Page 22 - PBCOctober2012

22 Pickwick Bicycle Club Magazine. Volume 9 No.3 October 2012
Some Club History from Mr.Brooks
I have long been confused by the fact that at the first meeting of the club on the 22 June 1870, it
was resolved “that the club uniform be simply a white straw hat with a black and amber ribbon”.
Our colours are now black and gold but, on pictures of the club outings that I have seen dating
back to the 1880s the members are never wearing straw hats.

Unfortunately the club records are incomplete and thus I do not have the old minute handbooks
to refer to. I have been through handbooks from 1881 to date that have survived in our
possession, and find that there have been many changes as follows.
The roots of the Pickwick Bicycle Club arose in early 1870 when “a few friends” residing in the
northern suburbs of London, full of the freshness of youth, and eager for “travel and adventure”
embarked upon the pursuit of the coming popular pastime (riding a Boneshaker) and arranged
outings together for their mutual enjoyment and good fellowship. A few such excursions as these
soon led the friends to form the idea of associating themselves still more closely by forming a club
........ with this end in view a meeting was held on the 22 June, 1870, at the Downs Hotel, Hackney
Downs. The first resolution passed was that a club should be formed and the club uniform be
as aforesaid. It was also decided that the Downs Hotel should be the rendezvous for biweekly
excursions on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

A further meeting was held on the 6th July 1870 when it was agreed to name the club ‘The Pickwick
Bicycle Club” and it was further agreed that each member should be known by a sobriquet selected
from the characters in the Pickwick Papers and be addressed by that name at all club meetings;
the Captain always to be Samuel Pickwick, Esq., during his tenure of that office.
In October 1872 it was agreed that a club photograph be taken and a copy of the rules supplied
to each member.
The oldest known photograph of the club is
headed A Club Run 1870 and the only machines
in the picture are Boneshakers. Those in the
picture are D S Metcalfe, Jack Bryant, J A
Johnson, W E Mabley, C B Yeoman, and Keith
Yeoman. Four of them are wearing what may
be described as bowler hats, Jack Bryant is
wearing a straw boater with a black band and
Keith Yeoman, is sitting on the ground with a hat
in his hand, which does not appear to be a
boater, or to have a black and amber ribbon.

Around May 1872 Mr W H Grout joined the club. He is remembered as the inventor of the “Grout
Tension Wheel” which was a means of building a cycle wheel akin to that in the cycles which are
now known as Penny Farthings but, instead of having individual spokes with some form of nipple
for tensioning them, there was a bar across both wheels with what might simply be described as
a spoke which could be tightened up to put all the other spokes in tension.
A somewhat similar design was patented by Mr J K Starley later of the Ariel Bicycle Company.
In May1874, our member Mr H Stanley Thorpe (Tom Smart), rode from Hertford (leaving at 3.40
am) to Coventry, covering the 82 miles in 9 hours 40 minutes, including stoppages. The return
journey commenced at 2.45 pm and he arrived home at 2.55 am the following morning, having
ridden the total of 164 miles in 23 hours 15 minutes. His machine was a 50 inch Ariel weighing
66 lbs.