Fashionable upper class bicycle craze 1895

By the early 1890's the safety bicycle was well established and pneumatic tyres were available, making bicycles easier and more pleasurable to ride. The fashionable upper classes craze for bicycle riding started in Paris in 1894 and the next year, London society had followed the fashion. This bicycling craze was much like the craze for indoor roller skating (dubbed by the press as "rinkomania") which swept London in the 1870's.

As Lady Norreys* said in Gentlewoman on June 1st 1895, "You see, bicycling is to be the amusement this season, and all the world is taking to it. Battersea Park is simply crawling with women who are learning, and a good club is an absolute essential." The St John's Wood, Kilburn and Hampstead Advertiser of June 20th 1895, commented on the craze "To the sudden devotion of the fashionable world to the wheel, we may attribute the opening of the new Trafalgar Bicycle Club. Society has these fits of enthusiasm at pretty frequent intervals. One year it is spiritualism, another it's 'slumming'** a third, golf, and now cycling has its day."

Constance Everett-Green wrote in The Hub 9 April 1898 "It would hardly be too much to say that in April of 1895 one was considered eccentric for riding a bicycle, whilst by the end of June eccentricity rested with those who did not ride."

The upper classes, men and women, rode their bicycles in public parks like Battersea Park, Hyde Park and the Serpentine. Riding was more social than for exercise. The craze took London society by storm, Princess Louise (Queen Victoria's sixth child) took private bicycle riding lessons at the Trafalgar in 1895. Social riding in public parks became very popular with the middle classes at the start of 1895, so the upper classes needed somewhere exclusive to ride their bicycles. To satisfy this need, a small number of London clubs sprang up in 1895 providing cycle tracks within their grounds where members could take exercise and socialise. The main London clubs were:

Sheen House - Richmond Park.

Trafalgar Bicycling Club - South Kensington.

The Wheel Club - South Kensington.

These clubs admitted both men and women as members. All of the clubs put on some kind of racing, but it was very low key and often limited to members. The role of women riders in the clubs was limited to 'competitions' for appearance, costume and skilful riding. Rational dress for women was initially not allowed at the Trafalgar Club.

When the upper classes moved on from fashionable bicycle riding at the end of 1896, the exclusive cycling clubs went out of business.

* Lady Norreys was described as the most indefatigable and graceful of the wheelers

** Slumming was when people went to see for themselves how the poor lived. They considered that first hand experience among the metropolitan poor was essential to understand their problems. Slumming was also an evenings entertainment for many well-to-do Londoners.

+ Rational dress was clothing for women bicyclists which was usually a divided skirt or bloomers. This caused outrage in some sectors of society. Lady Harberton was one of the pioneers of rational dress for cycling and she formed the Rational Dress Society in 1881. She was famously refused service for refreshments at the Hautboy Hotel, Ockham, Surrey, in 1899 when she arrived there on her bicycle in rational dress. Lady Harberton took the landlady to court and although the case was dismissed, it aroused great interest with the public and furthered the cause of women's cycling.