As a retired academic and woman of a certain age, Google is not my first choice for historical research. When I was looking for images of older women on bicycles recently, I turned to my preferred archival and library sites and found nothing. But then I followed the suggestion of reader Anne S. and tried a Google image search. There I discovered many photos of noted feminist activist and temperance movement leader Frances Willard (1839-1898), who took up bicycle riding in her fifties. Not only that, she wrote a memoir about her experience called A Wheel Within a Wheel: How I Learned to Ride the Bicycle.
Willard was the driving force behind the Women’s Christian Temperance Movement, a social cause that it is difficult to empathize with today. In the late nineteenth century, however, it was linked to a number of different reform movements that still have resonance, including women’s education, women’s suffrage, and fair wages for working women. Willard was a tireless advocate for all of these causes.
Suffering from poor health in her fifties, she decided that bicycle riding would be a means of healthy exercise and cheap transportation. In her memoir, she made many comparisons between bicycle riding and horse riding. She even gave her bicycle a name—Gladys.
Among her many avocations, Willard also believed in dress reform. She was not a fashion radical, like Dr. Mary Walker. Instead, she adjusted her clothing by choosing a shorter skirt. “January 20th 1894 will always be a red letter bicycle day,” she wrote in A Wheel Within in Wheel. “I mounted and started off alone… Gladys was no longer a mystery; I had learned all her kinks, had put a bridle in her teeth, and touched her smartly with the whip of victory.”
I love her adapted dress, especially since she was older, and had spent so many years in skirts sweeping the ground.
Again, one of your photos inspires memories. Your photo is from 1894, the year my grandmother was born. I remember seeing a photo of her dressed similarly to those in your photo. She could have used a bicycle instead of moving always at a trot around the farm to do her chores.
The temperance movement is hard to understand today. But I believe I remember hearing that the temperance movement was inspired, at least in part, by the prevalence of domestic violence.