If there is one form of transport that perhaps typifies the 18th century more than any other, it is a sedan chair.
Recently I have been doing some work on stage coaches, and the experience of what it was actually like to travel in one. This is already turning up some interesting evidence, suggesting that, far from our romantic costume-drama idea of wafting around the countryside in quiet comfort and contemplation, travelling by coach was nothing less than a barrage on the senses. Until recently I didn’t know that there was such a thing as ‘coach sickness’ in the eighteenth century! More posts on that will come soon.
But this has led me to wonder what it was actually like to travel in a sedan chair. On one level it seems like the ultimate luxury for the time. You get into the box, sit down in your comfy padded seat and relax while two hefty guys (probably wearing tricorn hats!) take the strain on the long poles that are mounted on either side. You are trotted along at a gentle pace, and were dropped off conveniently at your destination. Something like a Georgian Uber. But was this really the case?
First we need to get past the ‘Merry Old England’ view of sedan chairs and understand how important they were in eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century urban travel.
Sedan chairs had existed in different parts of the world since antiquity. In Britain, they began to appear as a form of public transport in the seventeenth century. According to the Encyclopaedia Parthensis or Universal Dictionary of 1816 Sedan chairs (described as a ‘covered vehicle for carrying a single person suspended by two poles and born by two men’ were first introduced in London in 1634. Sir Sanders Dunscomb obtained the first licence to use, let and hire a number of them in London.
The point about the licence is important. The use of sedan chairs was heavily regulated throughout the eighteenth century, with strict rules about pricing and location. Under Acts of Parliament, including one in 1800 under George III, operators of sedan chairs – called ‘Chairmen’ – in large towns such as London, Edinburgh and Dublin needed to have a licence from town authorities.
Pricing, of course, varied according to the distance and duration of the journey. The physical effort involved in carrying a (potentially corpulent elite!) person, in a large box, several feet off the ground must have been huge. Inclines and hills, uneven pavements or muddy roads, moving laterally or stopping to avoid obstacles – not to mention the distance – all added to the strain.
The customer expected speed, no matter what the weather or conditions. This was a full-body workout. Try walking up and down the length of your gym carrying a 30kg dumbbell in each hand for 30 mins, wearing heavy clothes and a hat and that might begin to give an idea of the experience.
They certainly suited the urban environment. In crowded city streets they could move around more easily than coaches, possibly even reaching their destinations more quickly. Like modern taxi cabs they were generally single use, from one destination to another, rather than return journeys. But town regulations suggest that they could also be booked by the day to include multiple journeys.
The Glasgow Almanack of 1795 listed prices for common trips across the city. A basic price of sixpence was applied before you even went anywhere. Every mile from the ‘Cross of Glasgow’, for example was charged at two shillings. Prices for specific locations varied from sixpence to two shillings, based on the distance but also perhaps the nature of the roads and hills. A ‘chairman’ was able to charge sixpence for every hour they had to wait for a customer once engaged, and extra fees applied to trips made between 3pm and 11pm.
So sedan chairs were generally used for short journeys…or so I had assumed. One remarkable source I came across by accident suggested that long journeys…indeed very long journeys, were not unknown.
A book published in 1817 titled Paris, Including a Description of the Principal Edifices and Curiosities of that Metropolis, by M. Mercier, recounts a journey made in a sedan chair by the Duchess of Nemours. This was no trot around the landmarks…it was 390 miles, from her home in Neufchatel in Switzerland, to Paris! How was this achieved?
Key to the journey was a regular change of ‘chairmen’! No less than 40 men accompanied her journey, following the sedan chair (presumably very slowly) in a carriage. Each time the pair of men carrying the chair were flagging they would be replaced, and so it went on. Remarkably the account says that, in this manner, they were able to achieve distances of 36 and 45 miles per day.
The remaining question is why? Why would you choose this long, literally plodding, journey of at least 9 days, locked into your little box, watching the scenery pass by very slowly through the side windows, and your poor ‘chairman’ gradually wilting in front of you rather than the comfort of the coach, which would probably do the journey in half the time?
The answer is that the Duchess believed that it was “more safe and pleasant than in a post-chaise (coach) in going up, descending or walking near the edges of the precipices which surround those happy countries”. Maybe it was for her…but almost certainly not for the poor guys carrying her!
What was it actually like to be a passenger in one? I’m in the early stages of the hunt for evidence, but some interesting material is already turning up. For some, the motion of the sedan chair was preferable to that of a coach. The poet and satirist Alexander Pope, for example, preferred the sedan chair. Pope disliked the often-violent motion of coach journeys, not least because he suffered from Gout and physical deformities which made it especially uncomfortable. On one occasion he had himself rowed across the Thames from Twickenham to Ham, still sitting in his sedan chair! Recovering from illness in 1817, Jane Austen wrote that that she had ventured out in a sedan chair, rather than risk a coach.
But there is a sense that even the motion of a sedan chair might be uncomfortable, as it was jolted and bounced around by the carriers. I have been told of an example of a person who was sick in one, but I haven’t been able to find it yet. If I do, I’ll report back!
Dr Alun Withey 