Women and the Bicycle During the Victorian Era - A Photographic History
This link will take you to the introduction
The safety bicycle, which emerged in the middle of the 1880s as a safer alternative to the more dangerous high-wheel bicycle, had similarly sized wheels and a much lower center of balance. Its acceptance among cyclists was slow at first but within a few years it had become the must have bicycle of the Victorian era. Before the introduction of the safety bicycle –the precursor to the modern bicycle–bicycling was, for the most part, a man’s activity.
The predecessor of the safety bicycle, the high-wheel or ordinary bicycle as it was known, (Figure 1) was a revolution in personal transportation but Victorian dress codes made it impossible for all but the most daring women to ride one if they had any expectations of maintaining an air of respectability. |
Figure 1 – A woman in feminized male attire leaning against her high-wheel bicycle in a promotion for the Richmond Straight Cut brand of cigarettes. Circa 1886 cabinet card. |
The thought of a woman wearing pants or anything that resembled them was abhorrent to many Victorians. A high-wheel tricycle was developed and both men and women as well as children used them, but they were heavy and more complicated to make and consequently expensive to manufacture (Figures 2 & 3).
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Figure 2 – A circa 1886 British cabinet card with women on high-wheel tricycles. The tricycle on the right is actually a tandem with a male rider on the back. From the collection of Lorne Shields. Used with permission. |
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Andrew Ritchie has pointed out:
The tricycle proved to be a crucial testing ground for many aspects of subsequent transportation technology… Tricycles moved cycling more in the direction of recreation and useful, practical transportation, and made it possible for women (who were excluded from high-wheel cycling, with a handful of professional exceptions) to participate at least on a limited basis. (Ritchie 2011:194-195).
Manufacturers even experimented with high-wheel designs that had a woman riding side-saddle but they proved to be unsuccessful. Before the introduction of both the ordinary and safety bicycles, only a minority of women had had an opportunity to ride, and this was usually in a circus or entertainment setting (Figure 4).
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Figure 4 – A circa 1870 CDV of a young woman with her tricycle. She was likely with an entertainment or circus troupe. Early images of women dressed this way are uncommon.
During the 1880s and 1890s, there were about twenty women who were professional cyclists in America (see: Hall 2019). High-wheel racers such as Louise Armaindo, Lizzy Bayner, Jessie Oakes, Annie Sylvester and Elsa von Blumen were some of the most prominent ones (Figures 5 & 6).
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Figure 5 – An 1880s cabinet card of Elsa von Blumen with her high-wheel bicycle. From the collection of John Weiss. Used with permission.
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Figure 6 – An 1880s cabinet card of Annie Sylvester with her high-wheel bicycle. She was born Annie Elizabeth James in 1864 on a farm in St. Louis, Missouri. It was reported that she "had a fondness for difficult and perilous amusements, climbing the loftiest trees, jumping from dangerous heights, and riding the most spirited horses" (Springfield Wheelmen Gazette, Feb. 1885). So bicycle riding was just another adventure. She was married and divorced before the age of twenty and had a son who died at the age of one. She took the stage name of Annie Sylvester and toured the country performing tricks with her bicycle. She progressed to circus performances, vaudeville and fancy theaters where she made a name for herself. From the collection of John Weiss. Used with permission. |
Elsa von Blumen was born in Kansas in 1859 to Prussian parents who had earlier emigrated to America. Her athletic career started in 1877 when she competed in pedestrian events, long distance walking competitions that were often held indoors in arenas or exhibition halls set-up specifically for the events. Contestants would compete for cash prizes to see who could walk the longest distance, sometimes going hundreds of miles and walking thousands of laps around a small, indoor track. In these gala events, Elsa often competed against men.
She transitioned to bicycle racing in the fall of 1880 and was one of the first women high-wheel racers in America. Her manager also paired her against horses, both for its entertainment value and because it was more profitable to do so (Figure 7).
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Figure 7 – Another 1880s cabinet card of Elsa von Blumen with her high-wheel bicycle. From the collection of Lorne Shields. Used with permission.
In December of 1881, it was reported that she would attempt to ride her bicycle 1000 miles in six days. This event took place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania at their Old City Hall Track.
Before the start, she expressed herself confident of her ability to complete the 1,000 miles before the next Sunday morning; but when she laid down her hand on the steel withers of the two-wheeled steed and swung into the saddle, she was trembling violently. [She regained her composure and by Friday evening had already ridden 849 miles.] … Her long ride had very plainly told upon her by this time. She looked tired and weary. She had lost several pounds of flesh, her limbs were stiff and sore, her hands so badly blistered that they had to be plastered… [A reporter asked her if she was] not sorry it is so near over? – Sorry? No, indeed. There is a long day yet to come, and I wish it was ended, If I complete this task successfully I don’t believe I will try it again. It is useless for me to say I have not suffered, for there have been times that I thought I must give up. Indeed, I declared several times I would quit, but somehow I have worried through. [After six days in the saddle, Elsa completed the 1,000 miles just before midnight on Saturday] … The enthusiasm ran high throughout the evening, the crowd standing on the chairs and cheering long and loud. During the last few hours of the ride, it was necessary to keep her up with stimulants applied outwardly. She had a severe headache and her limbs were swollen and sore, while her hands were very much blistered. She had little inclination physically to complete her task, and only did it through the force of indomitable will. (From: The Bicycling World, Volume 4, December 16, 1881.)
Elsa understood her unique position as a role model for other young women.
In presenting myself to the public in my bicycle exercises, I feel that I am not only offering the most novel and fascinating entertainment now before the people, but am demonstrating the great need of American young ladies, especially, of physical culture and bodily exercise. Success in life depends as much upon a vigorous and healthy body as upon a clear and active mind. In my travels I daily see hundreds of ladies and even gentlemen, with flat chest and narrow shoulders, and a shuffling gait, the result of neglecting the needs of the body. My experience as a bicycle athlete has beyond question saved me from a consumptive decline. In my rides, while I am willing to compete in friendly rivalry not only with gentlemen but with horses, I will countenance no wagering or gambling. The respectability which has characterized my performances in the past will be maintained in the present entertainments; and believing that all lovers of health and physical vigor will award me their approbation and patronage. (From: The Bicycling World, Volume 4, November 11, 1881).
She had lots of admirers who would cheer her arrival to an event. In 1882, she lost a six-day bicycle race against Louise Armaindo, who was perhaps the top woman racer of the 1880s, and later that year Elsa temporarily retired from racing, reportedly to study art. She was married the following year to Emery Beardsley, an upstate New York farmer. When Elsa discovered that some of her jewelry, cycling medals and some other items were stolen and later found in a haystack behind her father-in-law’s house, she left Emery and returned to her parent’s home.
Melody Davis has written that in the 19th century the difference between the sexes was:
…thus thought to be a biological matter, but, more significantly for society, it carried the consequence of dividing humanity against itself by gendered possessives (“woman’s” or “man’s”). To be human at that time necessarily carried an inherent opposition, as all qualities were given to one sex or the other…. This division manifested itself in one of its most dramatic forms through a late-nineteenth-century comic character called the New Woman, who reinforced gendered difference by inverting its terms – all for a joke, of course….
By the century’s end, though, the words New Woman had mushroomed beyond literary characterizations, cropping up in popular culture as a catchall term for women who defied feminine convention: collegians, bicyclists, sports enthusiasts, professionals, divorcees, and any woman who didn’t marry. It was also applied to feminist, who were at the time called “woman’s righters” or suffragists. The New Woman was a harbinger of sweeping changes in gender conventions perceivable on the horizon for society but seldom realized in the lives of average women of the time (Davis 2011). (Figure 8).
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Figure 8 – A stereoview of the New Woman in bloomers dated 1901. The intention of this series was to parody the New Woman. From the collection of John Weiss. Used with permission.
During the Victorian period, traditional women’s dress, for the most part, was very restrictive and certainly not suitable for riding a bicycle. In public, a lady usually wore a tightly laced corset over an equally tight bodice, along with a full skirt that was draped over multiple layers of petticoats that extended to just an inch or so above the ground. A woman who had any hope of being seen as a lady dressed this way. But when the safety bicycle appeared, it was a game changer for women. A step-through mode—like women’s bicycles today—was designed specifically for them and by 1896, it was reported that there were over 125,000 active women cyclists in America; the League of American Wheelmen (L.A.W.) predicted that the number would grow to over 200,000 by the year’s end (Figure 9).
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Figure 9 – A late 1890s cabinet card of a group of women on what was likely a Sunday outing. All were dressed in their most stylish cycling outfits. A hat appears to have been an essential accoutrement.
When women first took to cycling, it was in a very limited capacity. Some of the earliest accounts of women and bicycles are associated with the circus and the entertainment business (Figure 10). Women’s racing was initially seen as a novelty and usually a major draw at events. The women who performed in these events, many of whom were trick riders, were most often provocatively dressed (for the period) in attire that was intentionally fashioned to appeal to men (Figure 11).
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Figure 10 –One panel from an 1869 stereoview. A very provocative image (for the time) of a woman on a velocipede.
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Figure 11 – An engraving from the French magazine, Le Monde Illustre, November 21, 1868 of the first bicycle race in which women were competing on velocipedes. Even though their legs were covered in full-length stockings, the image was considered extremely provocative. In fact, the same image was run in a New York newspaper several weeks later and in that version an artist was employed to cover-up the ladies’ legs to make the image more suitable for a New York audience. |
H. Ansot, a correspondent for the Overland Monthly Magazine, reminisced in 1895:
I remember a long distance race which took place in [November] 1869, between Paris and Rouen, about 140 kilometers [about 87 miles], over very rough roads. J. Moore – the “Yankee,” as we used to call him – arrived first, closely followed by Michaux, Jr., Eribout, Castara and Bobillier in a bunch. English Johnston was one of the winners, and the poor stragglers followed in one by one. A lady, “Miss America,” entered the race, but failed to make enough speed to be remarked. She subsequently performed the very difficult feat of crossing a tight wire about one hundred and fifty feet in length and thirty feet above the ground, mounted on a velocipede having a V-shaped tire to fit the wire rope. (Overland Monthly Magazine, August 1895, page 124.)
Andrew Ritchie has pointed out that:
Women did not participate regularly in the club formation and racing that constituted the early bicycle movement. The infrequent accounts of their participation describe evidently risqué, exploitive displays of gymnastic and athletic ability in the urban music-hall environment of European and American capital cities and occasional races in France. These it can be argued, should be viewed as progressive, genuine athletic contests even though the main intention of the promoter was to be risqué and sensational. Performances involving women appear frequently to have been for salacious entertainment, rather than to showcase athletic prowess or exertion, although the fact that they occurred at all is significant (Ritchie, 2011, p. 27). (Figure 12).
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Figure 12 - Circa 1880s cabinet card of a provocatively dressed young woman on a high-wheel bicycle.
After the introduction of the safety bicycle, women’s cycling became a phenomenon of its own, one that had tremendous social implications. It forced reforms in the rigid Victorian dress codes and it played an important role in the development of the women’s liberation movement (Gilles 2018).
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| Figure 12a - An advertisement for women's cycling outfits from 1896. |
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Figure 13 – A signed, late-1890s cabinet card of Tillie Anderson. She was born in Sweden in 1875, and emigrated to America during her teenage years. Shortly thereafter, she became enthralled with bicycle racing and set out to break records. Her riding prowess caught the attention of the Excelsior Supply Company and they became her sponsor and supplied her with one of their top bicycles, the Thistle. She quickly became the most celebrated woman cyclist of her era.
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Figure 14 – 1898 cabinet card of Lizzie Glaw, a German emigrant who was another top racer on the women’s circuit in the late nineteenth century. She was one of the few women to beat Tillie in a race which took place in March of 1897 and she quickly proclaimed herself to be the American champion. From the collection of John Weiss. Used with permission. |
During the high-wheel heyday of the 1880s, bicycle tracks were usually large, outdoors and with a hardened dirt or cinder surface. When women’s competitive racing became popular in the mid-1890s, one promoter in particular, Henri Messier, designed a short, indoor track, made of wood; the entire circuit was banked, with the corners as steep as 45 degrees. Some tracks were so small they were erected inside armories, skating rinks and on the infield diamond of a baseball park. The entire wooden track was steeply banked, like a large wooden bowl. The corners on some tracks were so steep that if riders were not maintaining a critical minimum speed they would literally fall off the track. The races were fast, with speeds averaging over 20 miles per hour for the entire duration of the race.
Messier’s tracks were temporary structures, built from scratch for that specific venue, then torn down and the lumber discarded as scrap when the event was over. It was cheaper to purchase new lumber from a local vender at the next venue than it was to transport the track from one location to another. The men’s tracks were typically longer and not usually banked as steeply as the women’s tracks.
The women’s six-day races were also different from the men’s. Although they would race for six
consecutive days, the races were generally held in the evenings and limited to one three-hour race each
night. Thus, unlike the men’s six-day endurance events where they raced continuously for the entire six-day period, speed was less of a factor. The women races were much faster and reported to be much more exciting to watch (Figure 15).
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Figure 15 – Late nineteenth century cabinet card of Amelie le Gall, better known by the mononym Lisette. She held numerous racing records in France, where she was from, and her arrival on the American racing scene added another level of excitement to women’s racing.
Adding to the excitement were the women’s outfits. In an 1895 newspaper article about a competition in Minneapolis, the writer described one rider, Helen Baldwin, who rode for the Monarch Bicycle Company, as wearing:
tightly fitted riding breeches, similar to those worn by equestrians. Below the breeches, she wore tights. Helen may have been the first American racer of the era to adopt this sleeker, more practical, and more tantalizing uniform…
Within the very first mile, according to the St. Paul Daily Globe, her skin-tight knee breeches began creeping up or her stocking creeping down, leaving a pretty streak of pink flesh peeping through the opening. That an inch or two of exposed skin caused such a sensation says a lot about the public mores of the time (Gilles 2018:48). (Figure 16).
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Figure 16 – A late 1880s cabinet card of Helen Baldwin when she was still a high-wheel cyclist. She later transitioned to racing with a safety bicycle. From the collection of Lorne Shields. Used with permission.
The women would typically race three hours each night for a total of 18 hours per week and the winner of the most daily heats was declared the winner of that week’s event.
Sometime in late January or early February of 1897, Henri Messier set up a rink in Columbus, Ohio for a six-day women’s race. Conn Baker, one of the elite racers from the period was there and Roger Gilles, author of Women on the Move, wrote about the event:
Because of the threat of L.A.W. sanction, direct competition between men and women was rare, but sometimes men ventured onto the track while the women were in training. In Columbus in 1897, for example, professionals Tom Eddy and Conn Baker spun around the track every afternoon when the women weren’t racing. Eddy took four or five hard falls that week before mastering the turns. Baker felt more comfortable on the track, and on the Monday following the women’s race, with the arena closed to the public, Tilly [Anderson]—by then widely considered to be the top woman racer—joined the two men for several mile-long sprints. The pace was too fast for Eddy, who couldn’t hold the track and finally flew into the outer railing, snapping off a two-by-four post with his shoulder. Baker did better, and he and Tilly completed one sixteen-lap mile in 2:45 (21.8 mph), the first half with Tillie in the pace and the second half with Baker leading the way. Both riders were likely holding back, however, as Baker had earlier in the week completed five miles at 22.78 mph, and at that point in her career Tillie’s one-mile record was an amazing 2:09, or 27.9 mph (see: Women on the Move – The Forgotten Era of Women’s Bicycle Racing, 2018, University of Nebraska Press, pp 60-61).
The idea of a woman riding a bicycle didn’t sit well with those in society who were obsessed with a woman’s morals and mode of dress. There were many who considered it reprehensible for a woman to wear bloomers or any garment that resembled pants, let alone the outfits that women racers were wearing; it was considered scandalous and just not lady-like.
Bicycle historian Andrew Ritchie places this in a larger context:
It was not just a question of whether women should have the right to ride or not (and this was always the main issue until about 1895), but what they should wear when they rode, how they should ride, when they should ride, who they should ride with, whether they should race, whether it was good for their health, their morals, their families, their complexions, their hair and their reputations.
The discussion was really a much bigger one than women and bicycles and tricycles: what was really being talked about was women and men, and by implication women’s position in a society that was organized and dominated by men. The debate that went on between about 1870 and 1890 about women and cycling was in fact a continual battle fought by an increasingly large number of women for the right to do what they pleased, when they pleased, in the face of a vast army of mostly unwritten laws about how they were to live their lives. And older women as well as men were the guardians of these laws.
The story of women and the bicycle is an extraordinary one. Men, of course, designed and manufactured the velocipedes and bicycles which enabled them to liberate themselves from the confines of their homes and their jobs and to taste a new kind of freedom and adventure. The only barriers to their success were their own inventive limitations.
As cycling became more and more popular, and women kissed their husbands and sons goodbye on Saturdays and Sundays and waited for them to come home in the evenings with their exciting stories of the road, some of them began to grow resentful. Working-class and middle-class women alike found themselves in the often disagreeable position of being isolated from these new experiences which the men enjoyed so cheaply… they knew that they were missing something.
And so the right to ride a bicycle or a tricycle became one of the many things that a woman had to struggle for. And there were a lot of people who opposed her for all sorts of reasons. The most minute aspects of an activity that men had an unquestioned right to take part in were put under a questioning microscope (Ritchie 1975: 146-47).
In 1895, the New York Sun, a leading newspaper of the day, published a newly enacted regulation by the trustees of the board of education in College Park, Long Island, regarding women teachers riding their bicycles to school. It read as follows:
We, as the trustees, are responsible to the public for the conduct of the schools and in a great measure, guardians of the morals of the pupils. We consider that for our boys and girls to see their women teachers ride up to the school door every day and dismount from a bicycle is conducive to the creation of immoral thoughts, and will sooner or later cause the boys and girls to lose the respect for the teachers and terminate in the complete inability of the young women to maintain discipline…
Dr. A.F.W. Reymer, another member of the board was quoted as saying “It is not the proper thing for the woman to ride the bicycle. They wear skirts, of course, but if we don’t stop them now, they will want to be in style with the New York [City] woman and wear bloomers [a style of loose-fitting trousers that were gathered at the knee and exposed a woman’s ankles and revealed the shape of her calf]. Then how would our school-rooms look with the woman teachers parading about among the boys and girls wearing bloomers? They might just as well wear men’s trousers. I suppose it will come to that, but we are determined to stop our teachers before they go that far” (See: L.A.W. Bulletin and Good Roads magazine, July 12, 1895, page 18)
The teachers were notified of the passage of the order and needless to say they were indignant.
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| Figure 16a - An illustration from the British Illustrated Police News, May 23, 1896. |
During the Victorian era, a women’s mode of dress defined her place in society. You couldn’t be a “lady,” for instance, if you wore bloomers (Figure 17). In a society obsessed with strict moral codes and appearances, this was considered scandalous. Women who wore them, even if it was just while they rode their bicycles, were considered wanton women. They were often verbally ridiculed, had obscenities yelled at them or were physically pelted with objects when they rode by. A woman’s place was in the domestic sphere and many in society were determined to keep her there.
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Figure 17 – A fine cabinet card of a group of men and women on an outing. The woman at the far left is wearing bloomers. Circa 1894. From the collection of Lorne Shields. Used with permission.
In 1895, a St. Louis paper published what was likely an apocryphal yarn about a farmer and his wife, which sadly sums up the unfortunate plight of many Victorian women at the time. Coming upon the village doctor, a local farmer asked:
If you happen to be out our way at any time, I wish you’d stop and see my wife. She doesn’t seem to be feeling very well. The doctor asked what ailed her? I dunno, said the farmer. This morning, after she’s milked the cows, and fed the pigs, and got breakfast for the men, and washed the dishes, and built a fire under the broiler in the washhouse, and done a few little jobs around the house, she complained of feeling tired-like. I shouldn’t wonder if her blood was poor, and I guess she needs a dose of medicine (As reported in the L.A.W. Bulletin and Good Roads magazine, June 21, 1895).
In 1897, Susan B. Anthony, the American social reformer and women’s rights activist who led the National Woman Suffrage Association—a woman’s organization that played a pivotal role in the women’s suffrage movement—wrote to the League of American Wheelmen (Figure 18). In her opinion piece, she expressed her views on women’s apparel:
The matter of woman’s apparel has been discussed and re-discussed, and women have experimented and re-experimented in various directions to reform their dress and make it sensible. The big, tall hats in a public place are a nuisance too great to endure, and the trailing skirts for every passerby to step upon are another nuisance quite equal to that of the hat, and in every possible direction the attire of women seems to be planned for show rather for utility.
Fifty years ago, when a few independent women [see: Amelia Bloomer] undertook to dock their skirts at the bottom and were laughed at and ridiculed from Maine to Louisiana – there wasn’t any California then – they soon found that the physical comfort was not equal to the spiritual persecution, and so they relapsed into their long skirts again.
My friend, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and myself at that time declared that it was utterly impossible for women to be independent in dress or anything else so long as they were financially and politically dependent. The dress is an expression of the spirit within, and when that spirit is in bondage, the expression of it can be in no other form than that of bondage, whether it is the Chinese shoe or the unseemly hat, the pinching corset or the trailing skirt. When the spirit is crippled, the body will be crippled, also. Therefore, it doesn’t matter what I, or anyone, shall say or do to reform woman’s dress, so long as she is compelled to stand upon a political platform with idiots, lunatics and criminals and every possible defective class of men, she will have to be and do exactly what the superior classes of men desire.
So, let your symposium on woman’s clothes help to create a public sentiment that shall emancipate her from the political subjection that never has and never can make her other than the slave of every wind that blows, whether that wind is for big hats or little tight waists or loose waists, long or short skirts, high or low heels. The woman of today is the creation of the conditions that man has made for her, and what we of the National Woman Suffrage Association demand is, that woman herself shall have a hand in making such conditions as she thinks will conduce to her own best development (L.A.W. Bulletin and Good Roads magazine, January 29, 1897, page 122).
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Figure 18 – Susan B. Anthony, the American social reformer and women’s rights activist.
At times, women were their own worst enemies. One cyclist was so concerned with her appearance while bicycling that rather than wear bloomers, a bifurcated dress or some other form of rational attire, she elected instead to sew a six-foot long and 3/8-inch-wide chain into the hem of her dress to keep it from ballooning over her head while she rode (see: L.A.W. bulletin, May 14, 1897, page 532). But this was an isolated case. Far more threatening were such views like those of Miss Charlotte Smith, president of The Woman’s Rescue League of Washington, DC, who believed that the bicycle was nothing more or less than the devil’s advance agent and was the source of an alarming increase of immorality among women. In 1896, the Philadelphia Times published her list of objections to a woman riding a bicycle:
1) The alarming increase of immorality among young women in the United States is most startling to those who have investigated the subject.
2) A great curse has been inflicted upon the people of this country because of the present bicycle craze, and if a halt is not called soon, seventy-five percent of the cyclist will be an army of invalids within the next ten years.
3) Immoderate bicycling by young women is to be deplored, because of evil associations and opportunities offered by bicycling sports.
4) Bicycling by young women has helped to swell the ranks of young girls who finally drift into the standing army of outcast women of the United States more than any other medium.
5) Bicycle runs for Christ, by the so-called Christians, should be themed bicycle runs for Satan, for the bicycle is the devil’s advance agent, morally and physically, in thousands of instances.
A woman cyclist responded astutely to Miss Smith’s objections and concluded by saying:
A wise author once said “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” To the vulgar, all things are vulgar…. Wishing the “Rescue League” all the success it deserves (as published in the L.A.W. Bulletin and Good Roads magazine, July 17, 1896).
There was also Dr. Harriette C. Keatinge, of New York City, who, while an advocate for women who enjoyed riding, professed that it should only be done in moderation. She believed that cycling was ultimately injurious to a woman’s health. In an article titled “Women and the Bicycle From a Medical Point of View,” she wrote about the advantages and dangers of cycling for both men and women.
A careful examination of fourteen professional bicyclists failed to show any deformity of the spinal column; still the position most male riders take when on a wheel is calculated to injure them. The curving of the spinal column and bending over the handlebars is beyond question an injurious custom. They may make greater speed but it puts too great a strain on the heart.
It contracts the thoracic cavity and hinders the full expansion of the lungs, thus preventing the air from filling the air cells, and the blood becoming oxygenated… Bending over presses down upon the bowels, contracts the abdominal cavity and produces congestion of all the pelvic organs. Cyclists are apt to contract the habit of mouth breathing, which is most objectionable. Breathing with the mouth open irritates the throat and “bronchi,” causing very often laryngitis and bronchitis. It always causes the mouth and throat to become dry; at the same time, you inhale dust, etc., directly into the bronchial tubes.
The following conditions may be said to make the exercise unadvisable: Arteriosclerosis, valvular disease of the heart, asthma, affections of the abdomen and pelvis, epilepsy and chronic affections of the joints and muscles. Fast and long distance riding, especially in adolescents, is to be condemned. Straining to climb hills or win a race, or against head winds, are injurious.
No woman should ride with a tight-fitting waist or a tight or long corset on. The corset, if worn at all, should be soft and flexible. The clothing should be of light-weight wool material and adapted to the easy and unrestrained movements of the rider. Women should not ride during menstruation, and those of hemorrhagic tendency not at all….
Bicycling has many features to recommend it… The exercise demands deep respirations, and therefore the rider should sit erect, keep the shoulders straight, expand the chest and breath through the nose with mouth closed. Those persons who have heart trouble should not talk when ascending a hill. Women should ride in moderation, both as to length of time and speed, and should be properly dressed. A bicycle riding under these conditions cannot do harm. It is only when it is used under wrong conditions and abused that it injures the individual. The bicycle affords great pleasure and costs little to keep; it is of the greatest value to women who are confined in stores and factories, and those who lead sedentary lives. It renders a woman independent, as she can take a ride without an escort (From: The Ladies World – Outing and Bicycle Number, July, 1896, page 21).
The opportunities were there for women to ride, but a majority of them were afraid of what people would say if they did. Victorian society was, to a large part, about appearances. But the so called New Woman challenged these notions and she set the course for the future, one where women could compete with men on an even playing field.
Melody Davis points out that:
[m]ore than any one person, however, it was the machine—the bicycle—that steered pants into the realm of acceptability for women’s dress, as bloomers greatly facilitated pedaling. It proved difficult, however, to overcome centuries of aversion to women in pants so that any object, such as a bicycle seat or saddle, became subject to social suspicion if it separated a woman’s legs. Inflamed by the thought of women’s potential masturbation on bicycle seats, medical tracts of the 1890s attempted to dissuade the public from this sexual deviancy, especially censuring the “scorching,” or bent over the handle bars, position. Happily, these earnest doctors were not at all successful in discouraging women from riding fast, or bloomers from separating the legs. As they became more common, pants, whether worn or scorned, continued to signify physical freedom and self-direction, including the sexual, and it was commonly believed that women who wore them were in some manner trying to usurp the privilege of men (Davis 2011).
Regarding the bloomer question, Helen Foster wrote in 1896:
The question for us to decide is, whether we will have the courage of our convictions and of our own good sense; or whether we will blindly obey Custom, however senseless its mandates may be. Is the expression we often hear from numerous unthinking men and women, who are not cyclists, “that bloomers look horrid,” of so much importance that we should sacrifice to it our own personal comfort and freedom and enjoyment, much less our own individual convictions and our rights as human beings? Is it not nobler to brave a certain transient unpopularity… in a cause we know to be right and sure to win in the end?
There is truly an ethical side to the bloomer question; but it is not included in, or represented by, the cant about “womanliness,” etc., which is the weapon with which every step women have made to greater breadth and freedom of life has been opposed, and which, because of this, has now become so nauseating to all self-respecting women (L.A.W. Bulletin and Good Roads magazine, January 3, 1896, page 4.)
In response to an 1895 article in the Boston Daily Advertiser about how the new cycling craze was playing a role in getting romantic couples to wed, a progressive woman responded to the editor by outlining to women cyclists the advantages of a bicycle over a husband:
The New Woman, it must be remembered, does not marry to be supported. She can support herself. What she seeks is congenial companionship. Now the bicycle, as every rider knows, is
the most delightful of friends and companions. It has, in fact, several points in its favor as compared to a man.
In the first place, its promises are to be relied on; and if, when once won, and taken “for better or worse,” it can be replaced by another without trouble or expense, and satisfaction guaranteed. It is obvious that in the case of a man this cannot be done. A man is not warranted. If one is disappointed in him… there is no remedy which does not involve more inconvenience possibly than the man himself. Then it does not have to be expostulated, or reasoned with, or urged, before it will adopt any desired course. It never talks back, and it responds quickly and easily to the slightest wish. It never growls (only squeaks a little) when its meals are not ready, or its buttons are off. Does not swear, smoke, chew or drink. Again its whereabouts can always be depended upon. It does not go off by itself to the club at night, and come home in the wee sma’ hours with its running gear damaged and its tires punctured. It does not snore. It has no theories about woman’s sphere, no cast-iron views as to what constitutes modesty in feminine apparel. It is, in fact, a most ardent advocate even of so radical a garment as knickerbockers, and of complete liberty for all. When treated with the consideration it deserves, it is never selfish, jealous or unreasonable. It is patient and forbearing, a comfort and counselor in sorrow and trouble, a lightener of life’s burdens. Unlike the blushing miss, who, when asked by her Sabbath-school teacher to name her “chief consolation in life” replied, “I don’t like to tell you his name, but I’ve no objection to telling you where he lives,” the wheelwoman will unhesitatingly point to her wheel in answer to such a question. In fact, no woman need hesitate to confide her happiness to it. She will love it better and better as the years roll on, and nothing but death will come between her and her faithful “bike.”
There is undoubtedly much more that might be said on this interesting topic. It is perhaps the profoundest, as the bloomer question is the fiercest and most vexatious, of the many social problems which the innocent-looking, two-wheeled vehicle known as a bicycle seems to have raised. It adds another to the pros and cons which agitate the mind of the woman who is trying to decide whether to wed or not wed. It is to be hoped that such may find a few points worthy of consideration in the married life of Mrs. Victoria Bicycle. (As published in L.A.W. Bulletin and Good Roads magazine, July 5th, 1895, pages 7-8).
The L.A.W.’s weekly magazine published numerous letters and articles by women who defended their right to ride in any attire they saw fit for the occasion. In 1895, Mrs. L.N. Pero astutely defended a woman’s right to wear bloomers or any other form of rational dress:
One cannot pick up a paper without seeing the bloomer question discussed. The subject grows tiresome… Society women, actresses, lecturers all take it up and have their fling at bloomers. The chief objection appears to be that they are not “stylish,” that they are hideous and immodest. Terrible objections, all three, if they are true, and enough to make a very brave woman hesitate before she lays herself liable to have such terms applied to her, by donning the rational dress…
Some of those who are loudest in denunciation of bloomers, on the score of immodesty, advocate the short skirt, reaching just below the knee, with knickerbockers underneath. I leave it to any person who has closely observed the subject and feels competent to judge which looks neatest, and most inconspicuous, the well-made rather full bloomer, terminating just below the knee, with well-fitting leggings, or short skirt, raised and flopped about by the pedal motion, blown and twisted by the wind, displaying the knickerbocker undergarment in a way that must be most painful to the sensitive ones who think bloomers so immodest…
The unpleasant feature of bloomers is that they attract attention, and that is always unpleasant, but so did the first women to ride the bicycles attract attention. But they did not abandon the wheel for all that, and so also do the short skirts. There are plenty of people, even now, who say any woman who rides a bicycle is immodest.
It is evident to me that the woman who states that the skirt made down to the ankles, is just as comfortable and more suitable for riding, hardly knows what she is talking about, or, to put it mildly, has not had experience, and is not competent to judge. Possibly she rides a few miles occasionally in the city streets or the park, while some of us who like to go for an outing of fifty or a hundred miles with our husbands and brothers, in our comfortable, neat and stylish gear, even stylish bloomer suits, run the risk of being called all sorts of odious names by some person, who, for reasons best known to themselves, are unable to adopt this most comfortable and suitable dress, and can know nothing about the delight of being able to spin along without the swinging skirt spread to catch every breeze. If bloomers are truly undesirable and unnecessary then they will die a natural death.
Is it the fear that they will make women immodest that is causing so much agitation? Let us trust that true modesty can never be affected by one’s dress… But for the purpose for which it was designed the bicycle bloomer suit can have no equal (L.A.W. Bulletin and Good Roads magazine, December 6, 1895, pages 18-19).
A final note on the subject of women and the bicycle is from Melody Davis who wrote:
Besides reforming clothing by dooming the corset and giving license to women to wear pants, the bicycle in the mid-1890s induced women to exercise and gave them personal freedom. The bicycle became a chief means for women to get to work and to pay calls, and the comic press found a subject to occupy the pens of its artists for years, with entire almanacs devoted to “wheelers” and “scorchers” (fast riders). Stereo view publishers, however, tended to use the bicycle as one more satirical weapon with which to throw the New Woman “off balance.”
The New Woman’s… new found freedom, represented by her bicycle, was delivering the message that feminists had been trying to impart— though to a far greater purpose—that men could no longer automatically expect women to be subservient to their needs.
What follows is an intriguing gallery of images highlighting women and their bicycles during the late Victorian period. Powerful societal norms dictated how a woman should dress and behave back then yet most of these women would have thought of themselves as liberated and wearing what many of them considered rational dress. How times have changed.
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Figure 19 – Not everyone was naturally adept at riding the new bicycles. Victorian dress codes made it virtually impossible for women to ride the high-wheelers but when the safety bicycle appeared, manufacturers produced a step-through model specifically for them. Riding schools opened up in cities across America and offered riding lessons to neophytes. This image was taken in a New York City suburb by the Royal Photo View Company on Canal Street in New York City. Circa 1896.
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Figure 20 – Another outing image. The woman on the far right appears to be making a repair or adjustment to her bicycle. |
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Figure 21 – A circa 1896 family gathering. A lovely image that was preserved for posterity. From the collection of Lorne Shields. Used with permission. |
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Figure 22 – A half-plate tintype of a young girl with her tricycle. Circa 1890. |
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Figure 23 – Although much less common, images of African American cyclists are occasionally found. This superb, circa 1896, image of an elegant lady is from San Diego, California. From the collection of Lorne Shields. Used with permission. |
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Figure 24 – Another fine image of a distinguished African American lady from Detroit, Michigan. Looks to be from the late nineteenth century. |
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Figure 25 – Another lovely image of a group of friends out for a ride. Circa 1894. From the collection of Lorne Shields. Used with permission. |
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Figure 26 – Late nineteenth century cabinet card of a lady with her decorated bicycle. Likely embellished for a fair or some other holiday event. |
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Figure 27 - |
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Figure 28 – An 1890s image of two ladies at Niagara Falls. Looks like an early cut and paste image that was likely done in a photographer’s studio.
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Figure 29 – A beautiful mid-1890s image by the artistic photography studio of Davis and Sanford. They produced what were perhaps the most elegant images of clients in their Fifth Avenue New York portrait studio from about 1892 until 1915. |
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Figure 30 – |
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| Figure 30a - Wonderful image of a young woman working on her bicycle. Circa 1900. |
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Figure 31 – A rare flyer from the late 1890s of a women’s bicycle race in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Some of the top women racers of the era are featured on the flyer. |
Bibliography
2018 Gilles, Roger
Women on the Move – The Forgotten Era of Women’s Bicycle Racing, University of Nebraska Press.
2018 Hall, Ann
Muscle on Wheels: Louise Armaindo and the High-Wheel Racers of Nineteenth-Century America. McGill-Queen’s University Press Montreal & Kingston.
2011 Davis, Melody
The New Woman in American Stereoviews, 1871-1975. The University of Michigan Press.
2011 Richie, Andrew
Quest for Speed. Published by the author.
1975 King of the Road: An Illustrated History of Cycling. Wildwood House, London.
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