> secondhand summaries of secondhand stories

Reading these sorts of articles makes me feel like if people tried to describe current-day life based on instagram posts or something. Sure, its not necessarily completely false, but it also fails to capture how mainstream people experience life.

>> While I am very much interested in this sort of history, I doubt I would enjoy this book.

I tend to agree. I felt like I was being asked a lot of questions with few answers or explanation. The pictures were not elaborated on either, so I’m still not sure what the threat lurking outside the window at the coach house breakfast was.

I think that at some point the horses would need changing or resting, so you'd be obliged to stop.

Horses were like gas tanks. When they got tired you picked up new ones as easily as we would pump gas. They were not pets. Once they were too old or lame to keep the standard pace they became food.

How did this work when swapping horses of different fitness? Did people have to negotiate the price differential every time? I can see how it would work for a network like the pony express, but harder to imagine for individuals.

In another article on that blog, the author hints that it was all quite organized:

"William Waterhouse of the Swan with Two Necks Coaching Inn owned 400 horses, which he used to pull stagecoaches for their first part of the journey out of London. By 1817 he claimed to be spending £2 per horse on food, accommodation, tax .Waterhouse had distribution centres all over the Home Counties, including a warehouse in South Mimms in Essex."

https://about1816.wordpress.com/2018/09/12/back-from-obscuri...

"Once they were too old or lame to keep the standard pace they became food."

That is still common in some areas.