Toll

Toll, an old English word used for tax or tribute ('to whom tol tol;') Wyclif's Bible, Rom. xiii. 7), especially for long (like the German Zoll) applied to customs duties, but ultimately almost wholly restricted to money paid for the maintenance of roads by persons using them, and collected from travellers by collectors at toll-gates or toll-bars. Road-tolls were granted by Edward III., and the turnpike soon spread itself over all England, superseding 'statute-labour' in Scotland in 1750. The Rebecca Riots (q.v.) of 1843 were but one instance of the unpopularity of the impost; but in 1871 there were in most parts of the country toll-houses every six or eight miles, and about 5000 persons employed as toll-collectors (not including their families). A board affixed to the toll-house indicated the varying rates of dues exacted for an ass, a score of sheep, a riding horse, a cart, a one-horse gig, a carriage drawn by two horses, &c. Ireland first threw off this form of the burden, an act of 1857 abolishing the last in the island. In England twenty-seven toll-bars near London were abolished, and eighty-one on the north side of London in 1864, sixty-one on the south side in 1865. Others followed (in Scotland, in 1883, under the Roads and Bridges Act, 1878), but it was not till 1889 that the system in Great Britain was finally superseded by the mode of management now in force, for which see ROADS. Bridge-tolls were all abolished in London in 1878-79, but they still survive in some places, and pier-tolls are common.