Bygone Hertfordshire / ed. by William Andrews.

Date:
1898
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Bygone Hertfordshire / ed. by William Andrews. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    308/322 page 278
    An account of the incidents of the road would be sadly incomplete which omitted a mention of the romantic episodes furnished by the youths and maidens, on matrimony intent, bound for the blacksmith’s shop at Gretna Green, or the equally accommodating “ parson ” at Coldstream. The roads from the metropolis to both these hymeneal Meccas led through Hertfordshire, and there are many traditions in the county of post chaises being driven with feverish haste to the north, of angry fathers and guardians in full pursuit, and of the frequent return of the irascible parents with their erring and weeping daughters, whose journey had been cut short before it became too late. The county newspapers for the first few years of the century are full of accounts of lleeing couples and intercepted elopements. Gretna Green being somewhat nearer London was chiefly affected by those intending runaway marriages, and post- masters did a brisk and profitable business in supplying horses for this class of patron. “ Baily’s Magazine” records an incident, in 1824, on a Hertford coach of a less romantic and far more gruesome character. One of the passengers was Mary Blanchard, whose husband was lying under sentence of death at Hertford,
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