Page 6 - PBCOctober2020

Pickwick Bicycle Club Magazine Volume 17 No.2 October 2020 6

The Pickwick Bicycle Club

2020 Anniversary Ride

On Wednesday, June 22nd, 1870, six friends “full of the
freshness of youth” took to the new sport and pastime of
cycling “for their mutual enjoyment and good fellowship,”
remembered a 1905 account of their exploits. Convening at the Downs Hotel, a then seven-
year-old pub facing the recently conserved parkland of Hackney Downs in north London, the
six velocipedists — J.A. Johnson, Jack Bryant, W.E. Maverly, K.M. Yeoman, L.C.B. Yeoman,
and D.S. Medcalf — were minded to form a club. No name was floated at this first meeting,
but it wa s
nevertheless decided
th at th e c lub’s
uniform would be
“simply a white straw
hat with a black and
amber ribbon.”

At the same venue a
month later it was
suggested that the
newly minted club
should take the name
of a book written by
Charles Dickens, who,
in June, “had but
recently quitted for ever the sphere of his immortal labours,” said that 1905 history. The
young men could have alighted on any of the recently deceased author’s novels, but they
settled on his first: the Pickwick Bicycle Club was born. Taking place on the morning of a
gloriously sunny Monday June 22nd 2020, the celebration — complete with club banners,
hand sanitiser, and champagne in plastic flutes — attracted a small crowd. The curious well-
wishers included three young women who live in the downstairs rooms of the former Downs
Hotel, which, in 2007, had been converted to residential flats.