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Last broadcast on Tue, 2 Jun 2009, 15:00 on BBC Radio 4.
Horses in the age of the stagecoach
A listener is keen to find out how horses were organised in the days of the stage coach. Making History consulted Professor Peter Edwards at Roehampton University the author of Horse and Man in Early Modern England. Professor Edwards explained that first stagecoaches came about shortly after the English Civil War and this coincided with the first of the turnpikes (a stretch of what we now know as the A1). However, it is the eighteenth century that is really remembered as the age of both stagecoach and turnpike. Despite the threat of highway robbery, stage coaches were regarded as a safe mode of transport.
Horses could manage about 4 miles an hour, 40 miles a day. Four horses would be used in summer, six often in winter. A stagecoach journey would be timed so that the horses were actually changed at lunchtime, after between 20 and 30 miles and then again in the evening when passengers would spend the night in an inn. The horses would then spend their working lives going backwards and forwards along the same stretch of road, hired in by the company that operated that particular stagecoach route. Professor Edwards has come across very few cases where animals were ill-treated; evidence, he says, of their importance.
Further Reading
Horse and Man in Early Modern England, Peter Edwards. Hambledon Continuum, 2007. ISBN-10: 1852854804 ISBN-13: 978-185285480
Scottish Diaspora
Making History listener Annie Winiecki has always thought of herself as Polish. Her grandfather (see above) served in the Polish army. However, there is a family story that her ancestors were Scottish. Could this really be true she asks?
Making History consulted the writer and broadcaster Billy Kaye, author of The Scottish World: A Journey into the Scottish Diaspora and Professor Tom Devine at the Scottish Centre of Diaspora Studies at the University of Edinburgh, author of Scotland’s Empire. In a report compiled by Andy Cassell they explained that Annie’s family may well have been Scottish because in the seventeenth and eighteenth century before the passage to America had been fully opened up, many people from the east of Scotland did emigrate to Eastern Europe.
Further Reading
The Scottish World: A Journey into the Scottish Diaspora, Billy Kay Mainstream Publishing. 2006 ISBN-10: 1845960211 ISBN-13: 978-1845960216
Scotland’s Empire 1600 – 1815, Tom Devine. Penguin. 2004. ISBN-10: 0140296875
ISBN-13: 978-0140296877
Early Jet Travel
A Making History listener contacted the programme with an early memory of travelling to South Africa by air from London in 1947, a journey which took all of five days! Why so long he asks?
Making History consulted Professor Ian Poll at Cranfield University who explained that the propeller aeroplanes of the 1940’s needed plenty of re-fuelling stops and were unable to fly above the weather (i.e. above 30,000 feet). Therefore they needed to fly routes which afforded them the possibility of taking on fuel and keeping away from any bad weather. For this reason, a journey across Africa was not carried out in a straight line, rather a tortuous zig-zag taking in various air-bases. The cost of such a flight in those days was perhaps similar to a First Class flight today.
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This rather slow air travel was revolutionised by the jet engine and the British de Havilland Comet in particular. Frank Whittle was the pioneering engineer behind the gas turbine, jet engine and much of his work was carried out in the 1930’s. The Second World War was a catalyst to its development but Britain’s aircraft industry was working flat out on more traditional piston engines. The development of the jet engine was therefore handed over to the Americans who had the spare capacity to work on it. However, as early as 1943, the British Cabinet agreed that jet travel would be essential in the post-war reconstruction and the Brabazon Committee set out a plan to develop several military and civil jet aircraft, one being the de Havilland Comet.
The Comet came into service in 1949 and in the early fifties led the field. However, a series of dreadful accidents caused by metal fatigue around its square windows put the Comet programme on hold and allowed the American Boeing corporation to gain a competitive advantage that it held until the arrival of the European Airbus consortium in the 1990’s.
History shaping the future
The EC1 regeneration project in London, part of the New Deal for Communities scheme, is now nearing its completion. As part of its legacy, in an attempt to properly connect local people with the past and help plan for the future, it commissioned Dr David Green of King’s College London to work on a series of oral history projects and audio trails. His report is entitled “Finsbury: Past Present and Future” has just been published.
Vanessa met with David and John Hitchin from the EC1 project to find out just how history is helping plan for the future.
Broadcast
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Tue 2 Jun 200915:00
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