Transportation in the 1800s - the Dinner Scam

by Reuben Hart
(Tucson, Arizona USA)

There's some talk about a scam that was fairly common I think with mailcoaches rather than stagecoaches. Namely, the driver had a racket going with various innkeepers, whereby passengers halting for a meal, would order, and pay, but have only a few minutes to eat before the guard or driver came in to announce that the coach was leaving. The passengers got cheated out of their meal, the innkeeper kept the money and later split it with the driver. The food was then served to the next coachload of passengers that showed up. How prevelent was this practice?

Answer

Since it was clearly a scam, I think nobody really knows! ;)

The difference between "The Mail" and "The Common Stage" was probably at the root of this.
Mail coaches had a stric timetable to follow. They virtually guaranteed to arrive on time at their destination and used that to charge much higher fees than the stagecoach.

The strict timetable meant that stops were kept extremely short. On some mail routes, there was no time for passengers to alight at all and ostlers at the various changing stages were trained to change horses very quickly.

Usually, when travelling mail, passengers would know that stops were kept short. That's not to say that a few unscrupulous inn keepers and coach drivers didn't take advantage of this...

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