Page 24 - PBCOctober2022

Pickwick Bicycle Club Magazine olume 19 No.2 October 2022
Pickwick Bicycle Club Magazine 24
Volume 19 No.2 October 2022
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More communications were received from new member Simon Martel (Count Smaltork)……..
Dr Slammer provided the following photos in support of his correspondence
Dear Mr Winkle

Several years ago, I was given a copy of the ‘History of the Pickwick Bicycle Club’ compiled by the Hon
Harry Lawson’s ‘Bicyclette’ which was patented in
Mr. Crushton, 1905 Sirst edition. On the front free end paper is the name of the onetime owner, W.
1878 and was described as a Safety Bicycle.
Webb and conSirming that he was a member of the PBC.
Further, sandwiched between the pages was a monochrome photograph of a group of cyclists with an
inscription on the rear saying, ‘Pickwick B. C. Bob Willis in Centre’.

A circa 1892 photograph of three intrepid bicyclists. The machine on the right is a 40”
pneumatic-tyred Crypto Geared Front Driving Bicycle, similar to that seen on the back cover
of the March magazine. The
central machine is a lever driven
‘Facile’ Safety Bicycle of the type
manufactured by Ellis & Co from
1882, and the one on the left is a
Hillman Herbert& Cooper, solid-
tyred diamond-framed Safety
Bicycle, of the equal sized wheel
type that would eventually oust
from the market, all other types
of bicycle.
Please see this photograph attached. I wonder, does anyone recognise anyone in the photograph, and if
so, perhaps we could arrive at a date and/or the venue that the photograph was taken? Also, do we
know when W. Webb was a Pickwick member?

Yours …Count Smaltork (Simon Martel)

This was followed by the next item:
A circa 1894 photograph of a pneumatic-tired Crypto
Dear Mr Winkle Geared Front Driving Bicycle
As a new member (although I have been attending PBC functions for more than 10 years as a guest),
I found the myself trawling through eBay, & randomly searching “Pickwick”- and came across the sale
of an original page from ‘The Graphic’ - which seems to have been a lifestyle type weekly publication
(I believe it was in print from 1869-1932). Anyway, attached is a scan of the page showing a sketch of
‘A Tour of the Pickwick Bicycle Club in France’, with the annotation ‘Mr Pickwick goes to France to a
meeting in Beauvais’, with the Cathedral in the background. The page is dated September 15th 1888
and on the reverse amongst other articles is a note of some cycle race results from the previous
Saturday 8th September 1888.