care, especially the dental work, wouldn’t you?
now if you want to è£æ½¢ç¶²ï¼Œyou can search for 室內è¨è¨ˆ and è£æ½¢è³‡è¨Š and 室內è¨è¨ˆè³‡è¨Šç¶² to trans the words，who can help me?
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