The ladies section of a Victorian cycling club.

This picture, taken around 1900 in Leicester's Abbey Park, is well known and is believed to show members of the ladies section of the Leicester Rovers Bicycle Club.

I was collecting an early mountain bike from a chap living over 100 miles from Leicester when I noticed this picture in a display on his kitchen wall.

I don't think he believed me when I said I knew who it was and where it was taken, so I sent him a copy of the original and he kindly responded with one of his own.

Scandalous!

Photographers were quick to begin using the bicycle in studio portraits and a few risked disgrace by supplying collectors with erotica. What is unusual about this 1880's stereoscopic image is that it bears the photographer’s name - L.M. Davison of Leicester.

Leicester Cycle Company

Cyclemagic is on the site of the former Leicester Cycle Co of the 1890's. Here's a report on their stand at the Stanley Cycle Show in London from Cycling magazine, Novemeber 25th 1893.





Larger version of the text can be viewed here http://www.picturebay.net/img/members/Cyclemagic/peregrineshowtext.jpg

Alternative bicycle designs in the 1890's

Although introduced in 1885, the new ‘Safety’ bicycle did not herald the immediate end to alternative bicycle design as this wonderful picture from around 1890 illustrates. Two of the machines are ‘front drivers’ the middle one having lever drive instead of pedals. These machines were a geared version of the Ordinary or Penny Farthing machine (which itself remained in use until the early 1890’s) and remained popular until at least 1893 when the Safety design finally became the norm.

The picture below shows the start of a ten mile race at the Kennington Oval (now Lord’s cricket ground) in 1892. Second from the right (12) is Bert Harris being held by his Father, who, as a prominent bookmaker, was probably there for professional reasons! Forth from the left is Frank Shorland on a Crypto, one of the leading riders aboard front driving machines. Harris won the race.

A larger verson of this picture can be seen here http://www.picturebay.net/img/members/Cyclemagic/kennington.PNG

Dunlop Pacing Machines 1898.

Taken in 1898, possibly at the Crystal Palace track in London, this picture shows the famous Dunlop pacing teams with multi World record holder John Platt-Betts and his Rover bicycle. Riding these multi seat machines could be a dangerous occupation and when crashes did happen the injuries to both riders and the men being paced could be very serious. Shortly after this picture was taken one of these machines crashed during a training session when a handlebar broke. Platt-Betts, who was travelling at around 30 mph just an inch or so behind, crashed heavily, breaking his jaw and suffering other serious head injuries. It would take him over eight months to recover and resume training.

In 1901 he crashed again while trying to set a new mile record at Crystal Palace behind one of the new motor pacing machines which appeared to swerve violently shortly before the collision. Platt-Betts suffered almost fatal injuries but did recover to ride again, although he never achieved the same level of success as his record breaking years.

An early outing of a motorised pacing machine, possibly 1899, showing John Platt-Betts in action.

Cycling snippets from ‘The Rambler’ magazine – September 1897.

To moisten the mouth. One of the finest things to keep in your pocket is a piece of orange or lemon peel. It does not matter how hard and dry it may get, when you feel thirsty, bite a piece and let it lie on the tongue for a few moments and it will bring moisture to your mouth. It is much better than drinking any liquid.

How to keep cool when cycling. To keep cool in hot weather procure a cabbage or rhubarb leaf (a large one) and pin it to the cap so as to hang down at the back of the neck. This, besides cooling the body, also keeps flies away.

An effective makeshift. When visiting a county town some distance from home, should the weather turn out wet, half a yard of cheap oilcloth purchased at the local draper’s and cut into strips with your pocket knife, will provide mud-guards of which you need not be ashamed and which will be very effective.

Cycling etiquette for ladies. A woman need not consider it a breach of good manners if her masculine friend does not raise his hat to her when meeting on the road. Everyone is not expert in taking the hands from the bar. She should be satisfied with a polite bow and a friendly smile.

The bicycle as a torture. It is told as a fact that the present Sultan of Morocco uses bicycles as instruments of punishment. When any of the ladies of the harem offend him, he has them placed upon a machine and they are compelled to ride along a marked path in the Palace gardens. When they have fallen off a few times, and he has laughed at the spills, he declares their offences have been expiated.

Dunlop's pneumatic tyre - the Leicester connection.

The name John Boyd Dunlop is synonymous with the first application of pneumatic tyres to the bicycle but the connection between the tyres development and Leicester is little known.

After initial experiments, Dunlop took his crude pneumatic tyre to the local bicycle engineers Edlin and Sinclair who had recently set up in business on Garfield Street, Belfast. This was rather fortuitous as Will Edlin, son of Robert Edlin, owner of the Emperor Bicycle Works at Frog Island in Leicester, was someone else who, along with his father, had been experimenting with bicycle tyres. He also had close links with W&A Bates and Co, the Leicester rubber company who had made the first (solid) tyres fitted to bicycles.

As well as being a successful international bicycle racer aboard his father’s ‘penny farthing’ machines, Will Edlin had learnt his trade at the family’s bicycle works and as an apprentice with Rudge and Co. in Coventry. He was therefore well placed to both redesign the bicycle to accept the new, much wider, pneumatic tyres and to set up a small production facility to build them. So the first pneumatic tyred bicycle and the tyres fitted to it was produced by Will Edlin. Pictured below.

The following advertisement, the first ever for pneumatic tyres, was placed in the Irish Cyclist on December 19, 1888.

Look out for the new Pneumatic Safety (bicycle). Vibration impossible.
Solemakers - W. Edlin & Co. Garfield Street, Belfast.

Edlin bought the rubber components from W&A Bates and Co who themselves went on to make pneumatics and were eventually bought out by Dunlop in 1930. The St Mary’s Mills factory continued to make all Dunlop tyres and inner tubes for the UK market until its closure in the early 1970’s.

However, Will Edlin and John Boyd Dunlop soon fell out over the formation in Dublin of The Pneumatic Tyre and Booths Cycle Agency Ltd and Edlin went his separate way. He eventually set up the Edlin Tyre Company in Coventry with some success but remained bitter towards Dunlop for the rest of his life.

In May 1910, the Irish Cyclist magazine (among others) carried a full page advert for Edlin Tyres in which the following text was included

The Edlin-Sinclair Pneumatic Tyre was the only pneumatic tyre on the market in 1888. The great Pneumatic Tyre Industry was originated and developed to perfection under our joint managership - and it was undertaking the early manufacturing of the Dunlop Tyre that we migrated to England. The first bicycle built for pneumatic tyres was built by us in Belfast.

And in a private letter to Dunlop dated 13 June 1910 he wrote (presumably in reply to a letter received from him)

‘Perhaps I do not recollect all the little details of the various difficulties that cropped up, so well as you do, I have been busy earning a living for my wife and family this last twenty years to think of every little thing, but the main facts, I am well sure of and not likely to forget, you may have told me that I could make a fortune out of racers alone, but I didn’t see how telling me helped me to do so, what chance had I?

I know the chance I had as well as anyone, and I blame no-one but myself for letting the chance slip, I have thought many a time that certain individuals who became connected with the pneumatic tyre might at one time have treated me a little more generously and not have set about wiping me out of business existence which was don,e as of course you know.

The verbal agreement, you, Sinclair and self entered into at the start to put the tyre on the market was that you would give us sole right to the tyre in Ireland. And I agree with you it would have been a big thing had it so fell out that your patens had stood the test of time and, and the company called The Pneumatic Tyre Company and Booth’s Cycle Agency Ltd had never been formed, or we had not joined the company, but instead been given sole agency for Dunlop tyres in Ireland for a period of 14 years from the date of your patent, say at 5%. It would have been a very big thing. But alas, ‘what might have been’.