Page 24 - PBCOctober2016

Pickwick Bicycle Club Magazine Volume 13 No.2 October 2016 24

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 ben
faithfully passed down from generation to generation. If you would like
to receive the available history of your soubriquet, please contact
Joseph Smiggers at:
steve@stephenbullen.com and you will have the information by return.

Solomon Pell – Mr. Weller Snr’s attorney at the Insolvent Court

“Mr. Solomon Pell, one of this learned body, was a fat, flabby, pale man, in a surtout which
looked green one minute, and brown the next, with a velvet collar of the same chameleon
tints. His forehead was narrow, his face wide, his head large, and his nose all on one side,
as if Nature, indignant with the propensities she observed in him in his birth, had given it
an angry tweak which it had never recovered. Being short-necked and asthmatic, however,
he respired principally through this feature; so, perhaps, what it wanted in ornament, it
made up in usefulness. 'I'm sure to bring him through it,' said Mr. Pell. 'Are you, though?'
replied the person to whom the assurance was pledged. 'Certain sure,' replied Pell; 'but if
he'd gone to any irregular practitioner, mind you, I wouldn't have answered for the
consequences.' 'Ah!' said the other, with open mouth. 'No, that I wouldn't,' said Mr. Pell;
and he pursed up his lips, frowned, and shook his head mysteriously.”

W. Biddlecombe 1873 to 1875
Dr. Major Harold J Johnson MB, RAMC 1876 to 1919 President (1910)
A E Simpson 1943 to 1953
J L Elson Rees 1956 to 1958
Harry F Anderson 1964 to 1993 President (1975)
Don McKellow 1990 to present

Mr. Justice Starleigh – the Judge in Bardell v Pickwick

“Mr. Pickwick was on the point of inquiring, with great abhorrence of the man's cold-
blooded villainy, how Mr. Serjeant Buzfuz, who was counsel for the opposite party, dared
to presume to tell Mr. Serjeant Snubbin, who was counsel for him, that it was a fine
morning, when he was interrupted by a general rising of the barristers, and a loud cry of
'Silence!' from the officers of the court. Looking round, he found that this was caused by
the entrance of the judge. Mr. Justice Stareleigh (who sat in the absence of the Chief
Justice, occasioned by indisposition) was a most particularly short man, and so fat,