Christchurch Cycling Craze #17 - Don't Try This At Home!

Cycling Stunt on the Madras Street Overbridge in 1900

Christchurch Cycling Craze #16 - The Long Arm - or Wheel - of the Law

With all that cycling going on, some of it had to be a threat to law and order, surely? So if you can't beat them...

A police cycle patrol in Christchurch, which was raised to thwart a horse fiend.
From left: Constables J Andrews, D G Sinclair, W Ainsworth, A E Rowell, P Fitzgerald, District Clerk A Stanton, Constables T Barrett, J Hayes, S Flewellen, Cycling Instructor Mr F Painter, Constable D H Hannafin, Sergeant Major W T Mason, Detective R Marsack, Constable J Dougan, Station Cook W Kwoe, Constable W Tonkin, and Detective L D Benjamin. Taken by Frederick Nelson Jones in 1896. Alexander Turnbull Library

And then there was the small matter of enforcing the emerging rules of the road:

Traffic Officer Herbert MacIntosh prepares to mount his bicycle while his brothers and sisters watch in 1895, a time when motor cycles and cars were yet to become police equipment. Photo: Standish & Preece. Christchurch City Libraries.

Christchurch Cycling Craze #14 - Mother Was A Biker Chick

My mother attempts to get her turn on a tyre-less tricycle in a Christchurch backyard jungle, circa 1920. Her older brothers teased her relentlessly, but, as it is with brothers, they were her biggest protectors.

Who would have guessed that twenty years later those two older brothers would be in the army with a later departure for the North African campaign in World War Two. Pictured here in November 1940 with their maternal grandmother, a month after entering training camp. Happily, both returned all in one piece at the end of the war.

Although she might not appreciate the label "biker chick", mother could appreciate a bit of humour.

Like most Christchurch residents of that era, Mum was an ardent cyclist - not for the health benefits, but for getting from A to B in a low cost, relatively effortless way. She never did learn to drive a car; that all ended rather unhappily one day with the car on the front lawn inches from the front of the house, not in the driveway.

One of my first memories is of riding home from the doctor's, no doubt after a jab in the arm, in a child seat on the back of Mum's bike. No helmets, of course, but the wind in our hair, the thrill of familiar places passing by at a speed faster than walking, and the whirr of the chain & wheels in motion, just Mum and I.

In loving memory, Mum, 1917-2002, on Mother's Day.

Christchurch Cycling Craze #9 - The 1918 Influenza Epidemic

A nurse leaving a sub-depot on her daily round of visits, during the 1918 influenza epidemic, Christchurch [1918]. The Weekly Press, 4 December 1918. Christchurch City Libraries.

In the influenza pandemic between October and December 1918, New Zealand lost about half as many people to influenza as it had in the whole of the First World War.

The death toll had topped 8600 before the pandemic subsided in December, with Maori affected disproportionately with an overall rate of death of 42.3 per thousand people, seven times that of the European death rate of 5.8 per thousand people.

The flu's impact on communities was uneven too. Some were hit hard while others escaped without much loss. The most consistently lethal sites for death from influenza were the military camps such as those at Featherston and Trentham where the rates were 22.6 and 23.5 deaths per thousand people respectively.

With the medical profession already stretched to the limit by wartime conditions with many doctors and nurses serving in the military abroad, volunteers were called upon to serve in providing medical care, food service, transportation, funeral and burial services. The bicycle provided the means for volunteers and nurses to make house calls upon the ill & dying at a time when quarantine regulations and the lack of manpower prevented transportation to hospitals and temporary treatment stations.

Walter Ford Gibbs (1893-1918), Kuaka's great uncle, was one of 458 Christchurch residents to die of influenza.

Walter Ford Gibbs, 1893-1918

Like many of those most severely ill or who died, Walter was young. In early November 1918, Christchurch was crowded with people attending the Show weekend races and as a cab driver Walter would have no doubt appreciated the increased business. But the large crowds were the ideal breeding ground and transmitting device for influenza.

After becoming ill, Walter was transported from his home at 20 Melrose Street, a small side street just south of Bealey Avenue to Christchurch hospital. He died there on 14 November 1918. Two days later he was buried in an unmarked grave in the Sydenham cemetery in Simeon Street. He was just 25 years old.

It wasn't until towards the end of the century that a modern generation "re-discovered" Walter and restored him to family memory.

Christchurch Cycling Craze #8 - Woman With A (Cycling) Cause

Unidentified "Lady" Cyclist, Lancaster Park, Christchurch, circa 1896
Lantern slide, probably by A E Preece, Pioneer Amateur Sports Club, Canterbury Public Libraries

Resplendent in her "rational dress" this unidentified woman cyclist looks the photographer dead in the eye with a determination to meet whatever lies up ahead on the Lancaster Park cycling track and in wider society.

By 1896, in the short few years since their formation, the Atalantan Ladies' Cycling Club and the wider suffragist movement had made it possible for this young woman to compete in race events and increasingly ride in safety on city streets.

Indeed, she had probably contributed her own considerable share to the cause.

The rest, as they say, is history...

Christchurch Cycling Craze #7 - The Atalanta Ladies' Cycling Club

The Executive Officers of the Atalanta Cycling Club for Women. The officers were Miss Blanche Lough, later Thompson (1847-1963) (Captain), pictured standing in the centre; Miss Keating (Sub-Captain); Mrs Alice Meredith Burn (Hon. Secretary), pictured on the right; Miss Barker (Hon Treasurer). Committee members were Mrs Kate Sheppard (1848-1934); Miss Bertha Lough, pictured seated in the centre; Miss F Adams. Christchurch City Libraries

The Atalanta Cycling Club was formed by twin sisters Blanche and Bertha Lough and friends in Christchurch in 1892 to organise day trips and longer tours as well as picnics and balls. It was named after Atalanta, the female athlete in Greek mythology.

Clearly of an independent spirit and keen to blaze new trails for women, a number of the Atalantans were to rise to prominence beyond their cycling activities as the observant, knowledgeable reader will note. Blanche (Lough) Thompson was to become a social reformer: she participated in the free kindergarten movement, was active in the Red Cross, served in soup kitchens during the 1918 Influenza Epidemic and became the first woman to win a motor car driving competition in New Zealand.

The most famous member of the Atalanta Club, however, was undoubtedly Kate Sheppard, suffragist and social reformer, who was a founding member of the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) that campaigned for the vote for women who, it was believed, with a majority of the electoral vote would favour prohibition. Working with the likes of Tommy Taylor, reformer & prohibitionist, at The Prohibitionist, Sheppard and the WCTU successfully forced the hand of Richard Seddon's Liberal Government to secure New Zealand women the vote in 1893. New Zealand was the first nation to extend the franchise to women.

But the struggle was far from won: it took another forty years or so for one of their gender to gain a seat in parliament.

In the early days on the streets of Christchurch, the Atalanta Club members were subjected to abuse and even stone throwing as some members of the public found the act of cycling by women to be scandalous. Often one of the brothers of the Lough twins accompanied the group to deter such hecklers and troublemakers.

One of the contributing factors to the unwelcome attention the women cyclists received was the view held by a number of the club members that "rational dress" - bloomers or knickerbockers - should be worn for cycling. By September 1893, such negative publicity had been generated that the Club decided that none of its members should wear rational dress when cycling, though this was relaxed in succeeding years as public attitudes thawed.

Thus, the Atalantans swept up in the Cycling Craze played a key role in transforming social attitudes to women's participation in sport, in improving their health and leisure opportunities as well as contributing to securing the women's franchise.

The Atalanta Ladies' Cycling Club, circa 1892.
Christchurch City Libraries

Christchurch Cycling Craze #6 - Cycling Sydenham Rugby Club 1900s

photo by Adam MacLay. Alexander Turnbull Library

By the early 1900s, cycles and their cyclists were everywhere. A couple of Super 14 squads worth of men & boys stand outside the Sydenham Football Club Hall displaying their cycles before, perhaps, retiring inside for a few beverages. Mr CH will be along shortly to help out with an exact street location! Hastings Street? (And probably to tell me Sydenham was dry then - which will truly astound me).

Or per chance, the lads were about to play a game of cycle rugby with a half time show by the bicycling band?

And should push-bike power fail to budge an immovable object, the trusty steam traction engine could be prevailed upon to haul the Oddfellows Hall from its Lichfield Street location in the central city to a site 3/4 of a mile away in Sydenham in 1903. Skids rather than trollies were used under the Hall as they didn't want to unnecessarily raise its height and snag the telegraph lines overhead.

The Weekly Press, 25 Nov. 1903, p. 45

Christchurch City Libraries

A small child on a tricycle provides an attentive audience and managerial supervision.

The Christchurch Cycling Craze #1

A peloton of cyclists of the Pioneer Amateur Sports Club, in front of the AMP building in Cathedral Square, about to head out for a Saturday afternoon run, circa 1886. Christchurch City Libraries image.

Christchurch has been known as the Cycle City for more than a century. Its flat terrain, temperate weather, and wide streets lend themselves to the cycling way of life, even if the infrastructure has not always been provided to a standard or availability that cycling enthusiasts may have liked.

A mix of bicycles and folks are arrayed in front of the AMP building above prior to embarking upon a Saturday afternoon rumble, er, ramble.

Christchurch Bicycle Band Reprise

The Christchurch Bicycle Band on the "march" once again. circa 1895.
Alexander Turnbull Library

We sincerely hope Mr Canterbury Heritage will stop by & perhaps help us out with a suggestion as to which of Christchurch's fine streets this parade may be on.

Update: And he did:

"This is a westerly view of Kilmore Street from the Victoria Street intersection, looking past Cranmer Square toward Hagley Park.

The two storey building in the distance still exists; formerly a convenience store and then a school tuck shop, it stands at the corner of Cranmer Square opposite the former Normal School."

Earlier post on the Christchurch bicycle band here.