2-798-549 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

First class passengers, 1844. Travellers in a railway carriage. 'Although comfortable enough, there is little sociability in a first-class carriage on a railway; everybody seems to have an idea that he is the only one who is really entitled, by payment and position, to a seat therein, and so is afraid of compromising his dignity by speaking. There is, consequently, no conversation: the heads of the four corner occupants are usually looking out of the windows, and the centre ones looking at each other. By the same rule, however, that you rarely see a pretty woman in an omnibus, so you scarcely meet with ordinary ones in a first-class carriage'. From "Illustrated London News", 1844, Vol V.