29 Jun

Women’s Six Day Bicycle Races

I’m more and more convinced that my new heroine will be a bicycle racer, so I’ve been looking up about women’s racing at the end of the nineteenth century. There is, in fact, a book on the subject of women in six-day bicycle races — but it doesn’t come out until October 2018! I even sent an email to the author in hopes of snagging an early review copy, but no dice. He did email me a copy of an article he’s recently written for Michigan History magazine, which was helpful in that it explains the women’s races were sprints, compared to the men’s six-day races.

For male cyclists, the six-day race was just that: riding as long as you were awake for six days. It was an endurance event to the extreme. For the women, it was apparently an hour in the afternoon and two hours in the evening, which allowed their races to focus on speed and coincidentally be more exciting for spectators.

Understanding how the races worked is one part of the puzzle, but I’m still missing info. Namely, who was racing, when, and where? There’s a bit of a list at sixday.org and another at 6dayracing.ca, but the women’s information is scanty and earlier than I’m looking for. So I’m combing through the Library of Congress’s online newspaper database and making a similar list of women in six day races. And if I’m doing the work already, I might as well share it.

I started by searching for Tillie Anderson, easily the era’s most famous female racer (she’s even earned herself a children’s book) and then doing secondary searches on her named competitors. I got to about forty races and over fifty named competitors. Because the races last for so long, it’s hard to tell quickly if a news report is talking about a new race or is a slightly delayed account of a previous race. The list may therefore contract as well as expand. It’s a Google spreadsheet, so you can click here to view it. I’ve added in some notes as I found interesting tidbits in the new articles that were longer than just race results: dogs on the track, riots, and wardrobe malfunctions are a few of the newsworthy mishaps!

17 Jun

The Riotte Kerosene Bicycle Motor

While I’m working out the plot for my new book, I’m also trying to figure out what exactly the machine my heroine’s father has invented looks like. I have in mind for it to be an early motorcycle, but my knowledge of motorcycles and motors past and present is minimal. Fortunately my reliable friends at Google have scanned in volume 1 of The Horseless Age, a publication for the nascent automotive industry in 1895. There are a great many bicycle, tricycle and carriage motors described, from steam-powered to gasoline, and spring-motors, which were coiled by a hand-crank and then powered a bicycle for 15 miles. I was briefly excited by the description of an ether-motor–more efficient and powerful than using water for steam–until I looked a little further and learned that ether is extremely explosive, which is why we don’t see it used as a propellant in many engines these days. There will be some mishaps in the novel, but not the explosion and full-body burns sort of disaster.

Right now the leading contender for me to base my fictional motorcycle off of is a kerosene motor, a lightweight option which could be attached to a regular bicycle frame. It doesn’t seem to have caught on, as the only mention I can find is this description on page 19 of Vol. 1, No. 1 of The Horseless Age, printed in November 1895.

The Riotte Kerosene Bicycle

C.C. Riotte, of the Riotte & Hadden Mfg. Co., 462 East 136th St., New York, has invented a kerosene motor for bicycles which is extremely simple, light and inexpensive. It can be attached to any ordinary bicycle, detached at a moment’s notice, and is started and stopped by a small handle at the oil tank. It consists of two small valves, a cylinder, piston and igniter.

The operation of the motor it [sic] as follows: When the piston descends, a cylinder full of air mixed with a small quantity of kerosene oil is compressed into the explosive chamber and there ignited by an electric spark which is generated from a small battery weighing one half pound. This battery never polarizes or requires recharging.

The air in the cylinder being highly heated from the combustion of oil drives forward the piston which is connected through a crank with the rear wheel as seen in the illustration. The operation continues on, almost noiseless and without smell, with every turn of the rear wheel. A speed of twenty five miles per hour has been attained with it on level ground and a pretty good speed maintained on grades of about four or five per cent.

The weight of the motor including tank full of oil is nine and one half pounds. The tank holds enough oil to carry a person 75 miles and when the oil gives out a quart of kerosene or any kind of petroleum lamp oil can be bought at any country store or of any farmer.

Mr. Riotte has been experimenting in gas and oil engines all his life, and has had a good deal to do with stationary and marine engines of all descriptions.

The principle of this bicycle motor is the same as that of his new improved stationary oil engines except that heavy weights and the fly wheel are dispensed with.

The firm is also constructing a carriage, which is propelled by a kerosene motor the same in principle as their stationary motors. The operating gear will have but one lever to start, stop, reverse, or go at any speed from 2 to 25 miles per hour. They expect to form a company to manufacture bicycle and carriage motors on a large scale.

As far as I can tell, it seems like a pretty plausible option, especially with the option to buy fuel on the road. One of the things I’ve realized about the development of motor vehicles is that they were initially hampered by the lack of infrastructure. To be successfully used for long distance travel, they needed to have good roads for all the wheeled vehicles, and for the fueled vehicles, they needed places to buy fuel. I’ve pretty much taken the existence of gas stations for granted, but now I assume that part of what made or broke the different motor options described in The Horseless Age was the availability of their required fuel, whether it was kerosene, ether, or gasoline. It may also explain the interest in the spring motors!

06 Jun

Victorian women learning to ride a bike

More on women’s cycling from old books and journals. There are two popular topics regarding women and bikes: method of riding and choice of dress. Throughout the 1890s the debate rages on skirts vs bloomers/knickerbockers, what sort of cut to the skirts, bifurcated or not, how to keep your skirt out of the wheels, best bikes with skirtguards… There’s a lot of concern about looking unladylike while riding a bicycle. For the lady who did want to ride, how would she get through the awkward phase of learning to ride gracefully without embarrassing herself publicly? By attending a cycling school or academy, where a (presumably male) teacher would assist her with balance behind sheltering walls. As you might expect, there were still writers ready to make fun of the female student of the bike, as in the poem below, which I found in a magazine for Locomotive Engineers. I’m considering making my heroine a female bicycle instructor, as she could surely provide a more friendly experience than that described in this poem!

At the Bicycle Academy

‘Twas at the female cycling school,
Where bloomer costumes arc the rule;
And fairy forms in trousers hid,
Essay the bike as she is rid.

A rare and radiant vision she!
A dream! a song! a rhapsody!
To whom none other there was like,
Came forth to tame the festive bike!

She cast about a bashful glance,
Gazed at her wiry steed askance;
Then eyed her bifurcated skirt,
And wondered if a tumble hurt.

Then at the master’s stern command,
She grasped her steed with trembling hand;
A gasp, a sigh with anguish pent,
A bounce, a boost, and up she went.

Prate not to me of dire alarm,
Of fire and floods and martial arms;
For depth of woe there’s nothing like
A frightened female on a bike!

She stuck, she strained, she vainly strove
To make that pesky pedal move;
She pumped, she pushed, turned ghastly white;
And worked both feet with all her might!

And now she starts, she seems to feel
A thrill of life along her wheel!
But, oh! a bump! a zigzag slump!
Girl, bike, spokes, legs, all in a lump!

Reprinted from the New York Evening Sun in the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers’ Monthly Journal, Vol XXIX No 3, March, 1895.

29 May

The Bloomer’s Complaint

Here’s another something I ran across while researching bloomers and rational dress: sheet music from 1850 for “The Bloomer’s Complaint: A Very Pathetic Song for Piano Forte”. I’ve typed up the lyrics for easy reading — if you happen to play piano and are interested in the music, it’s right here on Google Books. Personally, I have no ability to read music, but I’m imagining it as ideally performed something like Hugh Laurie as Bertie Wooster singing at the piano.

Dear me, what a terrible clatter they raise,
Because that old gossip Dame Rumor
Declares, with her hands lifted up in amaze,
That I’m coming out as a Bloomer,
That I’m coming out as a Bloomer.
I wonder how often these men must be told
When a woman a notion once siezes,
However they ridicule, lecture or scold,
She’ll do, after all, as she pleases,
She’ll do, after all, as she pleases.

They know very well that their own fashions change
With each little change of the season,
But Oh! it is “monstrous” and “dreadful” and “strange”
And “out of all manner of reason,”
And “out of all manner of reason”
If we take a fancy to alter our dress,
And come out in style “a la Bloomer,”
To hear what an outcry they make, I confess
Is putting me quite out of humor,
Is putting me quite out of humor.

I’ll come out next week, with a wide Bloomer flat
Of a shape that I fancy will fright them,
I had not intended to go quite to that,
But I’ll do it now, only to spite them,
But I’ll do it now, only to spite them
With my pants “a la Turque” and my skirts two feet long
All fitting of course, most completely
These grumblers shall own after all, they are wrong,
And that I, in a Bloomer, look sweetly,
And that I, in a Bloomer, look sweetly.

27 Dec

Victorian Wedding Rings

Today’s research reading on Victorian wedding rings–and engagement rings–comes to you from pages 48-49 of The Jewelers’ Circular and Horological Review, Vol XV, No. 2, March 1884. I’ve reached a point in my current novel draft where the hero believes he has reason to purchase an engagement ring, so of course I went looking to make sure that was a thing in the 1890s, and to see what sort of ring he might buy. Something with just pearls, I think–he’s not quite sentimental enough to spring for the turquoise and seed pearl forget-me-not!

Buying Wedding Rings.

A shy young man went into a Broadway jeweler’s store, so says a local reporter, and looked at gentlemen’s rings, fingering them and asking questions about them, and yet appearing to take only a forced interest in them. The jeweler’s clerk whispered to a bystander, “By-and-by he will come around to the wedding or engagement rings. That is what he has come after.” Sure enough, the young man presently pointed to a tray of flat gold band rings. “What are they for?” he inquired. The clerk said that they were merely fancy rings, worn by ladies and gentlemen, and that some folks bought them for wedding rings. The shy young man tried two or three on his little finger, and, finding one that would not quite go over his knuckle, said, “Give me this one. How much is it?”

“It’s five dollars,” said the clerk, “but if you want a wedding ring I would advise you not to buy it. Every now and then we sell them to people who insist upon having them, but as soon as they find out the fashion they come back and have them melted up and rolled up into this old-fashioned round form. The only wedding ring is the round ring, plain and simple.”

“Gimme a round one, then; same size as this.”

He got one and went away. The clerk laughed, and said he could tell when a young man wanted a wedding or engagement ring every time; though sometimes they ask to be shown clocks, bracelets, or anything rather than what they come for. Very many come right to the point, though they stammer and falter about it quite painfully. Others again ask frankly and boldly to see what they want. “There never has been a change int he fashion of wedding rings,” said the clerk; “the plain round gold ring has always been the only correct thing. Men sometimes choose other kinds, but women never make that mistake.”

“Do women choose their own wedding rings?”

“Oh, very often. Frequently they come in alone, fit a ring to the right finger and leave it for the prospective bridegroom to pay for. Sometimes they pay for it and take it away, and of course the young man reimburses them. Quite often, too, the brides come in with their mothers. Very serious and grave the mothers are, and show neither timidity nor sentiment. They ask for wedding rings, they look them over, buy one, and go away. Irish and German girls often bring their lovers as well as their mothers. There is not a funnier sight in the world than to see a clumsy fellow hanging behind and looking unutterably foolish while his sweetheart and her mother discuss the purchase. They pay no attention to him until they come to the final selection. Then they tell him how much is to be paid and he pays it and they all go out. Irishmen are apt to be close buyers. They will scarcely ever buy anything without knocking something off the price, but no Irishman ever haggles over a wedding or engagement ring. It does not matter if the wedding ring he chooses comes as high as nine dollars. He pays the price without a murmur.”

“Many foreigners, particularly Germans, exchange wedding rings. The bride pays for the groom’s ring and vice versa. At the altar they exchange rings. They come in together to buy them.”

“What is the fashion in engagement rings?”

“Oh, there is no fashion in them particularly. Any pretty ring set with small stones does for the purpose. Turquoises and pearls are popular just now, and so are pearls by themselves. Diamonds are the rage with people who can afford them, and from that the precious stones range downward in price to amethysts. Engagement rings cost from $15 to $150; wedding rings from $5 to $15. Very many persons have initials, dates, or mottoes engraved in their wedding rings. ‘Mizpah,’ or ‘Thine forever’ are favorites, but the commonest custom is to have merely the initials and date–‘J.S. to S.J., Nov. 11, 1883’–cut in the inner surface of the ring. Nothing is engraved in engagement rings. The manner of wearing them has changed, however. They used to be word on the index finger of the left hand, you know, but the ladies think that a little too much of an advertisement nowadays, and they wear them on the third finger of the right hand. That finger of the left hand is still the one on which wedding rings are worn.”

On page 39 of the same issue, you will find an article on Electric Jewelry! Perhaps I’ll find a way to work that into a future story.

20 Dec

The Artist, the Lady and the Tiger

In my reading about the zoo, I learned about the American painter Frederick Stuart Church, who regularly used the animals of the zoo as models. It seems he was quite fond of depicting young ladies in company with big cats. He wrote a rambling illustrated article about his work and experiences for Scribner’s Magazine in December 1893, Vol. XIV, No. 6, which I found entertaining and intriguing.

Excerpts from “An Artist Among Animals,” written and illustrated by F.S. Church

Frederick Stuart Church illustration for Scribner's

I saw a young girl in the lion-house at the Central Park Zoo modeling a tiger. One morning I watched her for some time, and after she got through her work and was about to go, she took a rose from her dress and threw it into the animal. You know some of the cat family are very susceptible to the different odors, and the action of that tiger must have astonished the young girl. There was every expression of animal gladness in the way that he fondled and caressed the flower. I suggested to the young lady that it might be perfectly safe for her to go in the cage, the tiger seemed in such an amiable mood. She seemed half inclined to act on my suggestion and go in, but perhaps it was just as well she didn’t. You can never trust them.

After reading the first bit, which had come up on my search for “Central Park Zoo,” I assumed, as you may have up to this point, that this was a piece about the practice of drawing and sketching live animals, and maybe the exotic options available at the zoo. But Church, as a working artist, took commissions and therefore shares this anecdote.

I have a sketch on my wall–a rough cartoon of a tigress creeping up through the jungle with a most wicked glare in her eye, as if about to spring on a very pretty young woman in diaphanous drapery, who is seated on a bank with her feet in the water, apparently dreaming over a lapful of lotus flowers. That picture was suggested, and an order given to paint it, by a young New England girl, who is, or thought she was, a “reincarnationist.” She was one of the finest specimens of New England beauties I have ever seen, from the best old Puritan and Hugenot stock, her father, a magnificent specimen of manhood, following in the faith of his fathers; but she, in a future state, expected or hoped to take the form of a tigress, and go around eating up good-looking young girls. Queer idea, wasn’t it, and she had such a sweet and sympathetic disposition?I took the order, but do you know I was never able to make that animal take the fatal leap. With a great of persuasion I induced Mr. Conklin, the former careful and thoroughly experienced superintendent at the Central Park Zoo, to allow a tiger to be enraged up to a most desperate point, by having a young bear cub placed dangerously near his cage, and I made lots of studies in movement and expression of that animal’s most ferocious efforts to get at that cub, but it was of no use. I then changed the whole idea, and made a recumbent tigress looking up with a most placid expression into the face of the young woman, who still continued to dream over the lilies. The “reincarnationist” was disgusted, and I sold my “idyl” at a quarter of the price to “another fellow.” That change of expression cost me $750, and should have taught me a lesson, which some of my realistic friends would say served me right.”

Wait, what?

First, what about this New Englander of good Puritan and Hugenot stock casually appropriating ideas of reincarnation????

Second, she sounds like some kind of badass wanting to be reincarnated as a lady-eating tiger.

Third, that was an amazing character sketch of both the lady and the artist.

You can see that I really had to share once I read that bit. There’s more. Church wasn’t just about the drawing of ladies with animals. Apparently he was also about allegory.

Knowledge is Power by Frederick Stuart Church

One of my female critics, who is not in sympathy with my work, was looking the other day at a picture of mine which I call “Knowledge is Power.” It represents a young girl in college gown reading to a lot of tigers. The lady said: “If anyone needs knowledge that girl does, or she wouldn’t be such a stupid fool as to sit among a lot of tigers.” An excellent criticism from her stand-point, but perhaps it is not what I am getting at.

Okay, Church, you don’t understand the feelings of the “reincarnationist” and your female friends may not understand your philosophy either. I guess it’s a draw? At least you can idealize the nature of the female cats.

I paint the lioness much more than I do the lion. Probably few notice the difference, but I use the tigress in all my pictures in preference to the male. There is something in the female of the cat species, particularly, that appeals to much more than the male. She has certain lines, movements, alertness and quickness of perception, with a sort of you-had-better-look-out expression, which I don’t see in the male. I often think of that tigress I read of in a report of the London Zoo, who, accompanied by her two cubs, stealthily approached in the middle of the night a small temporary board shanty, where some native East Indian railroad workmen were sleeping. Leaving her cubs at the door, she stole in, grabbed one of the sleeping men, and made off with him before the horrified occupants could realize the situation.

Just think the peculiar intelligence shown not only in her successful raid, but in her instructions to her cubs, who she made wait outside for her while she did her terrible work!

This bit put me in mind of Kipling’s 1911 poem The Female of the Species, which concludes most stanzas with “The female of the species is more deadly than the male” and posits that females are fierce because they have an unshakeable instinct to protect their young, while males can be logical. For a reply to that, I recommend Charlotte Anna Perkins Gilman’s reply More Females of the Species.

But the poetry is a tangent away from F.S. Church. My imagination is particularly fired, not by his ideas about the females of the species, or by the allegorical meanings of the women he painted, but by the women he describes interacting with: the female painter, the critic, and, of course, the “reincarnationist.”

I had been thinking to make one of my heroines involved in spiritualism or vaudeville in some way, and the idea of a young lady of New England who wishes she were a tigress seems like it could play into that beautifully. There is something there about women looking for more expansive role in society and not wanting to be confined by the feminine ideals of the time. Why be the allegorical beauty reading to the tigers when you could be the tiger? Her explicit desire is to be a tigress who will “go around eating up good-looking young girls”! She seems ready to completely destroy and discard the current female role. Definitely a suffragist. Perhaps ready to smash the patriarchy as well. I’ll just have to be careful that she doesn’t cross over into Spirit Weavers Gathering territory…

You can see more examples of Church’s work on the Wikimedia Commons, as well as on artnet.com and americangallery19th.wordpress.com. In addition to ladies and big cats, he also painted ladies with polar bears or flamingos, or even by themselves without animal companions.