Page 18 - PBCMarch2022

Pickwick Bicycle Club Magazine ume 19 No.1 March 2022
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Who Were Your Early Namesakes?
Researching Your Ancestors
The Pickwick Bicycle Club has been in continuous existence since its formation
in 1870, and the soubriquets of its members have been faithfully passed down
from generation to generation. If you would like to receive the available
history of your soubriquet, then please contact Joseph Smiggers at:
steve@stephenbullen.com and you will receive the informaTon by return.

The Scientific Gentleman -an elderly gentleman of scientific attainment
“While these things were going on in the open air, an elderly gentleman of scientific
attainments was seated in his library, two or three houses off, writing a philosophical
treatise, and ever and anon moistening his clay and his labours with a glass of claret from a
venerable-looking bottle which stood by his side. In the agonies of composition, the elderly
gentleman looked sometimes at the carpet, sometimes at the ceiling, and sometimes at the
wall; and when neither carpet, ceiling, nor wall afforded the requisite degree of inspiration,
he looked out of the window.
In one of these pauses of invention, the scientific gentleman was gazing abstractedly on the
thick darkness outside, when he was very much surprised by observing a most brilliant light
glide through the air, at a short distance above the ground, and almost instantaneously
vanish. After a short time the phenomenon was repeated, not once or twice, but several
times; at last the scientific gentleman, laying down his pen, began to consider to what
natural causes these appearances were to be assigned”.

David C Bonner 1989 to present

The Cobbler – a bald-headed cobbler who rented a small slip room:

“Finding all gentle remonstrance useless, Mr. Pickwick at length yielded a reluctant consent
to his taking lodgings by the week, of a bald-headed cobbler, who rented a small slip room in
one of the upper galleries. To this humble apartment Mr. Weller moved a mattress and
bedding, which he hired of Mr. Roker; and, by the time he lay down upon it at night, was as
much at home as if he had been bred in the prison, and his whole family had vegetated
therein for three generations.”

Keith Audas 1992 to 2011 retired member
Nicholas Tribe 2016 to 2018 transferred to “Old Nobs”
Dave le Grys 2018 to present former National Sprint Champion and
Commonwealth Games Silver medallist