In one such reference he tells us Mrs. Ann Nelson was "one of those
stern, dignified, magisterial women of business, who were quite a
remarkable feature of the coaching age, who saw their husbands off
to an early grave and alone carried on the peculiarly exacting
double business of inn-keeping and coach-proprietorship, and did
so with success." She was the "Napoleon and Caesar" combined of
the coaching business. Energetic, she spared neither herself nor
her servants. The last to bed she was also the first to rise,
"looking after the stable people and seeing that the horses had
their feeds and were properly cared for." Insistent as she was
on rigid punctuality in all things, and hard as she was on those
who served her, she, nevertheless, treated them very well, and
gave the coachmen and guards a special room, where they dined as
well at reduced prices as any of the coffee-room customers. This
room was looked upon as their private property, and there they
regaled themselves with the best the house could provide. It was
more sacred and exclusive than the commercial-rooms of the old
Bagmen days, and was strictly unapproachable by any but those for
whom it was set apart.

[illustration: The Bull Inn, Whitechapel. From the water-colour
drawing by P. Palfrey]

The "Bull" began to decline when the railway was opened in 1839,
and in 1868 it was demolished.

There is no doubt that Dickens knew it well, and probably used it
in his journalistic days when having to take journeys to the eastern
counties to report election speeches. In The Uncommercial Traveller
he speaks of having strolled up to the empty yard of the "Bull,"