Passengers: Life in Britain During the Stagecoach Era

Passengers is a social history of Britain between 1790 and 1840. This is the period of the Napoleonic War and of rapid technological change and social tension. It was a contradictory age, simultaneously the elegant era of Jane Austen and the inspiration for Charles Dickens's work on poverty and injustice. The book has an initial focus on transport and hospitality, but it is also a wider portrait of this important but neglected period of British history. The author covers all aspects of the period-work, law, technology, finance, politics, poverty and crime are the most prominent. The inn and the stagecoach were some of the few places that the different classes met and coexisted in a country that was stratified and deferential. The poor served the transport and hospitality system, the middle classes used it and the ruling classes profited from it. The life of women is an important part of this book; they worked at levels in the travel and hospitality industries. This is everybody's story, an exposition of real places and real people in a society that was 'on the move,' in all senses of the phrase.. Table of Contents. Introduction: Is there Really a Stagecoach History of Britain?. 1 The Walking Classes2 Scandal at the Swan3 Respectability4 Bad Education5 Calculated Charity6 The Stagecoach Masters7 The Entrepreneurial Widows8 Crime in the Coaching Inn9 Crime On The Road10 Roads Work11 Who's on Board Today?12 The Stagecoach Driver: A Class Act13 A Georgian Family and their Struggle with Transport14 Melancholy Events15 The Stagecoach v the Law16 Hell for Horses17 A Journey up the Great North Road18 Moving the Mail19 Attacked by a Lioness20 The Brighton Line21 Inn Hospitality22 Poor Women and their Work23 New Times, New Time and New Timing24 First with the News25 The Stagecoach Defeats the Steam Engine26 The Steam Engine Defeats The Stagecoach. Conclusion: Immortality via Nostalgia.