John Jones, a Welchman, and William Williams, a Lancashire man, ran thirty miles on the Hereford road, on Monday the 12th of June 1809, for a wager of five hundred guineas. Williams had the better of his antagonist for the first twenty miles; but Jones soon after passed him, and won the race in three hours and three-quarters.
Spence, a chairman in Paisley, went from the cross of Glasgow to Edinburgh--a distance of forty-two miles--in seven hours and twenty minutes, without much apparent fatigue.
Mr. Ensor, clerk of Highgate Chapel, undertook, in September 1806, to walk twenty-six miles in four hours, for a bet of fifty guineas. He started from the first mile-stone at Hammersmith, at seven o’clock, and went the first seven miles within the hour, and accomplished the whole distance in three hours and forty-three minutes.
On the 26th of October 1805, Mr. King, an optician, undertook to walk the same distance in the same time, for a bet of thirty guineas. He started from the first mile-stone at Hammersmith, and reached the 17th, beyond Colnbrook, in one hour and fifty minutes, and returned to the place whence he had started seventeen minutes within his time, performing the whole distance in three hours and forty-three minutes.
A bet of fifty guineas having been made between Captain Hare and Mr. Cortey of Wigmore Street, that the latter should not go from Sevenoaks to Blackfriars Bridge, in two hours and forty minutes, on the 17th of April 1809;--the pedestrian started on the day appointed, and although the weather was extremely unfavourable, he did nine miles in the first hour, and eight miles and a half in the second. He had now forty minutes to perform the remaining five miles and a half; the whole distance being twenty-three miles. But the weather was so extremely severe as to beat him to a stand-still a mile from the Bricklayers’ Arms, when he resigned.
On Friday the 4th June 1807, Mr. Stevens undertook to go from the Woolpack at St. Albans, to Finsbury Square,--a distance of twenty-one miles--in three hours, for a bet of four hundred and fifty guineas. He started at a quarter before two o’clock in the morning, and arrived at his journey’s end by four. He ran in the first hour, seven miles and a half; in the second hour, ten miles; and in the last quarter, three miles and a half.