CTC Gazette, Vol 1922, No 4
Articles in this issue
- Editorial notes rebutting the Autocar's claim that night accidents are mainly due to unlit cyclists, welcoming the alignment of British Summer Time with France and Belgium, celebrating the Club's 1921 accounts turning a £368 12s. 11d. profit after 1920's deficit, and reporting the loss of a road-repair negligence case before Mr Justice Coleridge at the Surrey Assizes.
- About 1,100 cyclists filled the Memorial Hall, Farringdon Street, on 11 March to hear W. M. Robinson's new lantern lecture 'The Open Road', chaired by Club secretary Mr G. H. Stancer in place of the ailing president Mr W. G. Howard Gritten, M.P., with thanks proposed by Mr F. W. Evans and Mr P. J. Randall.
- Reports the Club's unsuccessful action against Epsom Rural District Council on behalf of Mr G. A. Harrison of Balham, thrown from his bicycle and concussed on a partially repaired, unlit road; Sir Malcolm Macnaughten, K.C., appeared for the plaintiff but Mr Justice Coleridge found for the defendants.
- John Urry rebuts Mr R. H. Carter's 'sham magnanimity' argument that cyclists should carry rear lights for their own protection, then rhapsodises on the arrival of spring, closing with his own poem 'Ballade of Bicycling'.
- Touring notes on glass-ball weathervane bearings at Rochester and Portsmouth, the stained-glass Sir William Ferrers at Bere Ferrers church, England's vanished forests, and the Wheatsheaf Inn at Daventry where Charles I lodged before Naseby; followed by member queries on touring North Devon, Scotland, the Pyrenees, Germany and Austria, and a Land's End to John o'Groats ride.
- C. G. Harper describes the Magdalen College, Oxford custom of singing a Latin hymn from the tower at sunrise on May Morning, a tradition dating to 1685 when Dr Thomas Smith wrote the words later set by Dr Benjamin Rogers and revised by Dr Varley Roberts.
- W. B. Shuttock, A.M.I.A.E., argues that alloy steels bring little benefit to bicycle frames because the brazing temperature (about 900°C) undoes prior heat treatment, and discusses an alternative motor-cycle practice of sweating tubes into lugs with soft solder.
- J. Whitaker, A.M.I.C.E., traces the Roman road from London through Staines and Bagshot Heath to Calleva (Silchester), part of Iter VII of the Antonine Itinerary, and explains why the Saxons never named it as they did Watling and Ermin Streets.
- News miscellany including a bicycle stolen from 'Wayfarer', Lord Sefton's renewed permission for CTC members to cycle through Croxteth Park, and the 'Politicians on Rear Lights' item quoting Cambridge by-election candidates S. Cope Morgan, Hugh Dalton and the successful Sir Douglas Newton.
- Fitzwater Wray's Daily News column, reprinted here, recalls addressing 60-70 young cyclists of the Metropolitan D.A.'s Northern Section at the Mitre Hotel, High Barnet, and watching the North Road Club's 24-hour scratch race in the Fens, won with a ride of 383½ miles.
- Mr E. Manville, M.P., questions the Lights on Vehicles Committee's hostility to reflex mirrors, while Lord Midleton and Sir Harold Smith describe being unable to see cyclists after being dazzled by oncoming motor headlights.
- Announces the Club's new 12-page booklet 'Why Cyclists Object to Compulsory Rear Lights', quoting motorist Mr S. F. Edge and the Bishop of Exeter (Lord William Cecil), who calls compulsory rear lamps 'a monstrous interference with the liberty of the cyclist'.
- Round-up including the Birmingham and Midland D.A.'s resolution against compulsory rear lights, the Liverpool D.A.'s Easter tour based at the Pont-y-pair Hotel, Bettws-y-Coed, and Mr J. C. Vincent's 'bachelor' dinner at the Wellington Hotel, Leicester, for the six Leicestershire and Rutland D.A. members with the highest annual mileages, averaging 7,750 miles.
- Condemns coroners' leniency in two unsolved fatal hit-and-run cases: Miss Evelyn Summers Newberry, killed on the Towcester Road at Far Cotton on 11 February, and an unnamed twenty-year-old cyclist killed by a car in Manchester, in both of which the driver was never traced.
- Formal notice of the AGM at the Royal Society of Arts, Adelphi, on 7 April 1922, with an agenda including rival motions from Mr A. Candler on compulsory rear lights and Club hostility to motorists, and Mr F. T. Bidlake's motion calling for minimum forward-light standards instead.
- The Council's report for 1921 records membership falling by 597 to 10,922 despite the doubled subscription, the Rights and Privileges Committee's casework including £1,500 damages over the Wallasey tandem fatality and £225 for a cyclist killed near Berkswell, and the restoration of limited-risk railway rates for accompanied cycles secured via Mr W. G. Howard Gritten, M.P.
- The Club's audited accounts for the year ended 31 December 1921, showing a profit of £368 12s. 11d. carried to the balance sheet, subscriptions and entrance fees rising from under £3,000 to over £4,500, and a reserve written off against the Club's frozen cash at Singers' Nachf., Vienna.
- Minutes of the Finance and Rights and Privileges Committees recording new Chief Consul appointments for Herefordshire (Mr C. H. Hill), Worcestershire (Mr A. Turner) and Anglesey and Carnarvonshire (Dr P. W. Black), plus settled compensation claims for members run down by a motor-cyclist, a taxicab and a motor-lorry.
- Letters on front hub brakes, a suggested Wye Valley touring route from Manchester via Ludlow and Tintern, a mapping error on the marshy Decoy Heath near Wareham, Sunday runs and church-going, and a warning from one member against cycling in Ireland after being refused hotel rooms near Dublin for speaking with an English accent.
- The April/May 1922 club-run timetable for D.A. sections nationwide, including Easter tours to the Peak District, the Wye Valley, the Isle of Wight and the Lake District, and the Cardiff and South Wales D.A.'s tour to Lulworth Cove meeting the Metropolitan D.A.
- New membership candidates listed by county, followed by Candidates for Affiliated Membership from clubs including the Levitin-Ilford Baths Club, the Carrot Caspers' C.C. of Glasgow, the Harlesden Ramblers C.C., the Finsbury Park C.C., the Plymouth C.C. and the East Mid-Surrey (I.O.G.T.) Cycling Club.