To every guard the superintendent supplied a list of instructions comprising twenty-six items. Prominent among these was the obligation to date and sign the time-bill correctly at every place, or to see it signed and dated by the postmasters on the way. How this was always accomplished in snow and wind and rain, with numbed fingers, is not easily understood. Often the time-bills must have been reduced to something like pulp by the time the trip was ended.
It was also the guard’s duty to report any horses unfit for service, and any defective harness, and to see that the coaches were in proper condition. He was urged to look to the lamps, to behave with civility to the passengers, and to sound his horn on several occasions and in certain contingencies duly specified.
Besides these ordinary official duties there were the extraordinary ones, in the case of a breakdown or in the event of a snowstorm. The guard had his tool-box and an assortment of spare parts at hand, so that he could help the coachman in effecting roadside repairs to harness or the coach itself; and when, from snowstorm or any other cause, the coach could be driven no farther, it was the guard’s duty to impress one of the mail horses and ride to the next stage, or to secure post-chaises or saddle-horses, and personally convey the mail-bags. No matter what became of the passengers, his first care was for His Majesty’s mails.
Coachmen, although not the servants of the Post Office, were fined heavily for being late, and for stopping at unauthorised places, and the guards were fined as well for allowing them to do so. To one guard, who had been severely reprimanded for not keeping time, and excused himself by saying he could not get the passengers away from their dinner, Hasker said, “Stick to your time-bill, and never mind what passengers say respecting waiting over-time. Is it not the fault of the landlord to keep them so long? Some day, when you have waited a considerable time (suppose five or eight minutes longer than is allowed by the bill) drive away and leave them behind. Only, take care you have witness that you called them out two or three times. Then let them get forward how they can.”
Beyond his weekly half-guinea, an annual suit of clothes, and a superannuation allowance of seven shillings a week, a mail-guard had no official prospects. It is true he might rise to become a travelling inspector of mails, when he would receive up to £100 a year, with 15s. a day travelling expenses. But inspectorships were naturally few, and in any case it is not conceivable that a guard on a “good mail” would ever have exchanged places with an inspector, who certainly drew the higher salary but acquired no tips.