Tackling congestion in 18th-century London

In the course of the 18th century, Britain’s towns became increasingly congested with private carriages as well as a variety of carts, drays and hackney coaches going about their business. For pedestrians it could make negotiating the streets a nightmare. For members of Parliament, keeping the ways around Westminster unclogged proved an uphill battle. In this latest post for the Georgian Lords, Dr Robin Eagles looks into the efforts to keep congestion in London to a minimum.

In the spring of 1749 Earl Fitzwalter’s accounts recorded him taking possession of a new landau, the ultra-fashionable, low-slung convertible carriage, which had become very popular with elite society. His new wheels cost Fitzwalter £100, in addition to trading in his old landau, which the coach-maker valued at just £12. This was far from Fitzwalter’s only vehicle. A few years earlier, he had treated himself to a new chariot, which cost him half the price of the landau, and his account books noted other conveyances, including chairs, for use by him, his countess and other members of the household.

As one of London’s elite, Fitzwalter was typical in ensuring that he had the means to get around the capital, and travel to and from his estates, in style. For less wealthy members of society there were hackney carriages, stage coaches and post-chaises, while plenty of those engaged in trade had a variety of carts and wagons to help them with their businesses.

What all of this meant, though, was that the streets of London and other towns and cities were often crowded and filthy. One commentator, William King, described how London was ‘pestered with Hackney Coaches and insolent carmen’ and equated the whole effect to ‘Hell upon earth’. It was not just the hackney carriages charging along the streets that made the place unnerving. There was also the resulting pollution. The horses left mounds of excrement, while the vehicles cast mud, ordure and ‘beer-froth’ onto the unwary foot-traveller walking beside the road. For a pedestrian like the poet John Gay, who described the experience of trudging the streets of London in his poetic series Trivia (1716) the place could be both thrilling and disturbing in equal measure. [Brant and Whyman, 2, 90]

Increased numbers of vehicles, unsurprisingly, resulted in traffic jams. In the 1750s, Joseph Massie noted that the area around Charing Cross in London became particularly bad when Parliament was sitting and during the corresponding legal terms in the courts:

‘Persons of high Rank are frequently seen closely hemm’d in, and imprisoned in their Coaches, by Stops, for a considerable Time…’

Cockayne, 179

This kind of gridlock was particularly unwelcome to members of Parliament attempting to make their way into the palace of Westminster. The area around New Palace Yard seems to have been particularly prone to jams, making it hard for Lords and MPs to make their way through and into the palace complex. It is thus no great surprise that keeping the ways around the palace clear was something that preoccupied the members with some regularity.

At the beginning of each new session of Parliament, both Houses turned their attentions briefly to standard orders before getting down to debating the monarch’s speech. Most importantly, it was a way of asserting their independence, but it also enabled them to ensure that recurrent nuisances were dealt with.

For the Lords, one of their first pieces of business, once the monarch’s speech had been attended to, was the renewal of the order for preventing ‘Stoppages in the Streets’. The repeated line was that there were so many hackney carriages and other vehicles cluttering up the areas around Westminster making it hard for Lords to fight their way into their chamber. There seems to have been no particular concern about the ordure that must have been a feature of life as the horses did their business waiting for their next round. The problem was one of convenience, rather than environment.

Sometimes, the Lords felt the need to repeat the command. On 30 July 1715 the standard order was once more laid before the House as it was felt that it had been insufficiently policed.

A Complaint being made to the House, “That, notwithstanding the Order of the Twenty-first of March last, for preventing any Obstruction in the Streets and Passages between Whitehall and The Old Palace Yard, Westminster, by Coaches, Carriages, Carts, or Drays, from Eleven of the Clock in the Forenoon to Three of the Clock in the Afternoon of the same Day, during the Sitting of this Parliament; yet frequent Stoppages happen in the said Streets and Passages, to the great Inconveniency of the Lords and others in coming to the House.

Journals of the House of Lords, volume XX

As the usual arrangements, preventing traffic from piling into the area around Parliament between 11am and 3pm, had proved inadequate, it was determined to extend the hours of exclusion to four in the afternoon. During this time ‘no empty Hackney Coaches’ were to be allowed to idle in Old Palace Yard, their drivers clearly used to loitering in the hopes of picking up a fare. The Lords did not leave it there. They also summoned the High Bailiff of Westminster to attend to explain why their previous order had not been ‘better observed’.

The fact that this remained a problem is reflected in the fact that the same order continued to be trotted out at the beginning of each session. On 10 January 1765, for example, the Lords were informed as usual ‘That there is such an Interruption, by Hackney Coaches, Carts, and Drays, in the Streets and Passages leading to this House, that the Lords and others are frequently hindered from coming thereto.’ Now the orders were made out for no traffic to be allowed to linger in the restricted zone between noon and five in the afternoon. Old Palace Yard was to be more fiercely controlled still, with no carts or drays permitted there between one in the afternoon and an hour after the House rising (which might on occasion be late into the night).

Of course, it was not just Westminster that experienced problems from congestion and from the at times ill-tempered conduct of coachmen hurrying their vehicles around. In the City of London, the Bank of England was wedged into a narrow system of streets where ‘a perpetual conflux of Wheel-Carriages of all kinds’ proved particularly obstructive and got in the way of people going about their business. [Cockayne 174] While efforts were made to redirect traffic away from customary fairs and markets, the conditions for London’s pedestrians remained trying for much of the period as the weight of traffic continued to increase. The solution, according to Gay, was to embrace pedestrianism, armed with a trusty walking stick:

If the strong cane support thy walking hand,
Chairmen no longer shall the wall command;
E’en sturdy car-men shall thy nod obey,
And rattling coaches stop to make thee way…

John Gay, Trivia (1716)

RDEE

Further Reading:

Emily Cockayne, Hubbub: Filth, Noise and Stench in England (2007)
Walking the Streets of Eighteenth-Century London: John Gay’s Trivia (1716), ed. Clare Brant and Susan Whyman (2007)
The Account Books of Benjamin Mildmay, Earl Fitzwalter, ed. A.C. Edwards (1977)