AThe bicycle Why was the bicycle an apt symbol for the suffragette movement in Britain in the late 19th century? Include physical changes to the bicycle and its effects on female riders. (200 words) Solution The 1890s was the peak of the American bicycle craze and consumers were buying bicycles in large numbers. In 1897 alone, more than two million bicycles were sold in the United States , about one for every 30 inhabitants. Bicycles, or “wheels,” were everywhere in the gay 90s as were “wheelmen’s clubs,” well organized association with newsletters, receptions, weekly outings, uniforms and special meeting rooms. Bicycle paths were clogged with traffic on weekends and newspapers were filled with cycling news and special columns for “wheelmen.” Hundreds of manufacturers were successfully profiting from booming sales and a quality bicycle could be had for under $100. Some 3,000 American businesses were involved, in one way or another, in the bicycle trade, including a bicycle shop in Dayton , Ohio owned by two brothers, Orville and Wilbur Wright, who were using bicycle technology to tinker with another invention they were working on. So popular was cycling that by 1896, even Madison Square Garden proved too small to accommodate all those who wanted to display their wares at “The Great Bicycle Exhibition.” 1 Balconies and three tiers of terraces for promenading above the Garden floor were constructed to expand the exhibition space. When the Garden’s electric lights were turned on, the effect, wrote one reporter, “was brilliant.” People in masquerade, human freaks, and other means were employed to attract visitors to the displays. “A Chinaman presides on the platform of a wheel known by its yellow frame. An Indian with his war paint on; a swell; a giant negro; a dime museum midget; a quartet of jubilee singers; a fat boy; young men in racing costume; allegorical figures that suggest the names of standard wheels; [and] a rambling tramp” contributed to the circus-like atmosphere that drew huge crowds to the Garden. Cycling in the 1890s was nothing less than “a general intoxication, an eruption of exuberance like a seismic tremor that shook the economic and social foundations of society and rattled the windows of its moral outlook.” 2 Nowhere was this more evident than in the role of the bicycle in the changing lives of American women. Indeed, the women’s movement of the 1890s and the cycling craze became so inextricably intertwined that in 1896 Susan B. Anthony told theNew YorkWorld’s Nellie Bly that bicycling had “done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world.” 3 It wasn’t always easy for women to ride bicycles and it was the evolution of bicycle technology that opened the sport to women and paved the way for women, such as Annie “ Londonderry ” Kopchovsky, to seize the bicycle as a tool of personal and political power. Before the development of chain technology, which allowed a cyclist to transfer pedal power to a bicycle’s rear wh.

1. AThe bicycle
Why was the bicycle an apt symbol for the suffragette movement in Britain in the late 19th
century? Include physical changes to the bicycle and its effects on female riders. (200 words)
Solution
The 1890s was the peak of the American bicycle craze and consumers were buying bicycles in
large numbers. In 1897 alone, more than two million bicycles were sold in the United States ,
about one for every 30 inhabitants. Bicycles, or “wheels,” were everywhere in the gay 90s as
were “wheelmen’s clubs,” well organized association with newsletters, receptions, weekly
outings, uniforms and special meeting rooms. Bicycle paths were clogged with traffic on
weekends and newspapers were filled with cycling news and special columns for “wheelmen.”
Hundreds of manufacturers were successfully profiting from booming sales and a quality bicycle
could be had for under $100. Some 3,000 American businesses were involved, in one way or
another, in the bicycle trade, including a bicycle shop in Dayton , Ohio owned by two brothers,
Orville and Wilbur Wright, who were using bicycle technology to tinker with another invention
they were working on.
So popular was cycling that by 1896, even Madison Square Garden proved too small to
accommodate all those who wanted to display their wares at “The Great Bicycle Exhibition.” 1
Balconies and three tiers of terraces for promenading above the Garden floor were constructed to
expand the exhibition space. When the Garden’s electric lights were turned on, the effect, wrote
one reporter, “was brilliant.” People in masquerade, human freaks, and other means were
employed to attract visitors to the displays. “A Chinaman presides on the platform of a wheel
known by its yellow frame. An Indian with his war paint on; a swell; a giant negro; a dime
museum midget; a quartet of jubilee singers; a fat boy; young men in racing costume; allegorical
figures that suggest the names of standard wheels; [and] a rambling tramp” contributed to the
circus-like atmosphere that drew huge crowds to the Garden.
Cycling in the 1890s was nothing less than “a general intoxication, an eruption of exuberance
like a seismic tremor that shook the economic and social foundations of society and rattled the
windows of its moral outlook.” 2 Nowhere was this more evident than in the role of the bicycle
in the changing lives of American women. Indeed, the women’s movement of the 1890s and the
cycling craze became so inextricably intertwined that in 1896 Susan B. Anthony told theNew
YorkWorld’s Nellie Bly that bicycling had “done more to emancipate women than anything else
in the world.” 3

2. It wasn’t always easy for women to ride bicycles and it was the evolution of bicycle technology
that opened the sport to women and paved the way for women, such as Annie “ Londonderry ”
Kopchovsky, to seize the bicycle as a tool of personal and political power. Before the
development of chain technology, which allowed a cyclist to transfer pedal power to a bicycle’s
rear wheel, bicycle designers increased bicycle speed by increasing the size of the front wheel to
which the pedals were attached. 4 The typical Ordinary, as these high-wheelers were known, had
front wheels as large as five feet in diameter so the machine would cover more ground with each
pedal revolution. It required extraordinary athleticism just to mount an Ordinary, let alone ride
one, and accidents were common. Steering was difficult and even a small obstacle, a rut in the
road or a large stone, could send the Ordinary rider, mounted many feet above the ground, head
first over the front handlebars. Indeed, learning how to “take a header” safely was an essential
skill.
In the late 1870s, the first so-called “Safety” bicycles appeared. Safety bicycles had wheels of
equal size and a chain drive (though a few models had a chainless “shaft drive”) that transferred
power from the pedals to the rear wheel. At first derided by experienced wheelmen as designed
for old men and women, the Safety quickly proved the superior design, both faster and more
stable than the Ordinary, and remains the basis for bicycle design today.
The Safety, not the Ordinary was, ironically, a bicycle ordinary people, including women, could
ride. The Ordinary quickly became obsolete and the Safety bicycle helped usher in the cycling
craze of the 1890s. “The safety bicycle fills a much-needed want for women in any station of
life,” said The Bearings, a cycling periodical, in October, 1894, “It knows no class distinction, is
within reach of all, and rich and poor alike have the opportunity of enjoying this popular and
healthful exercise.” 5
As cycling’s popularity exploded, a new breed of woman was making her mark in the 1890s.
“The New Woman” was the term used to describe the modern woman who broke with
convention by working outside the home, or eschewed the traditional role of wife and mother, or
became politically active in the woman’s suffrage movement or other social issues. The New
Woman saw herself as the equal of men and the bicycle helped her assert herself as such.
As women learned to ride bicycles they not only gained physical mobility that broadened their
horizons beyond the neighborhoods in which they lived, they discovered a new-found sense of
freedom of movement, a freedom previously circumscribed by the cumbersome fashions of the
Victorian era as well as by Victorian sensibilities. The restrictive clothing of the era -- corsets,
long, heavy, multi-layered skirts worn over petticoats or hoop, and long sleeved shirts with high
collars -- inhibited freedom of movement and seemed to symbolize the constricted lives women
of the 1890s were expected to lead. Such clothing was inimical to even modest forms of exercise
or exertion. Cycling required a more practical, rational form of dress, and large billowing skirts

3. and corsets started to give way to bloomers -- baggy trousers, sometimes called a divided skirt,
cinched at the knee. Although bloomers first appeared decades earlier, and a major social battle
was waged over their propriety, the cycling craze practically mandated changes in women’s
attire for any woman who wanted to ride.
“[C]lothing for sports engaged a wide variety of women in a discussion about their relationship
with their garments, “ according to Sarah Gordon. 6 “At a time when mainstream women rarely
challenged fashion’s dictates, the novelty of sports offered an opportunity to rethink women’s
clothing.”
Annie herself had strong views on the matter. “Miss Londonderry expressed the opinion that the
advent of the bicycle will create a reform in female dress that will be beneficial,” reported the
Omaha World Herald during Annie’s visit there in August 1895. ”She believes that in the near
future all women, whether of high or low degree, will bestride the wheel, except possibly the
narrow-minded, long-skirted, lean and lank element.” 7
But, dress reform was not a simple matter of practical adaptation; it invoked and challenged
popular perceptions of femininity and became a hotly contested moral issue. Eventually, the
battle over dress reform, largely fought on the battlefield of cycling attire, and the popularity of
cycling among women, forever altered public perceptions of female athleticism and proper
female behavior. The prim and proper gentility expected of women yielded to acceptance that
women, too, could exert themselves on the bicycle sensibly dressed for the activity and not only
retain, but even enhance, their femininity. Once hidden under yards of fabric, women cyclists
shed their old skins and emerged, quite literally, as “new women.”
In the course of her own journey, both geographic and personal, Annie would run the sartorial
gamut as she transformed herself into a new woman: she started in long skirts and a traditional
blouse, took to bloomers in Chicago, and would eventually don a man’s riding suit for much of
the trip, an evolution that symbolized the larger changes in women’s lives as expressed in the
clothing they wore. When Annie was in Phoenix in June of 1895, one elderly woman was so
shocked to see Annie in “men’s pants” that she ran horrified into a nearby shop and began
muttering about the “depravity and boldness of the nineteenth century girl.” 8 Cycling, and the
dress reform that accompanied it, challenged traditional gender norms and “provided a space
where women actively contested and rethought femininity,” 9 and there is no better example of
the phenomenon than Annie.
That bike riding might be sexually stimulating for women was also a real concern to many in the
1890s. It was thought that straddling a saddle combined with the motion required to propel a
bicycle would lead to arousal. So-called “hygienic” saddles began to appear, saddles with little or
no padding where a woman’s genitalia would ordinarily make contact with the seat. High stems
and upright handlebars, as opposed to the more aggressively positioned “drop” handlebars, also

4. were thought to reduce the risk of female sexual stimulation by reducing the angle at which a
woman would be forced to ride.
Some critics warned the bicycle was harmful to a woman’s health and all kinds of arguments
were thrown up to try and discourage women from taking to the wheel. The fragility and
sensitivity of the female organism was a common theme. An article in the Iowa State Register,
typical of the times, warned that exposure during cycling to wet and cold “may suppress or
render irregular and fearfully painful the menses, and perhaps sow the seeds for future ill health.”
10 The manufacturers of various “cures” capitalized on fears that cycling could injure the
kidneys, liver and urinary tract, some even suggesting that what might begin as a minor side-
effect from the vibrations of the wheel could eventually lead to death. Warner’s Safe Cure made
these claims in advertisements designed to look like ordinary newspaper articles. In the
September 21, 1895 editions of the Chicago Times-Herald and the Kansas City Star, for
example, Warner’s Safe Cure didn’t just warn women; men, too, were said to be at risk, and
Warner’s was the cure.
But the constant drumbeat of warnings about cycling’s ill effects on women throughout the early
1890s also brought forth pointed rebukes, such as this one in the Chicago Daily News: “When
woman wants to learn anything or do anything useful or even have any fun there is always
someone to solemnly warn her that it is her duty to keep well. Meanwhile in many states she can
work in factories ten hours a day, she can stand behind counters in badly ventilated stores from 8
o’clock to 6, she can bend over the sewing machine for about 5 cents an hour and no one cares
enough to protest. But when these same women, condemned to sedentary lives indoors, find a
cheap and delightful way of getting the fresh air and exercise they need so sorely there is a great
hue and cry about their physical welfare.” 11 Clearly, with the advent of cycling as a recreation
for women, the gauntlet over woman’s rights had been thrown down.
For leaders of the woman’s movement, such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony,
the battle over women’s dress was a critical part of the battle for sexual equality and even the
right to vote. “Why, pray tell me, hasn’t a woman as much right to dress to suit herself as a
man?” Anthony asked a reporter in 1895. “[T]he stand she is taking in the matter of dress is no
small indication that she has realized that she has an equal right with a man to control her own
movements.” 12 Stanton , sometimes referred to as “the first new woman,” 13 also forcefully
defended a woman’s right to dress as she pleased, a right asserted in the context of cycling. “Men
found that flying coat tails were ungainly and that baggy trousers were in the way [when cycling]
so they changed their dress to suit themselves and we didn’t interfere,” Stanton told a reporter in
1895. “They have taken in every reef and sail and appear in skin tight garments. We did not
bother our heads about their cycling clothes, and why should they meddle with what we want to
wear? We ask nothing more of them than did the devils in Scripture – ‘Let us alone.’” 14

5. Despite Stanton’s admonition that men “let us alone” on the question of cycling attire, even the
male dominated medical profession weighed in. At the Mississippi Valley Medical Congress in
Detroit in September of 1895, cycling was endorsed as healthful exercise for men and women,
but the delegates derided bloomers as “something outrageous” and “unanimously declared
[bloomers] to be an abomination and the cause of lowering their wearers in the eyes of
spectators.” 15 No medical reason was cited.
In Norwich, New York in 1895, a group of young men signed a written pledge promising not to
associate with any woman who wore bloomers and to use “all honorable means to render such
costumes unpopular in the community where I reside.” 16 Their goal, never realized, was to
build their movement into a “national anti-bloomer brigade.” Their effort was courageous, said
the Chicago Sunday Times-Herald, tongue-in-cheek, for “[t]he wearers of the bloomers are
usually young women who have minds of their own and tongues that know how to talk.” 17
They could have been writing about Annie.
The issue of women’s cycling attire was fodder for cartoonists, as well. A cartoon in the August
25, 1895 edition of the Omaha World Herald, a cartoon published during Annie’s visit to Omaha,
is a caricature of Egyptian hieroglyphics and depicts several Egyptian men at the “Rameses
Club” watching with bemusement as a woman on a bicycle cycles by in baggy pajama-like
trousers. “The New Woman of Ancient Egypt,” says the top caption; “First Appearance of
Bloomers on the Streets of Karnak,” reads the bottom caption. 18Another cartoon, one published
during Annie’s visit to San Francisco, depicted a woman whose loose fitting bloomers had been
filled with air by the rushing wind, her legs and hindquarters floating above the bike. But for her
grip on the handlebars she’d have sailed away. “Her bloomers were too loose,” read the caption,
implying that the woman, too, might be loose. 19
The social changes wrought by the bicycle were hardly limited to women’s fashion. A woman
with a bicycle no longer had to depend on a man for transportation and she was free to come and
go at will. She experienced a new kind of physical thrill made possible by the speed of the bike.
The bicycle imparted a parity with men that was both new and heady. In short, “more and more
women came to regard the cycle as a freedom machine.” 20
Indeed, mastery of the bicycle as a metaphor for women’s mastery over their own lives was the
message of Frances Willard’s 1895 bookA Wheel Within a Wheel: How I Learned to Ride the
Bicycle. 21Willard was one of the most famous women of her day, a leading suffragist and
founder of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union which had a mass following of
independent-minded, often politically active, women. At age 53, Willard resolved to learn to ride
a bicycle because, as she wrote, she “wanted to help women to a wider world…from natural love
of adventure – a love long hampered and impeded…[and] from a love of acquiring this new
implement of power and literally putting it underfoot.” 22 (Emphasis added.) And as she did, so

6. did millions of other women. America would never be the same.