author
Moses James Nobbs
b. 1817
A Norwich-born mail coach guard turned memoirist, he offers a rare first-hand glimpse of Britain’s coaching era just as it was giving way to the railway age. His writing feels close to the road itself: practical, observant, and full of lived experience.
1 Audiobook
About the author
Born on May 12, 1817, in Angel Street, Norwich, he wrote from experience rather than from a distance. In Old Coaching Days, he states that his father was a coach-builder and that he himself was brought up in the same trade before entering the Mail Service as a young man.
He became known for a remarkably long career in postal transport. Sources connected with his memoir and postal-history research describe him as the last of the Mail Coach Guards, with service stretching across the final years of the coach system and into the railway era.
His best-known book, Old Coaching Days: Some Incidents in the Life of Moses James Nobbs, was published in 1891 and is a memoir of work, travel, weather, accidents, and routine on Britain’s mail routes. It remains valuable because it preserves the voice of someone who actually lived through that transition in transport history.