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February 21, 2013 by carltonreid

How Servants injure Bicycles, 1897


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Muc Off bike brush set, 1897

One of the most fatal mistakes that can be committed by the owner of a bicycle is accomplished when she entrusts the treasured possession to the temporary care of the servant.

With the best intentions in the world, the ordinary domestic does not shine with glory in the rôle of cycle attendant, and it is, I venture to think, questionable whether the servants who quite unconsciously inflict the most injury upon a bicycle are ranked amongst the very careless or the very careful.

From the careless servant I suppose we have all suffered. She has but little property of her own, and cannot be taught to respect the possessions of others.

[She] prefers to scrub out the lobby without removing the machine. When she observes the consequent splashings upon the tubing and the rims – which is not often, for she is not a lady of observant nature – she wipes them off with her damp house flannel, and concludes that she has conscientiously performed her duty in the station of life to which she has been called.

To ask such a woman to clean the machine after a muddy run is to voluntarily drop five pounds sterling in as many minutes. It is to the very careful servant to whom this sacred duty is sometimes entrusted, and, alas! too often has the careful servant been weighed in the balance and found wanting.

The mistakes she makes are the mistakes born of indiscriminate energy and misdirected zeal.

Yes, both classes of the domestic certainly manage to injure the bicycle, and although I have suffered from both of them, I do not know which of them can be regarded as the lesser evil of the two.

From The Rambler magazine, 5th June 1897

++++++++++

The high society author of this piece was not noted against the article but it was probably Susan, Countess of Malmesbury, a frequent contributor to this magazine and others. The Rambler was published by by Alfred Harmsworth who later went on to create the Daily Mail and the Daily Mirror. He became 1st Viscount Northcliffe.

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October 3, 2012 by carltonreid

Beak wants bike ban on many A-roads

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Judge Simon Tonking of Stafford Crown Court has today written to The Times urging for cyclists to be banned from riding on many A-roads.


Sounds sensible, doesn’t it? What kind of crazy bicycle riders want to ride on quasi-motorways? (Er, apart from time trialists)? But the great majority of A-roads are traditional through routes, often with few alternatives for non-motorised users. Banning cyclists from A-roads – the great majority of which are historic highways not originally built for cars – in some areas would be tantamount to banning all non-urban cycling.

Clearly, most cyclists would prefer to ride on roads not at all clogged with fast-moving motorists but this is not always possible. In densely populated parts of the country there’s a dense network of roads and – usually – many alternative routes for cyclists to use. But in many areas the A-road network has to be used by cyclists, even if just partially. And many towns and villages have A-roads running through them, often with mentally fast speed limits.

Judge Tonking says his ban idea is for the “safety of cyclists” but his track record isn’t a stellar one where cyclists are concerned. In April a motorist who killed a cyclist on an A-road was spared jail by Judge Tonking.

The judge’s letter in today’s Times offers a “remedy” to such deaths: “take [cyclists] away from some of our more dangerous trunk roads where traffic is both heavy and fast moving.”

His behind-the-paywall letter says:

“As one who has the painful duty of sitting on cases involving the death of or serious injury to cyclists caused in road traffic accidents, several (but not all) of which have been accepted or found to have been caused by dangerous or careless driving of motor vehicles, I have seen the devastating consequences of such accidents.

“One immediate remedy, suggested in the light of hearing much evidence about such cases, is to remove all cyclists from any dual-carriageway which is not subject to a speed limit of 30, or possibly 40, mph. This would not prevent cyclists from using dual-carriageways in urban areas but would take them away from some of our more dangerous trunk roads where traffic is both heavy and fast moving. Any cyclist, particularly a lone cyclist who is not wearing high-visibility clothing, is at huge risk on such roads from vehicles approaching from behind at a (legal) closing speed of up to 60 mph. At such a closing speed a relatively small and very vulnerable “object” is coming into view at the rate of 60ft per second and in a moment’s inattention irreparable damage is done.

“Lest it be said that cyclists have a right to use such roads and it is up to other road users to be vigilant, the fact is that no cyclist, or even motorcyclist with a machine of small capacity, is permitted to use any motorway. As a matter of logic and realism the same should apply to dual carriageways where the speed limit is not significantly restricted.”

This last paragraph is quite the shocker, especially given Judge Tonking’s ‘form’ on such matters. In April, he deliberated on the case involving the death of Patrick Kenny, a 72-year old record breaking cyclist.

Mr Kenny was killed by Andrew Mylrea, a Rolls-Royce aero-engine Associate Fellow, who was driving “about 60mph” as Kenny cycled along the A38 slip road near Burton upon Trent. [Note: slip road].

Mylrea, driving a BMW, was convicted of causing death by careless driving at Stafford Crown Court and banned for driving for a year. Mylrea could have been locked up for five years but Judge Tonking decided not to jail him, saying: “This is not a case for a custodial sentence. This was a complete aberration. Your carelessness was failing to see Mr Kenny and his bicycle.”

Judge Tonking’s request for cyclists to be banned from A-roads is odd because cyclists can already be so banned. Many stretches of quasi-motorway have such bans in place, via bog-standard traffic regulation orders. And, of course, the very fact many A-roads are choked with cars is reason enough for most cyclists to avoid them, a de facto ‘ban’.

While many A-roads have been widened and signed to suit the needs of fast moving motorised traffic, they were not originally built for this purpose. Most of Britain’s A-roads were built as turnpikes for stagecoach traffic. With the coming of the railways, these ‘national’ roads fell into disuse and were first revived by cyclists in the 1870s, as has been pointed out numerous times on this blog-of-the-book.

Many trunk road dual carriageways were also originally turnpikes – many are also Roman in origin – although look and feel like motorways, the highways built specifically for motorised use. Given that many A-roads – and even many trunk roads – are sometimes the only A to B access between places, calling for blanket bans is a very serious matter, especially when it comes from a figure such as a judge. [Perhaps if Judge Tonking had experience of such roads from the cyclist's perspective he might come to a different conclusion? We need more beaks on bikes...]

Naturally, such bans are sometimes raised in parliament. Last year Uttoxeter MP Andrew Griffiths wanted to discuss such a ban with local cycling clubs following the death of a cyclist. The lorry driver who killed the cyclist had been sending and receiving text messages on his mobile phone in the minutes leading up the collision.

Perhaps MPs and judges who ask for cyclists to be banned from A-roads ought to demonstrate how cyclists can still transit the area in question, without huge diversions? If there is no latticework of alternative, quieter routes shouldn’t such calls for bans go hand in hand with infrastructure provision? By all means seek a safe solution for all but this ought to include good, usable routes for non-motorised road users. If there’s no room, cash or inclination for such provision, banning such road users would be unfair in the extreme.

Open Road motorway at night

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April 15, 2012 by carltonreid

When cycling was the “kind of thing a man must do to be taken seriously”

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An otherwise positive article in today’s Telegraph neatly illustrates how much has been forgotten about the important role the bicycle played in the 19th Century. William Langley’s article about MAMILs on carbon composite bicycles, and cycling becoming the “most fashionable activity in Britain”, features the cliché that cycling has always been “poor man’s transport”. He writes:

“Although cycling has had its useful times, and even times in vogue, it has never really made the big leap to become one of life’s essential obligations – the kind of thing a man must do to be taken seriously….In Britain, cycling has long been sniffed at as the forced option of the working class, rank with images of flat-capped factory hands and straw-chewing codgers weaving down farm tracks.”

Mr Langley – like most people, of course – doesn’t appear to know about the time, in the 1880s and 1890s, when cycling was the talk of High Society; when aristocrats competed with each other to be seen on the very latest self-propelled machines (usually tricycles); and when bicycles were the red Ferrari’s of their day (fast, dangerous, expensive and the playthings of the leisured rich).

In Langley’s piece Rapha’s Simon Mottram says:

“There’s a new social demographic of people with education and money who have a clear idea of the kind of lifestyle they want for themselves. They see it in terms of personal development, health and happiness.”

People with education, money and an interest in health and happiness were big into cycling in the late Victorian period. They might have driven off – like a departing gang of Mr Toad’s – when the motorcar came along but, for some years, cycling was very much an activity that was the “kind of thing a man must do to be taken seriously.”

Ownership of a tricycle, for instance, required not just the outlay of a serious amount of money for the machine itself but also somewhere to keep it: a stable or outhouse. The Tricyclist magazine suggested the creation of “town stables for tricycles” so that high society gents riding to their exclusive London clubs could leave their bulky and expensive vehicles in a safe place. The magazine said such storage need only cost two or three pounds a year (a large sum, of course) and would lead to the employment of “handy lads to clean and look after the machines.”

Tricycling was done by “Princes, Princesses, Dukes, Earls etc”, wrote a tricyclist in a circular to members of the Bicycle Touring Club in 1882 (the name was changed to Cyclists’ Touring Club in order to include tricycle riders).

Aristocrats who wished to take up a sport in the 1880s purchased how-to guides penned by peers. The Badminton Library of Sports and Pastimes was founded in 1885 by Henry Somerset, 8th Duke of Beaufort, owner of Badminton House, a stately pile in Gloucestershire. The first book in the series – on hunting, naturally – was authored by the Duke and a number of his aristocratic friends. Two tomes on fishing followed. A horsey title was published in 1886 and, in the same year, there came two books on shooting. Books on boating and cricket didn’t appear until 1888 but had been preceded by a joint book on Athletics and Football in 1887. Prior to this, and showing how important cycling was at the time, the Badminton Library’s book on Cycling was published early in 1887.

This socialite’s guide to the new form of locomotion was written by William Coutts Keppel, Lord Bury, the later Earl of Albemarle. (Keppel’s great-great-grand-daughter is Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, who could be Queen Consort of Great Britain one day).

In America, members of the Michaux Club of New York, named after the French bicycle innovator of the 1860s, were some of New York’s “best people”, as Mumsey Magazine put it. Rich socialites, such as the Rockefeller’s and the Roosevelt’s, were members of this club (they rode Safety bicycles, not tricycles).

British Prime Minister William Gladstone recognised cycling as a wonder of the age. In 1892, he wrote:

“I can only emphasise the fact that I consider that, physically, morally and socially, the benefits of cycling confers on the men of the present day are almost unbounded.”

The benefits of cycling are just as valid today as back then. (And for women, too.)

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February 7, 2012 by carltonreid

Pickwick Bicycle Club, 1870

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Today is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens. The great novelist was born on this day in 1812. On 9th June 1870, he died. Sadly, the old chap never got to ride a velocipede, which had arrived in London in 1869. None of Dickens’ characters rode bicycles but when six velocipedists from Hackney in London wanted a name for a club they had just formed, in the Downs Hotel on 22nd June, they landed upon Dickens. They could have chosen any of the author’s novels to name their new club but they chose Dickens’ first: the Pickwick Papers.


The Pickwick Bicycle Club was born. It’s the world’s oldest bicycle club and it’s also the world’s oldest extant Dickensian association. I’m a member. Club members – all men – are given sobriquets taken from characters in the Pickwick Papers. I’m Mr. Grundy. There are only a finite number of characters in the book so to become a member you go on seven-year waiting list and, when an unfortunate member shuffles off this mortal coil, in you jump.

There are two main events each year: posh and ribald ‘luncheons’ in the 200-year old New Connaught Rooms, near Covent Garden. At the luncheons, members are called to order by trumpeters of the Grenadier Guards and Pickwickian punch is wheeled in by Chelsea pensioners while members sing the Boys of the Old Brigade. The great and good of the bicycle world go to these functions, from industry bigwigs to pro riders (I sat next to David Millar at a previous function). The Pickwick Bicycle Club also still organises bicycle rides, including an annual ride at Hampton Court. Members are encouraged to ride period bicycles.

This ride has a long history. The third ride took place on May 26th 1877, and was immortalised in the drawing below which appeared in the Illustrated London News. Fixed front wheel velocipedes could be made to go quicker by enlarging the front wheel: the high wheel bicycle was the result and can be seen at the front of procession of up to 2,000 riders. London and “provincial” clubs were well represented on the ride. There was a rider from Edinburgh and seven from Manchester. 69 of the riders were members of the Pickwick Bicycle Club, and the club’s Captain K.M. Yeoman was “put in command for the day.” Behind him were six marshals, one of which was a fellow Pickwickian.

The clubs of the time were quasi-military in garb and manners: riders dressed in uniforms and followed commands issued via a bugler. One of the reasons for the uniforms and riding en masse was to discourage stone throwing from country-dwellers not used to seeing townsfolk on the long neglected turnpikes. Cyclists of the 1870s were the first users of rural roads since the demise of the stagecoach trade fifty years previously.

At the 1877 Hampton Court ride “each of the Marshals wore a scarlet sash,” reported the Illustrated London News.

“At half-past five o’clock the buglers sounded the advance. The Pickwick Club, which was first in order, immediately replied, and the men, mounting at once, came on in pairs in gallant style, amidst tremendous cheering…It took upwards of an hour for the regulars to file past, before the unattached riders brought up the rear. The procession was watched with much interest by H.R.H. Prince Christian and Colonel Maude, C.B., from the windows of the Greyhound Hotel.”

Those not attached to a club “acted in a spirit of insolent independence, and did much to upset the order which the marshals were taking so much pains to maintain.”

In an article in a CTC Yearbook from 1928 J Foxley Norris wrote “the usual runs in the early 1870s were about ten miles out, and a radius of 20 miles would well constitute a Sunday or weekend fixture. Such riding may seem trivial to the rider of 1928, but he will be reminded of the weight of the ‘boneshaker’ – 60lbs with its wooden wheels, iron tyres, and the villainous character of the road surfaces.”

Members of the Pickwick Club today include Richard Hemington, the boss of Specialized UK (sobriquet: John Edmunds); cycling commentators David Duffield (Mr Ayresleigh) and Hugh Porter MBE (Jonas Mudge); world champion track rider Tony Doyle MBE (George Nupkins); Howard Knight, former MD of Raleigh (Wilkins the Gardener) and bike shop owner Peter Hargroves (The Chancery Prisoner).

The most notable former member – and club president in 1944 – was Lord Nuffield CBE who, as William Morris, founded the Morris Motor Co. Naturally, as with many motor magnates, Lord Nuffield had started out as a bicycle mechanic.

In the company of his fellow club members Lord Nuffield was known as Joseph Smiggers. Many of the early clubmen raced using only their assumed names.

The Boys’ Own Paper of 1889 reported that in “some old reports of race meetings, we find the name of the “Fat Boy” frequently mentioned. As may naturally be supposed, this name was appropriated by one of the thinnest of men.”

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February 6, 2012 by carltonreid

#cyclesafe, 1896-1898

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The Times is running an eight-point cyclesafe campaign to highlight the need for safer streets for cyclists. In 1898 the newspaper had had enough of cyclists – it was at the end of the Bicycle Boom – and a leader suggested that it would be a fine idea to prohibit bicycles in certain places at certain times.

Most real cyclists, too, and probably every omnibus, cab, van, and carriage driver in London, would consider that a lady on a bicycle is utterly out of place in Regent-street or Cheapside, or any other great artery of traffic. The office-boys and clerks who twist in and out among the stream of vehicles, now clinging to an omnibus for support and now darting almost under the nose of a horse, can take care of themselves, and a special Providence seems to watch over their wildest escapades; but no one likes to see a woman running unnecessary risk, as it has more than once proved to be, to life or limb.

There is, indeed, much to be said for prohibiting bicycles altogether in the City and in certain streets between, say 10am and 6pm. But whether any authority, Imperial or local, will have the courage to interfere with so universally popular a pastime and means of locomotion is perhaps doubtful.
The Times, 1898

The topic of cyclists ‘sharing the road’ with heavier vehicles is nothing new. And nor is there anything new about cyclists being abused on the busy, busy roads of Britain’s cities. Watch the 1890s video above and then read this account of cycling in 1890s London by Susan, Countess of Malmesbury, extracted from The Badminton Magazine, 1896.

A new sport has lately been devised by the drivers of hansom cabs. It consists of chasing the lady who rides her bicycle in the streets of the metropolis…

Having now been the quarry of the Hansom cabman for nearly a year, and having given him several exciting runs, I cannot help feeling that cycling in the streets would be nicer, to use a mild expression, if he id not try to kill me…

I launched my little cockleshell early one Sunday morning in July into the stormy oceans of Sloane Street, Knightsbridge, and Park Lane, on my way to visit a sick friend who lived about four miles off, beyond Regent’s Park. The streets were really very clear, but I shall never forget my terror. I arrived in about two hours, streaming and exhausted, much more in need of assistance than the invalid I went to console. Coming home it was just as bad; I reached my house about three o’clock and went straight to bed, where I had my luncheon, in a state of demoralisation bordering on collapse. I only recount this adventure in order to encourage others who may have had the same experience as myself, but who, unlike me, may not have tried to conquer their nervousness.

What cured my fear was the purchase of a little shilling book called, I believe, ‘Guide to Cycling’, wherein it is written that cycles are ‘vehicles within the meaning of the Act.’ I then realised that I had an actual legal existence on the roadway, that my death by lawless violence would be avenged, and that I was not , what I had hitherto felt myself to be, like the lady, hated both of gods and men, who

‘Cast the golden fruit upon the board’-

I mean, my cycle on the streets -

And bred this change.’

Yes, I had as good a right to my life as even my arch-enemy the hansom, or my treacherous companion the butcher’s cart. I and my machine were no longer like a masterless dog, and if we were scouted from the pavement, at least we would take modestly but firmly, if need be, our proper breathing room in the road.

Cautious and alert, I merrily proceeded on my way, using my bicycle as a means of doing my morning shopping or other business.

Drivers of hansoms have various ways of inflicting torture on a fellow-creature, one of which is to suddenly and loudly to shout out ‘Hi!’ when they have ample room to pass, or when you are only occupying your lawful position in a string of vehicles. Also, they love to share your handle-bars and wheels, passing so close that if you swerve in the slightest – which, if you are possessed of nerves, you are likely to do – it must bring you to serious grief. They are also fond of cutting in just in front of you, or deliberately checking you at a crossing, well knowing that by so doing they risk your life, or, at any rate, force you to get off.

I myself always ride peaceably about seven or eight miles an hour, and keep a good look-out some way head, as by that means you can often slip through a tight place or avoid being made into a sandwich composed of, let us say, a pedestrian who will not, and an omnibus which cannot, stop.

Many a time when I first began to ride in traffic have I meekly escorted an omnibus in a crowded thoroughfare, thankful for the shelter it afforded from the wild and skirmishing jungle round me, and feeling like what I may perhaps describe as a dolphin playing round an ocean liner.

To my mind the great accomplishment for the cyclist in traffic is to be able to ride steadily, without too much wavering of his front wheel, at a very slow pace, so as to avoid getting off, and then with quick eye and judgment to make a dash where he sees his opportunity, never forgetting to look some distance ahead so as to avoid stoppages. In these cases, like all others, prevention is better than cure.

Another word I should like to say. For riding in the streets it is most essential to have one hand free, and therefore to be able to guide your bicycle with one hand; but acrobatic performances, such as riding without using either hands or feet down inclines in crowded streets, or with both feet on one side, or with your face to the hind wheel, as one man managed to do, are entirely to be discouraged.

How I admired at first the graceful way in which, a gentleman, very tall, and well known in royal social circles, took off his hat and bowed to his acquaintance on the pavement! I even envied the more humble individual whom I saw blowing his nose with reckless violence in Piccadilly; but now it seems to me that to fall would be impossible, even if I tried, and this is really the only frame of mind in which it is safe to bicycle in the streets of London.

And see also the pro-velocipede 1860s campaign in the New York Times. Oddly, this was also an eight-point plan.

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January 31, 2012 by carltonreid

New York City once had the best bike path in the world (and it was the first, too)

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Netherlands schmetherlands, the country with the best riding conditions for cyclists used to be America. Difficult to imagine, but in the 1890s a number of American cities could boast the world’s best bicycle-infrastructure. Part paid for by pushy, influential cyclists, the bike paths in cities such as Seattle, Portland, and even Los Angeles, were far in advance of any that could be found anywhere else in the world at the time. (The first bike path in the Netherlands was built in 1885 in Utrecht, partly at the instigation of an English cyclist, but it was more of an athletic track for high wheel riders rather than a functional bike path. The first utility cycling path in the Netherlands was built in 1896. The first bike path in Copenhagen was 1892, claims this article, and I hope to dig up more info on it before stating it’s the world’s first).

But it was New York which had the best bike path in America, and one of the first in the world. Petitioned for from 1892 and finally built in 1894, the Coney Island Cycle Path extended from Prospect Park in Brooklyn to the popular resort at Coney Island, a distance of five and a half miles. It was a later add-on to the 1870s Ocean Boulevard, a “pleasure parkway” from “the City of Churches” to the Atlantic ocean.

Opened in mid-summer, the Coney Island Cycle Path was an instant success. So successful, in fact, that the path’s crushed limestone surface had to be repaired within a month of opening, and the pressure of numbers caused the path to be widened. The year after opening, three feet were added to the original width of fourteen feet.

Those who owned stalls, rides and eateries at the Coney Island pleasure beach thrived from the increase in business brought by the cyclists following their “straight run to the sea.”

In June 1896 a return path was built on the opposite side of the boulevard. This was opened with a gala parade organised by the League of American Wheelmen’s Good Roads Association and was attended by 10,000 cyclists and upwards of 100,000 spectators.

“Attired in holiday garb and colors, the throng presented a picture pretty to look upon. That nearly every person in it was a cyclist or wanted to be was very apparent…Every public house on the boulevard was decked in flags and bunting, and many private residences were prettily decorated for the occasion…[a] juvenile rider had on a snow white Fauntleroy waist and red stockings with shoes to match. He was a cute little fellow, and somebody named him the ‘Red Spider’…The bloomer girls received much attention, as usual. One plump lassie startled the reviewing stand with her green bloomers, but she didn’t mind.”
New York Times, June 28th 1896

The Coney Island Cycle Path was “for the exclusive use of the silent steed,” reported the New York Times. As happens today, space for the bike path was, sadly, taken from pedestrians. Carriages used the crushed-stone macadamized road, and equestrians were provided with a soft, sand path. The bike route was part paid for by cyclists. The League of American Wheelmen’s Good Roads Association paid $3500 of the $50,000 necessary for the creation of the path. Monies were raised by individual contributions, by newspaper campaigns (the Brooklyn Daily Eagle stumped up $50) and by fund-raising events such as theatre productions.

An appeal in the New York Times in August 1894 spelled out the advantages of cyclists part-paying for the proposed cycle path:

“It is now within your power to have the most delightful and attractive wheelway ever provided for the exclusive use of cyclists: a smooth, clean continuous wheelway…”

The cycle path was “the first path in the world devoted exclusively to bicycles,” crowed the Brooklyn Daily Eagle. “No wheelman who has ridden on it has complained, as the completed sections are so perfect that it is not possible to find fault with them.”

City authorities liked the path because it got cyclists off the road, away from pleasure carriages and horse-waggons.

According to the New York Times of Christmas Day 1894 “the path is looked upon as an improvement [because] wheelmen do not interfere with driving at all, as the large driveway is now used exclusively by the lovers of horses and carriages.”

Brooklyn’s transport commissioner “had two roads constructed on the Ocean Parkway entrance so that the bicyclists may enter or leave the Park without danger of collision with vehicles…At the Plaza entrance, he has had Flatbush Avenue asphalted, so that the bicyclists may cross the [tram] tracks safely, and this path has been carried through one of the walks in Reservoir Point Park, so as to enable the bicyclists to reach the Eastern Parkway cycle path without danger.”

But it was sometimes bicyclists who caused the danger. “Scorchers” gave cyclists a bad name.

In May 1895 the Brooklyn Bicycle Club “put itself on public record as being opposed to ‘scorching’ on the Coney Island Cycle Path, and recommended to the authorities the prompt punishment of every offender. The practice of fast riding should never have been permitted on such a liberally patronized riding ground…” The speed limit was 12mph. Scorchers were stopped by policeman on bikes and could expect stiff fines.

But, by and large, the Coney Island Cycle Path was a leisure route rather than a race track.

How did the New York cyclists of the 1890s get such a fine, twin-track facility? Partly it was the financial contribution made initially by cyclists but more importantly, cycling was fashionable and chic. Bicycle riders of the 1890s were an ‘in’ group: and as Brooklyn had an estimated 80,000 cyclists it was perfectly natural to cater to the needs of a large, politicised, and active group of citizens.

And it wasn’t just by dint of numbers, some of New York’s “best people”, as Mumsey magazine put it, were seen awheel. Rich socialites, such as the Rockefeller’s and the Roosevelt’s, were members of New York’s most exclusive cycling club, the Michaux Club, named after the French bicycle innovator of the 1860s.

“To no metropolitan club is admission more eagerly sought. Its membership, limited to two hundred and fifty, has long been full, and there is already a lengthy waiting list. Entrance to its exclusive circle may be regarded as a social cachet of the most authoritative sort…The headquarters of the Michaux are at an uptown cycling academy, where it has elaborately appointed rooms…The Central Park Casino and the Claremont do not see a more goodly array of fair women and gallant men, year in and year out, than on the occasions of the Michaux [Spring] meet.”
Mumsey magazine, May 1896

With numbers and the support of high society, creating bicycle infrastructure was like pushing at an open door. Park commissioner Timothy L. Woodruff was a wheelman. It was he who led the parade of 10,000 cyclists that celebrated the opening of the return Coney Island cycle path. He was a member of the influential Skull and Bones secret society of Yale University (later members included both the Bush presidents of the US) but he made no secret of his allegiance to cycling:

“I am prepared, in my official position…, to do everything within the limits of my powers as such to care for and advance the interests of the wheelmen of Brooklyn. I am anxious to do this not that I may cater to the comforts of a certain class of citizens, not because I am actuated by personal devotion to wheeling, but because I believe the safety bicycle is the most beneficial instrumentality of this wonderful age.”

And Woodruff wasn’t a lone voice, pro-cyclist sentiment went right to the top. To be mayor in Brooklyn in the mid-1890s meant you had to be pro-bicycling. Mayor Charles Schieren said:

“When modern stables are transformed into sheds or shops with racks for the steel steed – which is the coming horse and a very economical one, because it eats no oats and does not kick or cut up the road – it is absolutely necessary to provide for this new order of things. This is a fad which has come to stay, and the cyclers rightfully demand good roads or paths for their accommodation. We must therefore plan additional facilities and build practicable roads for the exclusive use of the wheel, the same as we have provided bridle paths for equestrians in our parks…We must reconstruct our park roads and set aside a portion of the roadway for the exclusive use of bicycles, or make additional paths for them…Good streets and roads will attract many people to a city or town which has them…If the townships of this island would construct excellent macadamised roads, they would double their population in a short time. The cool summer breezes and fine, level country roads would make them a perfect paradise for cyclers…Brooklyn is now seriously considering a plan for building a system of good roads and cycling paths…which will give from twenty to thirty miles of excellent paths to the lovers of the wheel, and will prove a great attraction.”
New York Times, May 22nd, 1895

Schieren’s successor as mayor – Frederick W. Wurster – was also pro-bicycling. In March 1896, he said:

“The bicycle I look upon, to a large extent, as the pioneer of good roads. The bicycle has done more for good roads, and will do more for good roads in the future, than any other form of vehicle.”

The mayor was right that cyclists had pioneered the push for good roads but it was the next vehicle along that benefitted the most from the 1890s love affair with the bicycle. By 1897, sales of new cycles reached a peak and a steady decline set in. High society took to motorcars; most everybody else migrated to trams. Cycling, once for everyone, slowly became an athletic activity alone.

However, it wasn’t an overnight collapse. The arrival of motorcars in New York City didn’t herald the immediate decline of cycling. The first motorcars in New York arrived at a time when the Coney Island Cycle Path was at its most popular.

In 1896 the bicycle builders Charles and Frank Duryea offered for sale the first commercial automobile in the US, the Duryea Motor Wagon. One of these was bought by Henry Wells of New York.

On May 30th 1896 Wells drove his Duryea Motor Wagon into New York City to take part in a horseless carriage race organised by Cosmopolitan magazine (then called The Cosmopolitan). While racing on public roads, he crashed into Evelyn Thomas, riding a Columbia bicycle on Broadway near West 74th Street. Wells became the first motorist arrested for what would later become known as dangerous driving. Thomas was hospitalised with a fractured leg.

The Coney Island Cycle Path was poorly maintained after 1900. In 1901, Theodore Roche, president of the Democratic Union of New York, urged the authorities to bring the “cycling strips” to good repair as it would be “a disgrace to Brooklyn to allow them to fall into such a condition that it would be dangerous and unfit for wheeling.”

The paths were patched but not relaid. By 1911 the civic authorities were in thrall to what the New York Times called “the automobile men”. A protest ride of 3000 riders in September of that year cycled on the path to Coney Island “to arouse a public sentiment against the closing of the cycle path on the Ocean Parkway.”

The path was never closed. It still exists today. In part. The return path was asphalted over and became a road. The Ocean Parkway is now a multi-lane highway, with a slim bike path and a separate walking path. Both paths have to cross over a great many roads, with priority now granted to cars.

In the 1890s, the Coney Island Cycle Path was the best known of an extensive network of interlocking bike paths and roads macadamised for cyclists. Bicycle paths were created along Pelham Parkway, and along Riverside Park and Drive, and there were macadamised roads radiating outwards from downtown to what were then open fields, but which are now parts of the concrete jungle.

In his ‘Bike Snob’ book, Bike Snob NYC, who lives on Ocean Parkway, describes one macadamised road as “cycling’s erstwhile Great White Way.”

Merrick Road on Long Island was one of many improved roads frequented by cyclists, for leisure, for scorching and for getting to and from work.

BikeSnob: “In the 1890s, Merrick Road was the place to be on a a bicycle. It had a national reputation…It was so popular that people built hotels and businesses for all the cyclists who would visit from the city…Anything that creates a whole town is culturally significant.”

There were also asphalted roads. New York City had twenty miles of such roads in 1895. The New York Times of June 30th 1895 printed a map showing “the streets that are best adapted for good wheeling” with heavy dark lines representing asphalt and the broken lines representing crushed stone macadam. The newspaper said the map was of “Brooklyn’s Bicycle Streets.”

This map of the South Bronx is from 1897 (click on the + sign on Flickr to make it huge) and shows the streets of NYC when bicycles – and horse drawn carriages and trams – held sway.

1897 Map of New York City, inc South Bronx

Even in the 1920s, bike paths still existed throughout New York City and more were built during the New Deal work relief projects of the 1930s and 1940s. New York has a fine tradition of building infrastructure for cyclists, a legacy now being taken forward by NYC’s transportation commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan.

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‘Roads Were Not Built For Cars’ will contain lots of detail on the history of roads – and bike paths. The book will be published in August 2013 via a Kickstarter campaign that ends on April 20th, and a PDF of the book will also be given away, free, on this site later in the year.

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Archive

January 11, 2012 by carltonreid

Definition of ‘car’, 1907: “an ingenious device for public slaughter”

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punch2

In its Victorian heyday the satirical magazine Punch (1841-2002) poked fun at bicyclists and automobilists: both were guilty of “scorching” (speeding) and both ignored the prior road rights of pedestrians.

However, by the 1920s, ‘Motor Mania’ had seen to it that the Middle Class had become the Motoring Class, and Mr Punch – ie the writers and cartoonists on the magazine – had become “himself an enthusiast of the whirling wheel.” By the 1940s, cars had killed so many people, J. S. Dean wrote his famous pro-pedestrian tract, Murder Most Foul.

It made little difference. Road deaths had become acceptable to British society.

The rights of the motorist trumped all other rights. This ‘Motor Ascendancy’, before it became the norm, had been mocked by Punch. It’s fascinating to read volumes of Punch and see this transformation: from cars as killers and usurper of rights, motorists as “motor fiends”; to motorists as rightful “owners of the road”, immune to any charges of death on the streets.

There are some illuminating cartoons and poems from the Victorian and Edwardian periods of Punch which show how the coming of the motorcar was feared. “Road hogs”, a term first ascribed to cart drivers and their lumbering vehicles, was switched to describing motorists. A car, to the editor of Punch in 1907, was “an ingenious device for public slaughter”.

This is prescient. Today, if you want to kill with impunity, assassinate your target with a car and you’ll get little more than a slapped wrist. Only an idiot would choose to murder with a gun or a knife.

punch3a

THE MOTOCRAT (1905)
I am he: goggled and unashamed. Furred also am I, stop-watched and horse-powerful. Millions admit my sway—on both sides of the road. The Plutocrat has money: I have motors. The Democrat has the rates; so have I—two—one for use and one for County Courts. The Autocrat is dead, but I, I increase and multiply. I have taken his place.

I blow my horn and the people scatter. I stand still and everything trembles. I move and kill dogs. I skid and chickens die. I pass swiftly from place to place, and horses bolt in dust storms which cover the land. I make the dust storms. For I am Omnipotent; I make everything. I make dust, I make smell, I make noise. And I go forward, ever forward, and pass through or over almost everything. “Over or Through” is my motto.

The roads were made for me; years ago they were made. Wise rulers saw me coming and made roads. Now that I am come, they go on making roads—making them up. For I break things. Roads I break and Rules of the Road. Statutory limits were made for me. I break them. I break the dull silence of the country. Sometimes I break down, and thousands flock round me, so that I dislocate the traffic. But I am the Traffic.

I am I and She is She – the rest get out of the way. Truly, the hand which rules the motor rocks the world.

punch1a

MOTOR QUESTIONS (1903)
What rushes through the crowded street
With whirring noise and throbbing beat,
Exhaling odours far from sweet?
The motor-car.

Whose wheels o’er greasy asphalte skim,
Exacting toll of life and limb,
(What is a corpse or so to him)?
The motorist’s.

Who flies before the oily gust
Wafted his way through whirling dust,
And hopes the beastly thing will bust?
The pedestrian.

Who thinks that it is scarcely fair
To have to pay for road repair
While sudden death lies lurking there?
The ratepayer.

Who as the car goes whizzing past
At such law-breaking stands aghast,
(For forty miles an hour is fast)?
The policeman.

Who hears the case with bland surprise,
And over human frailty sighs,
The while he reads between the lies?
The magistrate.

Archive

January 9, 2012 by carltonreid

Bicyclists: watch out for “stupid people”, 1878

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From The Times, London, 5th September 1878

“The bicycle has come to the front, and is fighting for existence. Dimly prefigured in the mythical centaur…the bicycle has now surmounted the difficulties of construction, and adapted itself to human capabilities it augments at least threefold the locomotive power of an ordinary man. A bicyclist can perform…a daily journey to and fro between London and the distant suburbs with just the usual results of moderate exercise.

“[But] the bicyclist will have to submit to the same rules as all others enjoying some advantage over foot passengers. He will have to use bells when required…He will have to use his eyes. Above all, he will have to bear in mind that in every thoroughfare, at almost any hour of the day, there will be a large proportion of stupid people, and a not very small proportion of people a little the worse for drink.”