The exact date when Sedan Chairs reached the city of Bath is uncertain but they were certainly a familiar sight by the middle of the 18th Century. The need for a sedan chair service in Bath stemmed from its growing popularity and the restrictions of its cramped site which forced its inhabitants to…
‘croud up the streets to an unseemly and inconvenient narrowness’.
(William Stukeley, ‘Itinerarium Curiosum.’ 1776)
Bath’s tight streets were, as a result, more suited to chair traffic than to horse-drawn vehicles.
Towards the end of the 17th Century there were two forms of portable transport available; one was a specially adapted or constructed chair carried on poles and the other was the box-like Sedan Chair that we are more familiar with.
The earliest form of chair was
“a low seate and with frames round and over your head, and all cover’d inside and out with red bayes a woollen-worsted cloth and a curtaine drawn before of the same which makes it close and warme; then a couple of men with staves takes and carryes you to your lodging and sets you at your bedside where you go to bed and lay and sweate sometyme as you please.”
(Celia Fiennes, ‘The Journeys’ 1702)
Note that these chairs took the passenger not just to their door but even inside the house to your bedchamber. Samuel Pepys with his wife and servants followed the standard procedure on their visit to Bath in 1668, being collected from their rooms one by one at an early hour and then, after soaking in the baths,
‘Carried away, wrapped in a sheet, and in a chair, home; and there one after another thus carried, I staying above two hours in the water, home to bed, sweating for an hour… ‘.
The other form of Chair also seen on the Bath streets was a quite different kind of chair, similar to those in London, ‘to carry the better sort of people in visits, or if sick or infirme’.
These chairs were generally painted black on the outside and upholstered within.
Windows were fitted on three sides, The poles were longer than those of bath chairs and springy enough to impart a slight bounce to the main body of the sedan, where they threaded through metal staples . Passengers entered at the front, but were saved from
having to stoop too low because the sedan’s roof, hinged at the rear, could be lifted.
Once within the chair the passenger was at the mercy of the competence of the Chairmen. A foreign visitor to London in 1725 praised the skill of its chairmen, and their Bath equivalents were probably no worse.
‘…the bearers going so fast that you have some difficulty in keeping up with them on foot. I do not believe that in all Europe better or more dexterous bearers are to be found; all foreigners are surprised at their strength and skill.’
Once on the move the Chairmen continued to dominate the footways, moving along at a brisk pace and expecting precedence from every pedestrian they encountered, who were expected to give way when a chair bore down on them, with shouts of ‘Have care!‘ or ‘By your leave, sir!’.
Initially Chairmen would generally loiter on the streeets within hearing of the cry of ‘Chair! Chair!’ which would sometimes bring half a dozen of them racing from different quarters in competition for a customer, often followed by a riotous quarrel for the fare between those first arriving.
Initially, a score or more of each type of chair may have been in service during the season and by 1707 an Act of Parliament empowered the Bath Corporation to license up to 60 chairs, (London and Westminster were permitted 300). The licensed Bath Chairmen would have worn a uniform, comprising essentially a blue coat or greatcoat, black knee-breeches, white stockings or gaiters, buckled shoes, and large cocked hat.
A further Act of 1720 established stands or ranks in various places where chairs had to wait for fares, rather than standing around randomly and causing an obstruction. Fares and conditions of travel were regulated and by the mid 19th century (just after the Regency era) these were sufficiently common as to be included in the common almanacs of the day.
The Bath and Bristol Almanac of 1835 includes ‘Chairmen’s Fares, as settled by the Magistrates’
- For carrying one person any distance not exceeding 500 yards : 6d
- Above 500 yards and not exceeding 1173 yards : 1s
- Beyond 1173 yards and not exceeding one mile : 1s 6d
- Beyond one measured mile… : 2s
Where hilly or ascending ground was involved the distances were shortened accordingly, a sixpenny fare was only 300 yards if a hill was involved.
In addition, chairmen could be expected to wait for free;
“Any person may detain the Chairmen in every fare without paying for it as follows, viz;-
- in a sixpenny fare : 10 min
- in a twelvepenny fare : 15 min
- in an eightenpenny fare : 20 min….”
Chairmen also kept late hours,
“All fares to be charged double after twelve o’clock at night.’
At the Bath Assembly Rooms in 1848, Sedan chairs were as well regulated as other horse drawn carriages.
“No chairs of any description, under any pretence whatever, to set down, take up, or enter, at either of the carriage doors.”
“All chairmen, conveying company to or from the Rooms, are to observe good order, to remain by their chairs, and to take up their fares in their regular turns as first chairs, and under no other pretence.”
“Sedan chairs to wait, as usual, on the pavement on the Bennett Street side, and the wheel chairs on the Alfred Street side, taking care to leave a space in the centre equal to the breadth of the three doors.
N.B. The police have positive orders strictly to enforce these regulations.”
Note the mention of wheel chairs. By this date wheeled chairs in Georgian Bath had appeared but were seen as purely invalid vehicles, appropriate enough to conduct the aged Beau Nash to the Assembly Rooms, but hardly a means of transportation otherwise.
“Wheel chairs will be permitted to enter the lobby of the Rooms (to set down or take up company) by the side door of the portico next to Alfred Street, only; persons drawing such wheel chairs to take their turns as first wheel chairs, and unless they conform to these regulations they will not be permitted to enter the lobby, or remain on the pavement.”
Not all chairs, of course, were for hire. As they became more popular the well-to-do would have had their own private chairs. In the Bath Journal for Monday 11 May 1772, William Insley, a Sedan Chair Maker of London, advertised his products and noted…
“Patterns of the newest fashion and genteelest taste; and all sorts of Hackney Work completed on shortest notice for London, Bath or Bristol on the lowest terms.”
Advertisements of House content sales often included “…a Bath Sedan Chair and other effects.” or, if you were lucky “..an excellent Sedan Chair and Poles, adapted for a family’s private use.”
In spite of the comment in 1809 that
‘Bath is so increased in Size that most People have Coaches who formerly only went in Chairs’, (Lady Jerningham to her daughter 19 Jan 1809),
there was no very obvious lessening of demand in the first quarter of the 19th Century as Bath remained a popular resort. Over two hundred sedans still registered annually.
In 1829 the local magistrates took the decision of to approve a hackney carriage service in the city. Since the Bath Act of 1793, which effectively allowed coaches for public hire,
the situation had been transformed by the development of a light, four-wheeled, one-horse vehicle known as a ‘fly’. After the introduction of a fly service at Brighton in 1816 the fashion had spread; so that the Bath authorities were only following the trend.
However, the Chairmen were also suffering from the loss of their usual customers. By 1850, many of the best lodgings remained empty even during the Season. From the late 1850s local guidebooks mention only wheeled chairs.
References
- Fawcett, Trevor. “Chair transport in Bath: the sedan era.” in Bath History Volume II – 1988, History of Bath Research Group
https://www.historyofbath.org/images/BathHistory/Vol%2002%20-%2005.%20Fawcett%20-%20Chair%20Transport%20in%20Bath%20-%20The%20Sedan%20Era.pdf - William Stukeley, Itinerarium Curiosum. 2nd ed. (London, 1776, but first pub. 1724)
- Celia Fiennes, The Journeys , ed. C. Morris (London, 1947)
- Samuel Pepys, The Diary, entry for 13 June 1668.
- The Bath Chronicle, Thursday December 7 1848
https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000187/18481207/022/0003 - Bath Journal – Monday 11 May 1772
https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0004011/17720511/002/0002