Coach and horses: 200 years ago, unless you owned a horse and could ride, the stagecoach was the quickest way to travel from London to Brighton
CROYDON CHRONICLES: Almost 200 years ago, travelling even modest distances, between the capital and coast, could be a perilous business – especially if you had a short-tempered baronet driving your stagecoach at high speed.
DAVID MORGAN explains
Impatience on the roads today is reflected in the increased use of the horn if a driver pulls away too slowly from the traffic lights. Tooting can be heard from drivers stuck in a queue who can’t see the reason for the hold-up. Sometimes frustration boils over into road rage, with motorists shouting insults out of the window, or worse.
But road rage is nothing new. Back on a Friday afternoon in September 1838, long before the motor car was invented, there was an incident between two drivers in central Croydon that made headlines in the newspapers of the time, just a few weeks after Victoria had been crowned Queen at Westminster Abbey.
A phaeton, a sporty, two-wheeled carriage pulled by a pair of horses, was approaching Croydon at speed along the Brighton Road. The groom who was driving was forced to come to a halt because of a bit of a Victorian traffic jam, caused by various carts and people milling around.
The reports say that he pulled up just outside the Green Dragon coaching inn – a pub had been on the site at 64 High Street since the 1660s, just a short way from the Green Dragon we know in modern Croydon. The old pub stood where Green Dragon House, the office block converted into flats, is today.
Victorian road rage: how the incident outside the Green Dragon was reported in 1838
Back in 1838, as the groom pulled up, The Age stagecoach, a regular service between Brighton and London, came to a stop, too, just behind the phaeton.
The driver of the stagecoach gave the reins of his team of horses to another man sitting on the box with him atop the coach, and jumped down. He ran to the phaeton, grabbed the groom by the neckerchief and began to hit him violently on the face and head.
Such was the ferocity of the attack that the groom feared for his life , crying out, “Murder!” and could be heard begging for mercy.
A crowd gathered, with some them intervening to break up the altercation. In the scuffle, the driver of the coach was hit several times by some bystanders in order to separate the two men.
The coach driver, feeling that the crowd were very much against him, climbed back on his box and urged his team of horses to pull away, as the crowd hooted their disapproval at him.
When the incident was investigated, it turned out that the groom was working for a man named Newbury who was staying in Brighton. He had been asked by Newbury to take the phaeton back to London.
The groom had attempted to pass The Age coach at the Crawley Turnpike but was prevented from doing so by the coach driver. The phaeton groom then drove his own horses into the lead horse of the coach, forcing the other driver to swerve. The groom also used his whip, which according to witnesses, hit the coach driver.
Over the next 20 miles towards Croydon, there continued an unsavoury “battle” between the two, with the phaeton dodging back and forward in front of The Age.
The coach-driving baronet: Sir St Vincent Cotton had a reputation as a gambler, with a short temper
By the time the travellers arrived in Croydon, the exasperated coach driver took the opportunity to exact his own punishment for what had happened on the road. The face of the phaeton’s groom was swollen and beaten. He told onlookers that he would apply to the magistrates the next day for a warrant against the coach driver, who he named as Vincent Cotton. But the application for a warrant was never sought.
Cotton was a colourful figure, and a baronet – a kind of hereditary knight. Sir St Vincent Cotton, 6th Baronet, was known as the driver of the Brighton to London stagecoach for several years.
A letter to The Croydon Advertiser in 1887, written by Mr E Peek, who had retired to live in Southwold in Suffolk, contained some of his memories of The Age coach. Peek had lived in Croydon in 1836 in North End. Being fond of horses he had, along with many others, been a keen observer of the Brighton coach. Peek would go and watch The Age leave or look out for its return. In his letter, Peek said Cotton “tooled his horses along splendidly”.
According to Peek’s memory, Cotton would drive the coach down from Croydon, meeting the “up” coach half way. This is where the drivers would swap over. Cotton would then return to Croydon and Mr Blackenbury, the other driver, would return to Brighton.
Peek wrote that there would be quite a crowd, both in Brighton and Croydon, to see the coaches come in. If a passenger wanted to pay to sit up beside Cotton on the box, then it had to be sorted well in advance. It was a real honour to have that seat.
The coaches themselves were striking, described in one publication as “near perfection as possible”. The pole chains were made of burnished steel, the ribbons were the daintiest and the horse cloths were edged with broad silver lace and adorned with gold mountings. Although there were other coaches, The Age represented the best in coaching during its glory days, before travel by steam locomotives ended that Age.
Memories: Peek’s letter to the Advertiser in 1887
But how did a baronet end up as a coach driver?
Cotton was born in 1801 into a family where his father, grandfather, uncle, brother-in-law and godfather were all senior officers in the Navy. Sir Charles Cotton, Vincent’s father, was an admiral in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars. Admiral Cotton named his son named after the naval battle of Cape St Vincent, a famous victory over Spain in 1797 in which Horatio Nelson figured prominently.
Sir Charles died in 1811, which saw Vincent inherit the title and a splendid income from a young age.
After leaving Christ Church College in Oxford without being awarded a degree, Cotton joined the 10th Hussars. He was always happiest when he was working with horses. He served in Portugal but retired on half pay in 1830, having survived an attempt on his life by an irate husband with whose wife he had an affair.
Club member: Crockford’s in St James’s was one of the first gentlemen’s clubs in London
Returning to England, he became a well-known figure at Crockfords Club, a famous gambling club in St James’s. He hunted in Leicestershire, he played cricket for the MCC (making 34 against Cambridge University in 1834), he attended boxing matches, and he gambled. In fact, he gambled away almost all of his family fortune.
He had just a little money left, which he used to buy The Age coach to run between Brighton and London. This provided him with an income of around £300 a year – close to £50,000 a year in today’s values – though much reduced from what he inherited from his father.
In 1839, he returned to the family home at Madingley Hall in Cambridgeshire, as his mother was ill. Despite his gambling debts, Cotton managed to hang on to the family home.
After his mother’s death, Cotton moved to London, where he lived on a modest income from his sister. His health suffered and he had a stroke. He died on January 25 1863, aged 61. The day before he died, he married his mistress, Hephzibah Dimmick.
On his death, the baronetcy became extinct as all other male members of the family had died, and Sir Vincent had no heir.
His years as a coach driver were notable as he was such a character on the road, even employing a guard named John Horn, to ride with him on the coach in case of an encounter with highway robbers.
“What the deuce are your lives and limbs to me? Don’t you know I’m behind time?” he replied to an especially nervous passenger who wasn’t happy with the speed his horses were travelling.
Descriptions of his coach driving were included in His Jaunts and Jollities, the book by Robert Surtees.
And Cotton was known for having a temper! Another outburst got him into trouble in 1832. He appeared at Marlborough Street Magistrates Court and was given a fine for verbally harassing a man who had picked up a prescription in the street which Cotton had dropped out of his pocket.
If Cotton saw an injustice, he just couldn’t contain himself.
Tall – at 6ft – and athletic, Cotton the horseman and coach driver was a great figure in his prime, but he was weakened by a fall from a carriage in Richmond, when he landed on some railings. He was lucky to survive.
Being transported at speed in a stagecoach along the bumpy road from Croydon down to fashionable Brighton during Regency period England must have been quite the journey – as long as you remembered not to annoy your coach driver.
David Morgan, pictured right, has been chronicling Croydon’s history for Inside Croydon for a decade. Morgan is a former Croydon headteacher, now the volunteer education officer at Croydon Minster, who offers tours or illustrated talks on the history around the Minster for local community groups
If you would like a group tour of Croydon Minster or want to book a school visit, then ring the Minster Office on 020 688 8104 or go to the website on www.croydonminster.org and use the contact page
Some previous articles by David Morgan:
- Roll up! Roll up! Enjoy Croydon’s summer fayre, 1920s style
- Biggles and the curious case of the curate from Croydon
- When ‘Race Around The World’ was a tea shipper’s business
- The church fire that consumed a thousand years of history
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