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!

But tipping is fraught with micro-politics! For some people, it is only viewed as necessary if the provider of the service has gone above and beyond what might be seen as their usual duties. To them it’s a discretionary ‘thank you’ – something that tells the server they’ve done an extra good job. 

For others though it’s a necessity. In America, tipping is pretty much obligatory, and it can come as a shock to the uninitiated to have 20% automatically added to the bill, whether service or food have been good or bad. Putting service charges on a bill is rapidly becoming the rule rather than the exception. Debating or, even worse, withdrawing the tip opens up a whole raft of potential awkwardness.

And what about other ‘extras’ that are added to a bill without our knowledge or consent? Go to a café in Italy, for example, and you might think the basket of breads and dish of oil placed in front of you when you sit down is a nice treat from the owners, a free welcome gift to get you settled…until you see the ‘coperto’ or ‘cover charge’ on your bill!

All this might seem like a modern problem, but the unwarranted service charge actually goes back a long way. Travellers regularly complained about the variety of levies that were imposed on them for things they neither needed nor asked for.

In 1849, a disgruntled traveller called William Freckleton (possibly not his real name!) wrote to the Weekly Vindicator, complaining about just this situation. For Freckleton, the cause of all evils in travel was nothing to do with health or the journey but instead having to pay tips to a veritable army of chancers! His solution, and the purpose of his letter was simple: travellers should be advised to pay nothing but the fare for the journey and the cost of the room!

What had elicited his wrath? Freckleton arrived after a long journey to a posh hotel “denominated either Royal or Imperial of course”. He had tea and went to bed, carrying in his hands his own dirty boots in which he had walked all the day. On receiving his bill from the maid the next morning he was dismayed to see two entries that he did not recognise: sixpence for ‘maid’ and ninepence for ‘boots and waiter’. 

Incensed, Freckleton pointed out that his boots had not been cleaned, and had not left his sight. “As to a waiter, I saw none”. A stand-off ensued, and the maid threatened to call the police, at which he retorted that he would save her the trouble and fetch a constable to arrest her and the hotel owner for trying to obtain money under false pretences. He left the hotel in high dudgeon, carrying his boots and trunk, and with the words “stingy rascal” ringing in his ears from the offended maid.

He did, however, have some sympathy for the need for individuals to try and supplement their meagre income. Noting an apparently common practice of making hotel servants buy their jobs (in one case he cited a head chambermaid in a large hotel who had paid £200 for the privilege of the post – a substantial sum) to deter them from their ‘fleecing avocations’…in other words to stop them from trying to make a living from spurious tips!

(Wellcome Images)

But Freckleton’s experience wasn’t unusual. Even from the eighteenth century travellers regularly complained about “idle hordes” who congregated around inns and coaches, looking to make a quick sixpence by claiming to provide some or other spurious services. The arrival of railways created a whole raft of new opportunities for dubious luggage-carriers and carters, hostlers, shoe-shiners and guides. Amongst the things that stagecoach travellers were expected to cough up extra for were porters, waiters, provision of candles and sometimes even local levies to help the poor. As a great post on the ‘Wicked William’ blog points out, inns and hotels were akin to motorway service stations, charging overblown prices for low quality food. There were also taxes and toll roads to pay for which again added to the basic costs.

So tipping – and service charges – are nothing new. The history of added extras is a long one, and travellers and strangers have always been seen as easy pickings!

So, please do come and have a look, perhaps give me a like or a follow, and I pledge to bring the spirit of the blog to the small screen! And also please be kind to a middle-aged, alopecia-ridden bloke with one eyebrow left!

The BBC’s offering was Noel Edmonds’ Multi-Coloured Swapshop. Part of its appeal was the swap format. Children could call in to the show offering one or more of their own toys or possessions together with what they hoped to get in return. If they were lucky this might appear on screen or even be read out by Noel, and the swap might be arranged through the programme. The best swaps made during the show even made it on to a top-ten board. In addition to the call-in was the ‘Swaporama’ where an outside broadcast team visited a different town each week, and swaps could be made live and in person.

In many respects Swapshop looks like an early example of contemporary trends towards freecycling. Today there are many exchange websites offering the chance to offload unwanted items, upcycle, or declutter, without the involvement of money. In fact, though, it was part of a much longer history of exchange.  Advertisements seeking trades for objects have been around for a very long time…and, despite what you might think, the Victorians in particular seem to have been vigorous swappers(!).

What was the process for initiating the swap? Advertisements placed in the advertising sections of newspapers were one option. Many newspapers, such as The London Journal, had specific ‘Our Exchange’ sections, ‘Intended for genuine exchanges only without charge’. Even a quick survey through the pages of these advertisements offers a fascinating insight into the concept of exchange, ideas about value, and the sorts of goods deemed worthy to swap. 

In many cases, the choice of goods for exchange – and indeed the disparity in value – might not seem too enticing to modern eyes. A typical example from 1883 included an ad from Edwin Grist in which he offered ‘an old man’s bald wig and old woman’s brown wig, both as good as new’ in exchange for which he wanted ‘a good old violin and bow’. A ‘Mrs Nation’ offered a selection of ‘full grown buck and doe rabbits in exchange for any musical instrument’. Many of the requests for exchange were indeed for mundane items, of low value. Dr Farrow of Limerick hoped to exchange his ‘Acme’ opera glasses for some books; Miss Tucker of Winterbourne had her heart set on finding the sheet music for songs including ‘Her Bright Smile Haunts Me Still’ and ‘The Miller and the Maid’ for which she was prepared to offer three songs in return.

For ladies, The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine, published by Samuel Beeton (husband of Isabella, the eponymous ‘Mrs Beeton’) included a column called the ‘Englishwoman’s Exchange’. Desirable items for women commonly included domestic equipment, clothing and books. In 1867, ‘Aggie’ wished for a ‘new Vowel A washing machine in exchange for a good sewing machine’. Others, like ‘Helen’ hoped for a ‘Grebe muff’ in exchange for a thick corded silk Zuave’, whilst ‘A’ in the the Women’s Penny Paper in 1889 sought a teapot in exchange for her ‘Gothic pattern cruet’. Talia Schaffer suggests that anonymous advertisements offered women the chance to alleviate the potential shame of selling off treasured items…or maybe unwanted presents.

It was children, however, and perhaps especially boys, who seem to have been the main source of advertisements for exchange, made easier by the growing numbers of magazines and journals for both boys and girls, which often included space for swap requests.  Some, like the New Boy’s Paper included a regular ‘Our Boy’s Exchange and Mart’ section, allowing readers to offer their wares. There was a financial risk though. Advertisements here were charged at threepence per thirty words, with a penny for every five thereafter. If no swap was involved, and the advertisement was for a straight sale, the cost rose to threepence for only ten words.

There were often strict rules to be adhered to. Every Boy’s Magazine in 1869 included a list of regulations, including a limit of four lines, removal of names, and the strict instruction that the column was for exchanges only…”AND ON NO ACCOUNT FOR MONEY”

Requests ranged from the desirable to the downright dangerous. In 1870 Roy Gow asked for a highland kilt and sporran in exchange for a stamp collection. ‘W.W.’ of Paddington wanted to exchange his collection of second hand books…but not from just anybody, since ‘persons living in the country need not apply’. For postage stamps or money, however, Howard Whippell of Somerset would not only hand over his treasured copy of Last of the Mohicans but would even throw in his pistol! Guns and weapons were indeed a common theme. On one single page of the Young Englishmen’s Journal in 1864 were offers to exchange a ‘single barreled gun for a good concertina’, a ‘pair of dumb bells, nearly new, for a broadsword’(!), and eight shillings’ worth of books for boxing gloves.

So apparently popular were these types of advertisements that they were sometimes satirized. Comic publications such as Funny Folks sent up the phenomenon with their own parodies. In one ‘A gentleman going abroad’ would ‘sacrifice his 50-guinea pianoforte (overstrung and considerably trichord) for a ten pound note’. Interested parties were invited to apply to C. Sharp, Bogus Lodge, Hookit-by-the Sea!

Some of the swaps, though, were perhaps doomed by their own narrowness. In 1869, ‘M.R’s advertisement relied on finding someone who not only had a ‘birdcage capable of holding twenty canaries’ that they no longer needed, but also one whose heart’s desire was ‘a very handsome piece of double Berlin wool work’. How long did poor M.R. have to wait before her parlour rang with the sound of singing canaries?

The motivations for travel have certainly shifted through time. It is perhaps easy to assume that travel was limited before the eighteenth century but, in fact, people were traversing land and sea for a wide variety of reasons. Long voyages were a feature for naval and commercial sailors, emigrants, missionaries and others. As roads and transport technologies improved through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the processes of travel gradually began to improve, and travel for leisure started to become possible for more people. 

‘The principal design of a Traveller ought to be to improve himself by every thing he finds amongst foreigners, either in their sciences or customs’. So wrote John Toland in his 1705 ‘Reflexions on Travel’. Many early modern writers saw the potential benefits of travel in terms of education and broadening experience. In the early modern period, for example, one of the key reasons for travel was as a form of intelligence gathering. Young men were encouraged to visit other countries as a form of education, but equally to gather potentially valuable information about governments, politics and defence, as well as potential resources.

A second important consideration was the broadening of the mind. For Francis Bacon, travel in the ‘younger sort’ was part of their education whilst for ‘the elder’ it was a ‘part of experience’. In one of his ‘Discourses for Gentlemen’ the writer (and former Parliamentarian colonel) Edward Leigh considered both the pros and cons of travel. Simply reading about other places, he argued, was no substitute for going and seeing. ‘There is no map like the view of a country [and] one journey will shew a man more than any description can’. Sir Philip Sidney made a similar argument in 1633, noting that whilst ‘sedentary travell’ – in other words sitting at home and learning about the world through maps and books – was a useful and diverting pastime, it was no substitute for experience. 

Health too was often at the heart of debates about travel, and early modern physicians were certainly divided on whether people should head out into the wide blue yonder or instead say safely at home. There were certainly some who viewed travel as a beneficial activity as part of a broader regimen of health. In 1558, William Bullein’s Government of Health put ‘temperate travel’, along with ‘moderate diet’ and ‘good ayr in swete fields’ as one of the ‘chief medicines’. 

Sometimes travel, and a change of climate, was argued to be healthy and restorative. Sufferers of coughs and catarrhs, suggested the physician Peter Paxton, would be ‘perfectly delivered from them by travelling to warmer regions’. In 1709 Frederick Hofman in 1709, suggested that travel preserved health and led to ‘tranquility of the mind’, noting that travelling for the sake of health and been common since ancient times. Others noted that travel and ‘Foreign air’ was presumed to purify the brain and lungs.

If travel could provide ease and relief from illness, the hardships of long journeys could also serve to ‘harden’ the body. In his advice manual to young travellers, Thomas Neale argued that the chief reason for travel, other than experience, was the “hardning of the bodies faculties for the bettering of gifts to the mind”. Exposure to a wide variety of different environments, from high mountains to “scorching desarts” would render the traveller’s body more durable, in turn “bettering the inward parts”. Nevertheless, Neale criticised young “brain sicke” travellers who skipped from place to place, never taking time to truly immerse themselves in a place, and merely indulging their passions. This could only lead to the ‘overthrow of their health’! 

Travel, when undertaken by physicians, was also argued to be beneficial to the health of patients, since it provided the doctor with invaluable experience of different bodies, climates, environments, diseases and remedies Physicians, such as Leonardo Fioravanti, used their own travels to stress their skills and experience. Remarking on the breadth of his knowledge, Fioravanti noted that he ‘judged it to be necessary to travell, and to goe unto farre places to seek out learning and knowledge, and not to hope or look for it, sitting at home idlely. I prepared my self therefore to my journy, and with long travell and labour have searched out, and learned those things, which for Christian love sake I can no longer keep silent’.’

There were, then, a wide variety of reasons why travel was encouraged in the early modern period. And, just as today, the supposed positive benefits included expanding the mind, refreshing sagging spirits through new experiences, the comfort and restorative effect of warmer climes…and even more simply the pleasure of the new.

With summer coming, thoughts might well be turning to the next trip. In the words of  Peter Pan, “Would you like to have an adventure now or have your tea first?”!

I was recently reading the The Juvenile Tourist: or Excursions Through Various Parts of the Island of Great Britain, published by John Evans in 1805. Written as letters to a prospective young traveller, it contains descriptions of counties and towns in England and Wales, together with recommendations for tourists for things to see or do. Leafing through the first section detailing departure from London, a particular reference caught my eye. 

The passage began with a situation familiar to any traveller of this period – a change of horses. Journeys by coach or on horseback were necessarily done in stages. Coaches travelled over fixed distances between two points – usually inns – at which point the horses would be changed. Mounting his new horse, the writer soon continued his journey, heading out on Hounslow Heath. Things quickly took a dark turn though. After pausing at a wooden monument ‘marked with a bloody hand and knife’ marking the spot where a local man who had cut the throats of his wife and child had been buried with a stake through his heart, he moved on to another, equally chilling, relic. 

“We still hear not unfrequently of robberies in [this] quarter during the winter season of the year; a recent proof of which is exhibited by a new gibbet, erected not far from Belfont, on which we saw suspended the body of Haines, generally known by the designation of the Wounded Highwayman…”

Who, then, was this mysterious Haines? The problem is that there are potentially many highwaymen Haineses. These include a notable fellow highwayman of the famous Dick Turpin gang, and also one William Haines, sentenced to death in 1783 for highway robbery in Acton, robbing the assistant postmaster of Hackney as he walked home alone through country roads on a dark, foggy December night. While criminal bodies could admittedly be left in gibbets for twenty years or more, becoming more macabre as the years passed and bits and pieces fell off them, 22 years before Evans’ description seemed unlikely. 

Professor Sarah Tarlow’s excellent chapter on the afterlife of gibbets (https://rdcu.be/dyItn), however, proved the key to unlocking the identity of the mysterious highwayman. As she reveals, the erection of a gibbet containing Haines’ remains on Hounslow Heath provoked controversy in newspapers, frightened travellers, caused the royal family to avoid the road, and even caused issues when it blew into the garden of a nearby house in a storm. (Anyone who has experienced a neighbour’s trampoline blowing into their garden in a storm should be grateful that it was just this and not a mouldy criminal in a cage!).

The Juvenile Tourist corroborates this, and adds some extra colour. From his description, for example, it is not hard to see how the spectacle of the rotting highwayman might upset delicate constitutions. “He was apparently a large, tall man; his irons were so constructed that his arms hung at some little distance from his body, by which means the hideous sight was rendered more terrific and impressive”.

Clearly no fan of the practice, he noted that Hounslow Heath had once been ‘disgraced with a long range of gibbets’, which had only been removed at the behest of the royal family, fed up with seeing them as they journeyed to and from Windsor. Further Evans noted that the dismal sight of Haines’ body “suggested with full force the horrible idea of a fellow creature deprived of the honours of sepulture” (i.e. burial and memorial) and instead left to rot “to the grinning scorn of public infamy”.

Things start to become clearer from the Old Bailey records, which have lengthy details of John Haines’ trial, and how he ended up in an iron cage by the roadside.  In 1799, Haines and an accomplice, armed with ‘certain pistols loaded with leaden bullets’ held up what they thought was a passenger coach. Unfortunately for them it in fact contained two Bow Street officers, and one other man, acting on reports of robberies in the area, and keen to trap a criminal. The trial report suggests that John Haines clearly played his role to the full, wearing a thick brown coat with a hat pulled low, having a distinctive horse and also scoring highly on his highwaymanly patter: witnesses attested to hearing him shout ‘damn your eyes, you bugger, stop and give me your money’!

But what of his nickname, ‘the wounded highwaymen’? A report in the Northampton Mercury provides the last piece of the puzzle. During the robbery there was in fact an exchange of fire. While most of the robbers’ bullets went through the back of the coach seats, one of the officers believed that he “had hit his man”. This was later proved true when witnesses stated that Haines returned to an inn later that night, saying that he had been wounded.  When Haines was later arrested  “A surgeon described him to have had one ball pass through his shoulder; he had extracted one and he believed there were more in his body”. The ‘wounded highwayman’ was clearly aptly named.

Whoever, he was, and whatever he did, though, there is undoubtedly something disquieting about the image of the desiccated body of the highwayman, the metal locks and hinges of the iron gibbet screaking, and the skirts of his tattered greatcoat waving in the wind!

Today, ‘things’ are incredibly important both before and during our travels, and we are usually accompanied by a wealth of ‘stuff’. First there is the right luggage, whether finding bags small enough to qualify as ‘carry on’ for the plane, or cases large enough to contain all the necessaries for two weeks in the sun. Then come decisions about clothes: do we take a bare minimum, or instead give ourselves lots of choices? Do we have the right clothes for the right weather or environment? (Authorities in Naples are fed up of people trying to walk up Mount Vesuvius in Crocs!) These types of decisions about what, and how much, to take were all ones that were faced by travellers over the past three centuries.

But perhaps the other most common type of products that accompany us on journeys are those related to health and hygiene. Commonly travellers will take some form of medicines, cosmetics or personal grooming products, sun cream, insect repellent, deodorant …the list goes on and the market for these kinds of products is massive. And if you’re anything like me, this often takes up more space than the clothes!

It’s perhaps easy to assume that these type of health/cosmetic travel goods are a feature of modern tourism, but in fact they have a much longer history.  I’ve long been interested in the history and advertising of products, and my project on the history of facial hair explored the world of shaving products in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Another big strand of my work looked at the early modern medical marketplace and the ways in which all manner of remedies and preparations were touted as the universal cure for all ills. By the nineteenth century, of course, newspapers were stuffed full of advertisements for products, with many makers and sellers starting to target the growing numbers of British travellers and tourists heading off to foreign climes.

Travelling cases, for example, containing everything necessary to attend to appearance on a journey had been available since the eighteenth century. In 1780 the razor maker Daniel Rigge advertised his ‘Travelling cases and leather pouches, which contain the whole apparatus for shaving’ as well as bottles and space for other items of personal grooming. As tourism expanded, so did the range and design of these types of travel ‘furniture’. One notable maker was the firm of Mechi and Sons in Cornhill, London. ‘Mechi’s Dressing Cases’ for travellers contained tooth and nail brushes, soap and other requisites and were, according to the advertisement, an ‘invaluable acquisition’ for the ‘steam boat or travelling companion’. 

Soaps were particularly popular, offering tourists something familiar from home with which to perform their daily ablutions. In 1830 James Atkinson’s Almond Soap was particularly noted as a useful accoutrement for travellers, as well as the army and navy, and sold in ‘neat portable pots’ for ease of carriage. 

Health was another common topic, offering solutions for various problems. ‘Lamplough’s Effervescing Pyretic Saline’ offered to replenish the vital salts lost from ‘exciting causes’ which included excessive heat or tiredness. ‘Dr Locock’s cosmetic’ was a refreshing cream that could be used to treat sunburn or tan, whilst his asthmatic customers could also treat themselves to some of his ‘pulmonic wafers’ which promised relief in ten minutes for those suffering in cold climates or inclement weather. Even food was not neglected. Nineteenth century tourists could purchase ‘Mellin’s Food Biscuits’, recommended particularly for travellers who often require a sustaining and nutritious food, that can be easily digested and assimilated’.

It is interesting to note, though, how some manufacturers began to tailor the advertisements of existing products towards travellers, in turn ascribing new attributes to them specifically related to the rigours of travelling. 

One useful example of this was Rowlands’ ‘Kalydor’. Alexander Rowlands and his son established a perfumery business in London in the late eighteenth century, which expanded through the nineteenth. Rowlands specialised in cosmetic products and undertook something like the modern advertising campaigns across various newspapers, extolling the many and various attributes of their wares. 

‘Kalydor’ was a skin and beauty cream that became their flagship product. In early advertisements in the 1820s ‘Kalydor’ was touted as a refreshing cosmetic compound, ‘imparting a glow of youthful beauty’ on the cheeks of women, ‘keeping their complexions clear and lovely’ whilst also soothing and protecting men’s faces after shaving ‘leaving a softness not to be described’. A decade later, further attributes included protection against wind and damp. 

By the 1860s, however, Rowlands had hitched a ride on the growing numbers of specialist travel advice literature and magazines, adding their by-now-familiar products to the back pages of these publications. By this time Kalydor had become the traveller’s best friend: 

‘Tourists and Travellers, visitors to the seaside, and others exposed to the scorching rays of the sun and heated particles of dust, will find Rowland’s Kalydor a most refreshing preparation…dispelling the cloud of languor and relaxation, allaying all heat and irritability and immediately affording a pleasing sensation’. 

Not only that, adverts often also included Rowland’s ‘Macassar Oil’ (useful in preventing hair drying out and falling off in the sun) and ‘Odonto’ – imparting a ‘graceful purity and fragrance’ to the teeth!

Travellers were obviously a lucrative market. The soapmaker Gibbs turned on the charm in their advertisement, stating that ‘The refined habits of English travellers render a COMPLETE TOILET EQUIPMENT one of the first essentials of the tourist’. Putting their existing ‘Naples Soap’ into an elastic case (keeping the case shut to prevent soggy soap scum from leaking out into the portmanteau), they introduced their new innovation, the ‘Naples Travelling Tablet’.

These are just some of the many products that I’ll be looking into in more detail, especially for what they can reveal about preparations, and what the supposed risks and dangers of travel were. As thoughts begin to turn to summer, many of us will soon be putting ourselves in the shoes of past travellers, and making those awkward decisions about what to take.

Before the broadening of travel in the 18^th century, many journeys were relatively short, and local. As a great deal of work has shown in recent years, the early modern population was surprisingly mobile. People travelled from parish to parish, and from rural to urban areas as they visited market towns to buy and sell goods. Perhaps the majority of journeys were taken on foot, on horseback or on a cart or, for those with means, in small carriages. By the later eighteenth century, post carriages were also available to private passengers.

But travel of any kind was a risky business. Roads were proverbially poor, often deeply rutted in summer and reduced to a quagmire in winter, making journeys by foot, or by cart or carriage, uncomfortable at best. Falls from horses were common, leading to injury or death, and even a long time in the saddle could be painful. Travel by sea, even over relatively short distances, was fraught with danger, not only from the vagaries of the weather, but also the condition and seaworthiness of the vessel. Such was the discomfort caused by sea travel that sickness on the first journey by sea was regarded as almost inevitable, only abating once the body had become accustomed to the motion of the waves.  With all this in mind, then, what options for treatment could be found in early modern remedy culture?

Travelling of any kind was clearly seen as a tiring and enervating process, and something to which the body needed time to adjust to. Some hints of this process can be found in travel-related terms in dictionaries. The term ‘travel-tainted’ was used by Shakespeare in Henry IV, and was defined by Samuel Johnson as one who was ‘harrassed or fatigued with travel’. To be ‘unwayed’ was to be unused to travel, as opposed to a ‘wayfaring man’ who, according to John Kersey’s 1658 dictionary, was one ‘accustomed to travel in the roads’. The use of the word ‘accustomed’ suggests again a process of acclimatisation. The advice of the Sick Man’s Jewel in 1674 was that ‘such that are weary by travel or labour’ should chew tobacco in the evening, whilst Leonardo Fioravanti recommended the juice of Rose Solis to those ‘who are wearied with travell’.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, a variety of remedies can be found to treat sore feet. Robert Turner’s, Botanologia the Brittish physician, or, the nature and vertues of English plants advocated anointing feet with the herbs ‘ladies bedstraw or gallium’ before they undertook a journey. There was even a term for this: to ‘surbate’ was to ‘batter the feet with long travel’! Turner noted that the herb mugwort ‘is excellent good to bathe the surbated Feet of Footmen and Lackies in hot weather’, admirably giving some consideration to footsore servants.

For anyone suffering from pain and discomfort caused travelling by horseback, some potential relief could be found. Andrew Boorde’s 1587, The breuiarie of health contained a remedy for galling or chafing caused by ‘riding upon an evill horse in a naughtie saddle’. His suggestion was to ‘rub, anoint or grease the place aggrieved’ with a tallow candle…perhaps not a situation you would wish to walk in on! If the unfortunate chafed traveller possessed a pair of particularly large buttocks, Boorde suggested that rubbing between the cheeks with olive oil might be a useful expedient. 

It is harder to trace specific conditions relating to coach travel, but the health dangers of being squashed into a confined space, breathing in the noisome air and odours of fellow passengers, whilst simultaneously being joggled, bumped and bounced around for hours, was a well-known hazard – particularly into the eighteenth century. The term ‘coach sick’ appears occasionally and was regarded as occurring from the ‘swimmings in the head’ that could accompany violent motion. Some physicians advocated opening the windows to constantly refresh the air; others suggested opium!

Whilst sea travel was less common outside naval and commercial purposes, medical authors did offer some suggestions for the alleviation of sea sickness. In his 1667 Treasures of Physick, John Tanner viewed sea travel as one of the key ‘external’ causes of vomiting and advocated a range of treatments including laudanum, vegetable and herbal oils and syrups.  As John Moyle noted, in his 1684 Abstract of sea chirurgery, it was not uncommon for the abject misery of constant puking to be accompanied by the discomfort of constipation: he claimed to have ‘known some who in a whole week together have not gone to stool’. Moyle’s solution for those who were ‘sea sick and vomit much’ was a gentle purge or, failing that, a ‘clyster’, or enema.

As ever in the early modern medical marketplace, where there was demand there was likely a crafty quack chasing a fast shilling. Travel-related conditions were common amongst the efficacy puffs for proprietary pills and medicines. In 1670 the ‘English Pills for the Scurvy’ claimed to be extremely useful for sea travellers, standing them ‘in great stead in all Sea-sicknesses’, as well as ‘sickly Climates or Seasons; Calentures, Fevers, Fluxes, Poysons, Agues, Surfeits, and the like Scorbutick Diseases, which so commonly afflict such as go to Sea’. John Archer’s ‘Chymical Drops’ were of ‘great use to travellers’ in curing sickness, whilst ‘he that useth [John Headrich’s Traveller’s Salt] on the Sea Vomits not’. There are many more similar examples, and plenty more still to find. 

Health and medicine were, as they still are, then, central to travel. Even the few examples given here are revealing about the supposed effects that travel was seen to have on the body, along with the approaches taken to mitigate them. I am very much looking forward to delving more deeply into the medical history of the travelling body.  

From the early modern period, domestic and international travel were beginning to increase due to many factors including commercial expansion and the Atlantic economy, religion and mission work, military and diplomacy, as well as technological developments and the growth of travel infrastructure. For the first time in history, large numbers of travellers were beginning to explore both their own countries and wider world, encountering new countries, environments, and peoples.

Unlike today, when it’s entirely possible to have breakfast in London, lunch in Milan and be back at home in time for supper, travel in the early modern period was no easy undertaking. More than this, it was widely acknowledged to be inherently dangerous. What, then, were the perceived risks? Even a brief survey tells us a lot about how travel was regarded in health terms.

First was the risk of accident or death on the journey. In the seventeenth century even relatively short distances on horseback or in a carriage carried dangers. Falls from horses were common, causing injury or even death. As Roy Porter noted, when the wife of Justinian Paget was thrown from her horse in October 1638,  it was said to be the ‘cause of all her future sickness’. In Monmouthshire in 1657, one Francis Bradford was killed as his horse bolted, throwing him over its neck with his feet caught in the stirrups. ‘His wyfe was with hym and she presentlie alighted from her horse and cryed for helpe’. Many drownings occurred as people tried to cross rivers on horseback and fell in or were swept away. 

Travel by sea, even around local coasts, carried its own obvious risks of storm and wreck. So common and widely acknowledged were the vagaries of sea travel that a common reason for making a will in the early modern period was just before embarking on a voyage. The language used in these formulations is telling. In 1638, Edward Harthorpe, Richard Veesey, Michael March and Thomas Huckleton, ‘with divers others’, made their will, ‘being bound to take a voyage to Canady (sic) in America, w(hi)ch being a daingerous voyage, and they putting theire lives to hazard therein, did consider their mortalitie’.

This was a common theme, and the prospect of the impending journey, and the not-unreasonable assumption that they might not return, led many to consider putting their affairs in order. This anxiety was neatly articulated by Thomas Youngs in 1663, ‘Being bound upon a voyage to sea, and calling to remembrance the uncertain state of this transitory life, and that all fleshe must yielde undo death…’. One intent on the journey, travellers wanted to be prepared in body and soul.

Once abroad, too travellers were at the mercy of a bevy of dangers, from unfamiliar territories and extreme landscapes to harsh weather and climate, their safety contingent on the quality of their transport and the reliability of their guides. In 1793 Useful Instructions for Travellers contained chapters advising travellers as to how to deal with the many and various dangers to life and health that they might face. These included the necessity to frequently open carriage windows to refresh the air, the need to take a small medicine chest to attend to wounds (including falls from horseback), and various preparations to treat the haemorrhoids that often accompanied long periods in a sitting position.

Knowledge of the conditions, climates and environments of intended destinations was also key. Ideally, a traveller should be able to ‘cure himself of some distempers’, be wary of the change of air and the hazards of the journey, and to take their own store of medicines in case they were hard to procure once abroad.

But some even considered the whole process of travel itself to be potentially harmful to the body. Even in the sixteenth century, ‘The Hospitall for the Diseased, wherein are to bee founde moste excellent and approued medicines’ included a list of things considered bad for the heart. As well as what the author viewed as deadly vegetables such as beans, peas and leeks, further heart problems might be caused by ‘too much travell’, or even ‘drink[ing] cold water after travell’. Similarly, in a section about things that are ‘ill for the brain, A.T.’s 1596 A.T., A rich store-house or treasury for the diseased  noted “Overmuch heate in Trauaylinge”.

Scurvy was another condition firmly linked to travel. In 1609, Petrus Pomarius’, Enchiridion medicum viewed scurvy as an occupational hazard for ‘those that trauell by sea, by long voyages; and our fishers that travel to the Newfound-lands’. As well as the perils of the long journey, the problems could arise due to the ‘stincking waters, & especially in an hot aire’ that travellers were exposed to. Climate – and particularly heat – was considered risky. In the 1793 Etmullerus abridg’d: or, a compleat system of the theory and practice of physic, Michael Etmuller stated that travelling in a hot climate could cause wakefulness and perturbation of the mind.

Even ‘foreign’ food and drink could be risky. Thomas Tryon’s Miscellania (1696) noted the dangers of ‘intemperance’ and of misjudging the effects of climate upon the body in regard to drinking alchohol. According to Tryon, many English travellers were ‘much Distemper’d, and many die when they Travel into the West and East Indies, because they take wrong measures, continuing the same disorder and intemperance as they did in their own Country’.

Travel, then, was a risky business, and one that individuals would not have undertaken lightly. There were a range of factors to consider, from basic risks of life and death to the dangers of particular conditions and climates, food and illness. 

In the seventeenth century the numbers of travellers embarking on long journeys, and to other countries, was still relatively small. Whilst recent work has shown that early modern people were relatively mobile, often travelling from the countryside to market towns to buy goods, for example, and even sometimes further afield, international travel was generally undertaken by a much smaller group including elites, merchants and traders, diplomats, and the military. 

In the eighteenth century, however, the growing popularity of the Grand Tour saw travel to other countries become easier, more accessible, and increasingly desirable. Grand Tourists were a new breed of traveller. Rather than for business, this was travel for pleasure, to be immersed in other cultures, see historic sights, encounter new people…and shop for souvenirs. Since the costs were still beyond the reach of many, this was essentially a road trip for elites, with many destinations across Europe becoming social hubs for young, wealthy British travellers. 

Our perhaps romantic idea of the Grand Tour, however, of Grand Tourists sallying forth to evocative Roman ruins or journeying in carriages through the vertiginous, snowy passes of the Alps, overlooks what must have been a logistical and organisational challenge. Today it’s possible to decide one morning to book a flight to a European capital, arrive in time for lunch and a bit of shopping, and be back home for tea! Booking longer holidays, including hotels, meals and transfers is a matter of a few clicks of the mouse button. Once abroad any information or help we need, including instant translations, are readily available on our phones. In the eighteenth century, travel companies did not yet exist, communication across long distances could take days, and your experience along the journey, and at your destination, depended much on who you knew, and what could be arranged in advance. 

Recently, I’ve started to become interested in the bit ‘before’ people travelled in this period. How did people prepare for their potentially arduous journeys? What did they take with them, and how did they decide what would be necessary? As any modern traveller knows, trying to decide what to pack for a week away is complicated enough…but a foreign trip in the eighteenth century could last for months. 

Help was at hand, however, in the growing market for consumer goods for travellers. As with so many other areas of Georgian life, where there was a trend there was a market. The advertising pages of eighteenth-century newspapers give us a good idea of the sorts of things that were available to those about to embark. 

Perhaps one of the first considerations was what to carry everything in? Luckily a range of makers and retailers were beginning to sell travelling cases of all shapes, types and sizes to cater for many different journeys. In 1766 the ‘pocket book maker, stationer and bookseller’ Kearsley of Ludgate Street in London was one of many selling ‘travelling cases’. Nearby, in Leadenhall Street, Nodin and Hould offered officers of the army and navy, and domestic travellers, their range of ‘camp equipage, camp furniture, travelling trunks and cases’, including a light kind for expeditious travelling’. Their advertisement noted that any orders by post would be ‘carefully and expeditiously executed’. As with many other areas of retail too, examples ranged from the utilitarian to the downright posh, with examples made from leather and wood, and sometimes arrayed with ornamental embellishments of gold, silver or pinchbeck – a fashionable and decorative metal alloy. 

Along with cases came a wider range of goods aimed at travellers, which included items for personal grooming and ‘toilette’. As I’ve explored in some of my work, the eighteenth century was something of a golden age for fashioning and refining the body, and instruments for personal grooming were desirable as well as functional. For men, the social importance of the shaved face made portable shaving equipment a vital companion to the traveller. Help was at hand from firms such as Jennings in Cheapside, London, who sold pocket cases for travellers, including a razor and sharpening strop. The perfumer Richard Barnard sold specially contrived cases for brushes, powders and razors ‘in a small compass fit for travelling’. In a sense these were the precursor to modern ‘travel-sized’ toiletries.  Similar travelling ‘etui’ or ‘toilette’ sets for both women and men were available from many sellers and included small, portable instruments such as tweezers, nail nippers, brushes and combs, sewing needles and other useful objects to help travellers attend to their appearance on the fly. 

But sometimes entrepreneurial artisans came up with innovative solutions for uncomfortable or inconvenient travel problems. Some tried to counter the discomfort caused by sitting for long periods on horseback, or in bumpy carriages. The Umbrella maker Mr Clemson of the Strand recommended his ‘oiled linen breeches for travelling’ to, shall we say, ease the passage. Specially made ‘breeches powder’ was ‘clean, preserve and beautify’ but also to freshen up sweaty or smelly trousers after a long journey.  In 1766 one Mr Loop, near the Royal Exchange, defied any barber or wig-maker in the country to equal his ‘hollow cork wigs, waterproof, in the Italian taste, for travellers’. Clearly sitting in a soggy wig, as well as bedraggled clothes, on a rough sea crossing was neither an uncommon nor welcome experience. 

So, just like today, the eighteenth-century traveller faced similar challenges to those of today. So many things to think about, so many situations to plan for, so much to try and fit in the case…so many things to buy before going on holiday!