The Velocipede Invasion of 1869

During the first half of 1869, the people of Charleston swooned rapturously over the arrival of the latest mechanical sensation called the velocipede. This precursor to the modern bicycle was heralded locally and around the globe as a revolution in human locomotion that was destined to change the world. Having embraced the new machine in mid-February, the city’s initial enthusiasm for the velocipede was overshadowed several months later by another fad that went on to spoil everyone’s summer fun.

The Rise of the Velocipede:

Velocipede is term coined in France in the early nineteenth century to identify a two-wheeled vehicle that preceded the modern bicycle. In 1817, German inventor Karl Draise created a two-wheeled machine that a rider could propel with his feet on the ground or glide or coast while balancing with his feet raised. Drais took his laufmaschine, as he called it, to France in 1818 and patented it under the Latin name velocipede, which means “swift feet.” It enjoyed a bit of popularity across Europe and in England, where it was sometimes called a “hobby horse” or “dandy horse” after the modish young gentlemen who rode it in public.

Forty years later, in 1860s Paris, several engineers worked together to add a rotary crank and pedals to the axle of the front wheel, which the rider turned with his feet to propel the machine (as on a child’s modern tricycle). They also designed a metal frame that could be mass-produced, and patented the vehicle as the new and improved velocipede. At this time, the wheels were of nearly equal size and were made entirely of wood. Each wheel’s outer rim was wrapped with a thin band of steel until rubber tires first appeared in the late 1880s. To slow or stop the machine, the rider, or “velocipedestrian,” either pulled a lever on the frame to engage a friction brake against the rear tire or simply lowered his feet to the ground.

Notice that I described the rider using the masculine pronoun “his.” The velocipede was invented by men for men, but women started climbing on to the new-fangled machines immediately after they appeared in public. In fact, the rise of the velocipede had a significant impact on the advancement of women’s rights in the late nineteenth century by facilitating an unprecedented degree of individual mobility and independence. For the general public of the late 1860s, however, the biggest question was whether or not women should wear trousers while riding a velocipede. The newspapers of that era are filled with discussions of avant-garde females riding “bicycular” machines while clad in shocking “bi-legular garments.”[1] In the summer of 1869, for example, the report of a women’s velocipede race in Paris failed to mention the results of the competition, but provided the following chauvinistic description: “The ladies wore pretty little hats on masses of hair, silk jackets coming a very little below the waist, and silk boots. This was all. From the hips to the feet, nature, covered with the tight-fitting, elasticunmentionables [sic], prevailed. The young ladies worked around the ring with that ugly and ridiculous movement of the legs which the velocipede exacts from its votaries, and ‘never,’ says a [male] spectator, ‘were the pretty, round forms of pretty women made to look so laughably unattractive.”[2]

The velocipede caught the public’s attention across France, and mass-produced machines quickly began to proliferate throughout Europe. The first velocipedes in America rolled into New York during the summer 1868, and quickly spread to Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, and Chicago. A good share of credit for its rapid dissemination in this country can be ascribed to a traveling band of acrobatic performers called the Hanlon Brothers. Having seen the machine in Paris, the Hanlons incorporated velocipede riding into their gymnastic and juggling routines. They even opened their own riding school in New York, patented their own modifications to velocipede design, and started their own manufacturing plants. Between 1868 and the early 1870s, audiences in cities across the United States stood in line for a chance to see the Hanlons doing trick-riding and to place orders for their very own Hanlon velocipede.[3] In early October, 1868, the New York Sun observed that “the velocipede seems destined to come into use in this city, though it will not soon attain here the vogue it has reached in France. Our streets are too narrow and too crowded, and we have few broad, smooth avenues affording the opportunity of employing it extensively as a means of exercise and health. Still, it is so attractive and fascinating, developing so much strength and skill, and affording so great amusement to the rider, that its votaries and students must become numerous.”[4]

Beginning in the autumn of 1868, Charleston’s principal newspapers, the Daily Courier and the Daily News, started printing brief news items about the appearance of bicycles on the streets of other American cities. Local readers may not have seen one of the strange machines yet, but they were certainly aware of its rapidly increasing popularity. In early December, the Charleston Daily News noted that “New York, Boston, Baltimore and Washington have velocipedes flying about their streets,” and asked “who will be the first to introduce them into Charleston?” A few weeks later, the local press noted that New Orleans had a velocipede, and a woman in Davenport, Iowa, was seen riding a velocipede on stage while wearing “a bycicular garment.” Across the Northeast and Midwest, a number of carriage makers quickly retooled their shops and began producing velocipede wheels and frames to satisfy increasing demand. The Charleston Daily News reported that a factory in Cincinnati was rolling out 1,600 velocipedes each week and selling them for $35 apiece.[5] By January of 1869, there were approximately 250 velocipedes in use in New York City, and the numbers were rising exponentially. “The demand for them is so great” in Gotham, said our Daily News, “that the manufacturers have more orders on hand than they can fill in two months.” In early February, the local press once again asked “why don’t some enterprising person introduce the velocipede here?”[6]

The Velocipede Invasion:

On the afternoon of Sunday, February 14th, 1869, a lone rider appeared on King Street, near the corner of Spring Street, pedaling southward on a home-made velocipede. The rider’s name was Henry Duc (1812–1892), a local tinsmith and inventor, who had built the machine in conjunction with Daniel B. Haselton, a local machinist and agent for a sewing machine company.[7] Mr. Duc’s first ride down King Street attracted a considerable amount of attention, and seemed to stop all business in the city’s retail corridor. The following day, the Charleston Daily News published the following curious account under the headline “First Appearance of the Velocipede in Charleston.”

‘What’s it?’ ‘Where’s it?’ ‘Who’s got it?’ ‘Where did it come from?’ ‘Have you seen it?’ ‘There it goes!’ ‘Whoop! don't it fly?’ ‘Break he neck durrectly.’ ‘De debbil in dat same ting.’ ‘Confederate cavalry on a charge.’ ‘Or retreating.’ ‘The ghost of Tam O’Shanter’s mare.’ ‘Any other horse would get as thin that eat as little.’ Such were some of the myriad interrogatories and remarks made by the crowd yesterday on the appearance of a velocipede in the streets of this city. The Savannah Advertiser boasts that Savannah is not behind the world, because somebody has an agency for velocipedes for Georgia and South Carolina. Well, we acknowledge that Charleston is some seconds behind Paris and New York, but she has a velocipede of her own manufacture, and she intends to catch up. The one that created such a sensation yesterday was made by Mr. Duc, an expert tinner, in conjunction with Mr. D[aniel]. B. Haselton, the sewing machine man, and was ridden by Mr. Duc through the principal streets, at a rate that would soon reduce horse flesh to the tenuity [thinness] of the velocipede itself. Mr. Duc was followed, longo intervalle, by a great crowd of men and boys, black and white; and people indoors who heard he was coming rushed to the windows to get a peep at the wonderful horse substitute.[8]

Henry Duc’s inaugural ride in mid-February 1869 marked the beginning of a local wave of velocipede mania. For the next five months, Charleston’s principal newspapers included some mention of velocipede news nearly every day. To give you a sample of this excitement, I’ll share a few choice quotes from local press:

• “It is rumored that a race is to take place between Mr. Duc’s velocipede and one of Northern make. . . . Several persons tried to ride the velocipede yesterday, but failed.” (Daily News, 16 February 1869)
• “The velocipede was out on the street yesterday and attracted universal admiration. An enterprising merchant would make money by importing a stock of them.” (Daily Courier, 16 February 1869)
• “At a late hour last night the velocipede was said to be perfectly quiescent.” (Daily Courier, 17 February 1869)
• “A newly patented velocipede has a ‘carpetbag’ attached.” (Daily News, 18 February 1869)
• “The inquiries after the velocipede are unceasing. Why don’t the owner bring it out and show it?”  (Daily Courier, 20 February 1869)
• “The recent advent of one of these machines in our good city has created quite a furore . . . it is extremely probable that they will very soon come into general use.” (Daily Courier, 22 February 1869)
• “The velocipede mania is said to add to the business of both surgeons and tailors. . . . Velocipedes are beginning to catch fits from medical men. They claim that the vehicle causes abcesses [sic] and malformations. (Daily News, 1 March 1869)
• “Mr. Duc who introduced and manufactured the first velocipede in our city is going to construct one to go on one wheel. . . . A gentlemen of this city tried to ride the velocipede yesterday and soon landed on terra firma, and concluded to rely henceforth on horseflesh.” (Daily News, 2 March 1869)
• “Personal Gossip. . . . Miss Susan B. Anthony is in favor of women riding astride on velocipedes.” (Daily News, 6 March 1869)

The Hanlons Are Coming:

By design or by chance, Charleston’s first blush of velocipede mania was in full bloom when advertisers began pasting “huge” illustrated posters all over the town announcing the imminent arrival of the celebrated Hanlon Brothers.[9] The five Hanlon brothers, described as “the best gymnasts now in America,” brought with them a troupe of fifteen olio entertainers to perform at Hibernian Hall from Monday, March 8th, through Saturday, March 13th. Their nightly shows and matinées included acrobatic feats, physical comedy, juggling, singing, dancing, recitations, and an Irish harper. “But the great novelty to our people,” noted the Charleston Daily Courier, “will be the much talked of velocipedes. These machines, in their present shape, were perfected by the Hanlons, who hold the patent still, and who work them with a speed and precision that is wonderful. It is claimed they go at the rate of thirty miles an hour during their exhibitions. We have heard so much of the new feedless horse that we will be most curious to see one in the flesh—or wood.” The Daily News reported the possibility of a Hanlon velocipede competition on the streets of Charleston, idea of which “has increased the mania here for the ‘feedless horse,’ and asked “why don’t Mr. Duc show his ‘hanimal’ on Broad-street?” The Hanlons, observed the Daily Courier, “are the inventors of the present improvement in the two-wheeled Velocipede, which, as now constructed, is destined to work a great change in locomotion. [But] let us not hazard a prophecy upon the future of the Velocipede. Bring along your Velocipede, Messrs. Hanlon.”[10]

On Monday, March 8th, both of Charleston’s daily newspapers announced that one of the Hanlon brothers would appear at noon at the corner of Queen and State Streets to give a public exhibition of skills on the velocipede. Why that location? Because the Anlgo-Irish-American Hanlons had a local cousin, John Hanlon, who operated at pub at the northeast corner of Queen and State Streets, and that’s probably where the brothers were staying.[11] As the appointed hour approached, a swelling crowd gathered at that location expecting to see one of the nation’s first bicycle heroes. The I’ll let the Charleston Daily News of March 9th, 1869, narrate the potentially-historic event:

The oldest inhabitant can scarcely recollect a greater manifestation of excitement on the streets of Charleston than that which occurred yesterday. . . . For months past the public curiosity on the subject of velocipedes has been gradually increasing. Mr. Duc’s invention, and his Sunday twinkling through the streets, intensified the general interest, and Hanlon’s huge posters, with pictorial illustrations of a velocipede race, wrought the excitement up to the highest pitch, ready to break out in any absurdity at the slightest opportunity. The opportunity was not long wanting. An authorized notice appeared in the News of yesterday morning stating that one of the Hanlons would start with his velocipede at the corner of Queen and State-streets at twelve M[eridian]. and give the business men of East Bay and Broad-street the first opportunity of seeing the new mechanical horse. Long before the appointed hour people gathered in crowds in the neighborhood of the designated starting point and along the proposed route, and also on Meeting and King streets. They waited long and patiently—i.e., however impatient many of them were, they showed no signs of it. People within view of the corner of State and Queen streets were still gazing intently but wearily on that interesting locality, when all at once the cry was raised that the velocipede had gone up Meeting-street, they found themselves among the stragglers at the tail-end of the crowd running up the street, and seeming to grow denser as it was more distant. They were told that the velocipedes had gone up to the Washington Race Course [now Hampton Park] for a regular run—best three heats in five. They took the [street] cars or increased their speed on foot, hoping to be in before the end of the fun; but when they reached the corner of Hasel [sic] and Meeting streets, they saw a small crowd gathered at the door of the Pavilion Hotel [now the King Charles Inn], and were informed that the Hanlons had been up to the shell road [on upper Meeting Street], taken a run up and down, come back, and gone into the Pavilion to take a drink. Somebody had been badly sold.

Despite the confusion and disappointment of the Hanlon’s first public exhibition, the local press predicted that “Charleston is likely to run wild with excitement caused by the introduction of the new machine. The city turned out en masse yesterday, to witness the manoeuvres of the Hanlons upon the instrument, and their appearance upon the street was the subject of town talk during the rest of the day.” Having witnessed their first evening’s performance at Hibernian Hall, one reporter advised “those of our community who have not yet enjoyed the privileges of witnessing them should seize the first opportunity of so doing. Not to have seen the velocipede is in extreme bad taste. Go at once.” Returning to the streets for some free advertising, the Hanlon brothers gratified “the bulls and bears” on Broad Street by racing up and down that thoroughfare on their way to the Battery. Along the famous seawall promenades and around the shell paths of White Point Garden, the Hanlons displayed their velocipedic skills for the genteel ladies of Charleston strolling with their parasols under the mid-day sun. Thanks to the influence of the acrobatic riders, a rumor began to circulate “that the Mayor intends to mount the police on Hanlon’s Patent Velocipedes.”[12]

The Zenith of Fame:

After an intense week of street-velocipeding and sold-out stage performances, the celebrated Hanlon brothers packed up their troupe and returned to their show-business itinerary in mid-March, 1869. In the following weeks, Charleston’s mania for the “horse substitute” did not diminish “one jot,” as the local press noted. A group of young professional men placed orders for Hanlon-brand velocipedes and formed a club while they waited for the arrival of their machines from New York. A new drinking joke concerned a new cocktail reportedly called the “velocipede sling”: “The fellow who gets aboard finds himself suddenly on one wheel, and capsized at the first corner reached.” While many young men in Charleston were catching up with their Northern neighbors by embracing baseball as the new national sport, the Daily Courier reported that the velocipede had superseded the popularity of baseball in New York City.[13]

The first retail establishment to sell velocipedes in Charleston was the carriage dealership of Leonard Chapin and Company on Hayne Street. Here, a reporter from the Daily News witnessed the arrival from New York of a consignment of what he called “these wobbling, pirouetting, shin-scraping, coat-tail clevating [sic] inventions of cavorting genius, on which a man can travel in any attitude, from a perpendicular to a horizontal, at the rate of a mile a minute.” “Crowds gathered to see the extraordinary performances of amateurs on the two-wheeled monster,” said the Daily News, “but it was not until a gentleman from New York mounted the vehicle and went through the streets like the wind, that anybody believed the thing would go.” An agent from the Daily Courier witnessed the same event and described the new velocipede with the following colorful phrase: “it resembles a cross between a sawbuck and an old fashioned ‘shay.’ You straddle a stick, wobble your legs, and go it blind, feeling very much as if you were sitting on the tail end of a comet, and being whisked through infernal space.”[14]

By April of 1869, the foundry of William Henery, in Meeting Street, was producing its own version of the velocipede in order to satisfy the local demand. The venerable King Street toy shop of Mr. Van Santen began retailing two, three, and four-wheeled machines imported from New York. As the number of velocipedes slowly increased, there were suddenly velocipede races all around town—on the part of upper Meeting Street called the Shell Road, on South Battery, at the race track that became Hampton Park, at the Charleston Shuetzenplatz (now the site of the Charleston Rifle Club, at the west end of Heriot Street), and even on the beach at the village of Mount Pleasant.[15] One report of a race on the Shell Road, noted that the winning rider pedaled “about seven-eighths of a mile” in the span of four minutes. That means he was traveling at a speed of just over thirteen miles per hour.[16]

All of this racing aroused the attention of local authorities, who issued two very different warnings. First, the Daily Courier reported that “the velocipede, it is now said, produces hernia; and young men and boys are cautioned not to exert themselves imprudently, upon the new vehicle, in trials of speed.” Second, the Courier asked velocipedestrians to “take notice that the Mayor has forbidden the running of bycycles [sic] on King-street.”[17] This prohibition from riding along the city’s principal retail corridor also demonstrates that the term “bicycle” was in use, at least by some Charlestonians, in the spring of 1869.

The next step in local bicycle progress occurred in the mid-May, when two competing proprietors each opened an indoor “velocipede rink” for the education of the “numberless people who affect the bycycle.” The first rink, opened by Mr. Chapin in Hayne Street was heralded as an instant success by the Daily Courier, “as the devotees of the two wheeled machine in our city are numerous.” The second, operated by Mr. C. H. Platt and called the “Stonewall Rink,” was located above the auction house of Messrs. Knox, Daly & Co., at the corner of Meeting and Wentworth Streets. Because these schools offered customers the opportunity to learn to ride indoors with a minimum of embarrassment, the Courier reported that “the number of bycyclists [sic] in the city is consequently much enlarged.”[18]

By the end of May, 1869, said the Charleston Daily News, “the streets were alive . . . with velocipedes.” At the same time, the Courier reported that “velocipede riding on the Battery by moonlight is coming into vogue.” It’s difficult to quantify the exact number of bicycles in Charleston at this time, but I’m sure the size of the local cycling community was exaggerated by the local press. Let’s assume, therefore, that there were fewer than one hundred of the machines on the streets of Charleston by the summer of 1869, almost all of which were ridden by affluent young men. The rapidly increasing popularity of the new-fangled velocipede inspired inventors around the world to experiment with a host of designs, ranging from one-wheeled unicycles to four-wheeled, steam-powered contraptions. This burst of creativity was documented in an 1869 book titled The Velocipede, Its History, Varieties, and Practice, with Illustrations, which you could purchase at Fogartie’s Book Depository, “in the bend” of King Street, for fifty cents.[19]

The Police Crackdown:

Charleston’s honeymoon love affair with the velocipede was tempered by the fact that the vast majority of the city streets were unpaved, sandy thoroughfares in 1869. Nearly a mile of upper Meeting Street was paved with crushed oyster shells, and there were few stretches of wooden plank paving in King, John, Chapel, and Elizabeth Streets, but there were scarce few other hard surfaces on which one could ride the iron-rimmed machines. The most attractive surface was not the city’s streets, therefore, but its sidewalks, which had long been paved with either brick or flagstones. The practice of cycling on the sidewalks inevitably led to confrontations with pedestrians and pram-pushing maumas, who communicated their disdain for the two-wheeled machines to the city’s police department.

On June 2nd, the chief of the Charleston police force, Captain Henry W. Hendricks, published a brief notice containing an indirect, passive-aggressive warning to local velocipedestrians. The text did not specifically mention the bicycular machines, but rather quoted from the text of a city ordinance ratified in 1810, in the following words: “That it shall not be lawful to, or for any person to draw or roll any small coach, carriage, curricle or chaise along the foot pavements, or any other hard body or machine of any kind whereby the pavements may suffer damage, or foot passengers be incommoded. Every person herein offending shall, for each and every such offence, be fined the sum of Twenty Dollars.”[20]

Charleston’s small community of bicyclists immediately expressed their profound indignation at the police action, but they were indeed guilty of the charge leveled against them. Pedestrians were very numerous at this time—some thirty-odd years before the appearance of the first automobile—and the paved sidewalks were far too narrow to accommodate the tipsy, novice velocipedestrians. On June 3rd, the editor of the Charleston Daily Courier reported that he had received a letter from an irate citizen, the tone of which implied, in no uncertain terms, “that the Chief of Police is doomed.” Personally, I suspect the letter was a piece of journalistic satire, complete with dialect misspellings and poor grammar in imitation of a knuckle-dragging brute, but I’ll let you decide for yourself. Here’s the complete text:

Charleston, June the 2 1869.

To captain hendricks:

Sur:—What du you mean by yure beastly conduc who ever herd of a bycycle bein called a vehicle, it aint even a masheen and your order about the ordnance and all that is nothin but malis, you are jellus because you cant ride the bycycle yourself and so you wont let them as kin ride it do so. this is to worn yu that all the bycyclers in this city has made up a union league and Ku-Klux-Klan an wo be to yu an yur minionns ef yu attemp to karry out yur infimus aurder about bycycles. Sur we want yu to now that we are not to be subjugated by your tyrrancial aurders, even if you are a kaptin of poleese. The city ordnance—that be durned how kin that ordnance mean bycycles when bycycles wasn’t invented when it was passed. Yu had better go an lern somethin about your bizness, you good fur nothin Poleese—yu and let us an our bycycles alone. If not beware of Union-league-Ku-Klux-Bycyclers, for yu shall dy.

Diabolically,

Velocipedestrian.

Ku-Klux mark is here thus, cross bones and coffen.[21]

In response to the police crackdown on sidewalk cycling in early June, Charleston’s budding community of velocipedestrians flocked to the plank-road sections of John, Chapel, and Elizabeth Streets. Local news reports noted that the summer crowds gathering in this area include scores of white and black cyclists, although it appears that their recreational gatherings were segregated. While white riders pedaled leisurely and raced competitively on the wooden paving during the day, African-American cyclists gathered on the same streets after sundown to learn to ride and to race as well.[22]

The Decline of the Velocipede Fad:

By the end of June, 1869, the novelty of the velocipede was beginning to dissipate. Charleston had greeted the machine with wonder and excitement in mid-February, and joined in the chorus of predictions that it would soon become a fixture of human locomotion. As the number of steel-rimmed machines increased in the ensuing months, however, and its votaries plowed awkwardly along the crowded sidewalks, the people of Charleston grew increasingly weary of its presence. This decline in interest was not simply a local phenomenon, however. On June 26th, the Charleston Daily News noted succinctly that “the velocipede mania is subsiding in our city, as it is everywhere else.”

Throughout the month of July 1869, the Charleston newspapers contained a steadily diminishing number of references to local velocipede activity. At the same time, those same papers included in an increasing number of stories devoted to a relatively-new fad that was clearly destined to become the national past time: baseball. One might be tempted to conclude that the initial popularity of the velocipede or bicycle in Charleston was eclipsed by the rise of baseball in the summer of 1869, but the real story behind this phenomenon is a bit more complicated. It’s wasn’t baseball, per se, that overshadowed the velocipede in July of 1869. Rather, it was the baseball riot of July 26th, 1869, that pushed Charleston’s bicycle mania off the streets and out of the newspapers.

Tune in next week, when we’ll commemorate the 150th anniversary of the baseball-Dixie race riot of 1869 by recounting the violent drama that gripped Charleston for weeks and spoiled everyone’s summer fun.