Page 4 - PBCMarch2023

Pickwick Bicycle Club Magazine Volume 20 No.1 March 2023 4

Greetings Fellow Pickwickians
from your President, Samuel Pickwick Esq

I am both delighted and honoured to be your President
in this forthcoming year. I have been attending lunches
since the early 80s and in a rare two-for-the-price-of-
one moment, became a member in 1986 alongside my
brother Tim (your current Club Captain).I was fortunate
enough to be both the older (and wiser?) sibling so took
over my grandfathers retired soubriquet of “Charlie the
Pot Boy” some ten years before his passing in 1995.
I live down in Kent with Annie and our three boys - all of
whom are on the waiting list.

“Charlie the Pot Boy” only has a very minor role in the
Pickwick Papers, appearing at the Magpie and Stump as “a President & Captain
shambling pot-boy with a red head”, but I imagine that
without his stoic efforts the pubs clientele would have
remained very parched. The pub’s pot-boy would have been one step up from a
street urchin whose sole job was to refill the jugs of ale around the tavern. I
dropped into the Magpie and Stump the other day and whilst it now boasts a modern
facade, it still sits opposite the Old Bailey on the same site where it has welcomed
customers for over 300 years. The pub used to serve “hanging breakfasts”
accompanied with ale for those wanting to get the best views of the weekly public
executions. Until the last hanging in 1868, it was traditional for the Magpie and
Stump to deliver a “last pint” of ale to the cells of the condemned. Maybe it was all
part of Charlie the Pot-Boy’s job.

My connection with the bicycle trade began when I joined the family bicycle
business in the early 80s. My maternal grandfather, had set up a very successful
wholesaler called Southern Trading Co, supplying London and the Southeast with
both electrical and bicycle goods, stocking Tri-ang Toys, Raleigh bicycles and
everything in between. A tour around the tables at a Pickwick lunch brings back
fond memories with the presence of many familiar retailers and suppliers. After 75
years of trading, my brother and I left the bicycle trade to concentrate on
expanding a property portfolio which, ironically, still includes two bicycle shops one
of which predates our esteemed Club!