Veteran Ladies - Part 2

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To continue last week’s story…

By 1902/1903 makers building motorcycles often using proprietary engines or kits such as the Minerva, offered lady's models. An easy route as they either employed available self-manufactured sturdy lady's cycles or built stronger frames to the same design then adapted or made appropriate smaller fuel tanks and/or accumulators and trembler coil boxes to suit. In turn, the press carried reports by lady motorcyclists detailing their trips, pleasures and tribulations. Among the contributors was Muriel Hind who not only extolled the many virtues of motorcycling but also reported her tribulations including when a group of ”loafers” gathered to ridicule and offered unhelpful advice while dressed in her lady's attire she repaired a punctured tyre. Naturally, she succeeded and was soon on her way.

Woman contributed to the letters and advice columns of the weekly motorcycling and motor press detailing on their machines and experiences including Mrs Tuckett of Bath in 1903. After reading a letter published in the Motor Incorporating Motor Cycling & Motoring from Mr Tatchell of Bristol who rode a motorised tandem built to order by Messer Morrisch & Co of Redcliff Hill, Bristol using a Minerva engine. Mrs Tuckett made haste to Bristol to order her machine on which she planned to take her blind husband on trips and appointments. Mr Morrisch advised a 2 1/2hp Minerva engine which he attached over the belt driven front wheel of a tandem tricycle with dropped frame for herself as the driver. At the time of writing, Mrs Tuckett reported she'd learnt to handle her Tandem Motor-Tricycle in one lesson and had covered over 600 miles finding the machine easier to steer than she`d expected. Closing with “it's a most delightful way of getting about.”

Alongside this Mariel Hind futured the cause of woman motorcyclists changing to a larger 3hp Singer, and along with other woman started to pen columns in the motorcycle weeklies (later under the pseudonym 'The Lady Motorcyclist') of her trips. She began entering reliability trails, often driving a Singer forecar, with success, and she revelled in her ‘brushes with the law` for speeding or competing in illegal impromptu hill climbs but never reported and prosecution “as her little Singer” easily outpaced a policeman's cycle!

Muriel was a seasoned leading competitor giving her the confidence to commission a powerful 5hp lady's model. Later she approached the Pilkington Bros of the Rex Motors Company asking them to build her a dropped frame 5hp V-twin. The brothers were so impressed by Muriel they invited her to become a factory motorcycle tester, demonstrator and works trail rider. During her 5 years, she had 4 different machines built especially for her. Her active competition career drew to a close in 1912 when she married fellow trails rider and TT racer Richard Lord of Rex who also retired on marriage.

Muriel's successful trail career and her regular columns did much to further the cause of woman motorcyclists. The manufacture of lady's model motorcycles in the veteran and early vintage periods certainly helped further the woman cyclists` cause, and history confirms a number of men preferred riding lady's model motorcycles, but it took time to convince the stubborn of both sexes…

Words by Richard Rosenthal. Courtesy The Sunbeam Motor Cycle Club.

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