stagecoach

stagecoach, any public coach regularly travelling a fixed route between two or more stations (stages). Used in London at least by 1640, and about 20 years later in Paris, stagecoaches reached their greatest importance in England and the United States in the 19th century, where the new macadam roads made travel quicker and more comfortable. In the United States, coaches were the only means that many people had to travel long overland distances. In 1802 one could travel by different coaches 1,200 miles (1,900 kilometres) between Boston and Savannah, Ga., with the total price of travel and lodging amounting to $100. In England, in 1828, coaches ran 12 times daily from Leicester to London alone. They were also very quick; the London–Edinburgh stagecoach travelled its 400-mile route at an average speed of 10 miles an hour. Washington Irving’s essay “The Stage Coach” describes a journey by stagecoach in England and provides an interesting picture of the coachmen. Many of Dickens’ novels retrospectively present the great age of the stagecoach. Gradually, after the 1840s, coaches succumbed to the railroad, although they continued to be used in less accessible places into the 20th century.

Stagecoaches have passed into folklore and literature. Few films with a locale in the American West would be complete without one. Especially notable is John Ford’s Stagecoach, which uses the coach to present a little ark of humanity thrown together to react to and learn from each other and so follows such literary examples as Smollett’s The Expedition of Humphry Clinker and Maupassant’s “Boule de suif.” See also Concord coach; diligence.