coach for passengers and goods, strongly sprung and drawn by four horses, usually four-in-hand. Widely used before the introduction of railway transport, it made regular trips between stages or stations, which were places of rest provided for stagecoach travelers. The business of running stagecoaches or the act of journeying in them was known as staging.The stagecoach was supported on thoroughbraces, which were leather straps supporting the body of the carriage and serving as springs (the stagecoach itself was sometimes called a "thoroughbrace"). On the outside of a stagecoach were two back seats facing one another, which the British called baskets. The front or after compartment of a Continental stagecoach was called a coupé or coupe. An inside passenger or seat was an inside, while an outside passenger or seat was an outside. A shotgun messenger, armed with a coach gun, often rode as a guard.
The stagecoach was also called a stage or stage carriage. Types included:
- mail coach or post coach: used for carrying the mails
- mud coach: lighter and smaller than the Concord coach, flat sides, simpler joinery
- road coach: revived in England during the last half of the 19th century
A stage wagon was sometimes used as a stagecoach, especially in thinly settled areas.
Familiar images of the stagecoach are that of a Royal Mail coach passing through a turnpike gate, a Dickensian passenger coach covered in snow pulling up at a coaching inn, a highwayman demanding a coach to "stand and deliver", and a coach being chased by American Indians in a Western movie. The stagecoach was first developed in the British Isles during the 1500s, and only died out in the early 1900s in the United States. Coaching inns opened up throughout Europe to accommodate stagecoach passengers. Shakespeare's first plays were staged at coaching inns such as The George Inn, Southwark. The Royal Mail stagecoach, a mail coach introduced in 1784, hastened the improvement of the road system in the British Isles through the turnpike trust system. And the stagecoach was vital in the colonisation of North America.
The diligence, though not invariably with four horses, was the continental analogue for public conveyance, with other minor varieties such as the Stellwagen and Eilwagen. Stagecoaches could compete with canal boats, but they were rendered obsolete in Europe as the rail network expanded in the 19th century.
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