stage-coaches were road vehicles offering public scheduled stage carriage of passengers. London had its hackneys by the mid-1620s, the first stage-coach—to St Albans—was recorded in 1637, and services developed on the radial routes to the capital 1650–1715. Small (four-seat) and expensive, they offered carriage at speed and cost two to three times that by stage wagon. By the late 1750s, the London-based network was largely complete, and services differentiated between ‘flying’ and ‘old’ or ‘slow’ coaches, and in the last quarter of the century suburban short stages developed. Regular services between leading provincial ...