Tag Archives: history

Read More Bicycle History on The Cycling UK Website

Are you interested in reading more about cycling history? Visit the history section of the Cycling UK website! As Cycling UK’s historian, I have been researching the history of this influential organisation from it’s foundation as the Bicycle Touring Club … Continue reading

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Bicycle Fashion Files Part Three: The 1890s Craze

Innovation and experimentation in Late Victorian women’s cycling costumes An explosion of women’s cycling fashion accompanied the cycling craze on the 1890s. The third and final blog in the Bicycle Fashion Files series looks at practical, popular and inventive approaches to late … Continue reading

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Bicycle Fashion Files Part Two: Tricycles and Highwheelers, 1870-1880s

The Question of Women’s Dress During the Heyday of Tricycles and Highwheelers, 1870-1880s The second instalment of the Bicycle Fashion Files examines cycling dress in the age of the tricycle and highwheeler, 1870s-80s. While only a few women took to … Continue reading

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Bicycle Fashion Files Part One: Early Inventions 1790-1860s

Adapting Women’s Dress to Early Cycling Technology, 1790-1860s Fashion is one of the most popular topics in women’s cycling history. The Bicycle Fashion Files look at women’s cycling fashion across three eras, Early Inventions 1790-1860s, Highwheeling and Tricycling 1870-1880s, and The Cycling Craze … Continue reading

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Ladies Cycling Clubs: The Politics of Victorian Women’s Bicycling Associations

The wheelmen’s club, outfitted in dapper uniforms and racing en masse down a country road, is one of the enduring images of late Victorian masculine associational culture. Cycling clubs may have started out as male reserves, especially during the highwheeler … Continue reading

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The Lady Ariel Side-Saddle Ordinary, 1874

  The Lady Ariel Side-Saddle Ordinary of 1874, shown above, is one of the most eccentric and innovative designs in the history of the bicycle as a gendered object. The Ordinary, commonly known as the highwheeler or penny farthing, was … Continue reading

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Ladies’ Cycle Races at The Royal Aquarium: A Late Victorian Sporting Spectacle

S.Begg, Lisette takes the lead at The Royal Aquarium, 1896 On November 18th, 1895 novice racer Monica Harwood, a young woman from Buckinghamshire who had only learned to bicycle six months earlier, took her place on the track at The … Continue reading

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“Woman power” bicycle kanga from The British Museum

Powerful women on bicycles are everywhere these days–even in the stairwells of The British Museum! The “Woman power” bicycle kanga shown above hangs in The British Museum’s North Stairs near the Africa galleries. It was printed for the Kali Mata … Continue reading

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Mrs Fawcett’s Bicycle License: Cycling stories from the archive

  Cycling history turns up in the strangest places. Millicent Garrett Fawcett’s permit to drive a bicycle in turn of the century Johannesburg, shown above, is one such curiosity from the archives. This small paper license was one of the … Continue reading

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Millicent Garrett Fawcett: The Suffragist Cyclist

The accomplishments of peaceful suffragists are often overshadowed by the legacy of the militant suffragettes, but those in Mrs Fawcett’s law abiding camp played an equally important role in the struggle for the vote. Details of suffragist’s personal lives and … Continue reading

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