Vol 3, No 25
Articles in this issue
- Leading editorial weighing the pros and cons of the nom de plume in a serial publication: under the shield of anonymity a writer may tender wholesome advice or correct an injustice without seeming presumptuous, but the same cloak lets him secretly stab an adversary he dare not meet in open field. Excluding such correspondence is the Editor's most onerous duty, and the complete Editor would need omniscience, tact and incorruptible honour.
- Reprinted from the Globe, welcoming the first sign of a police crusade against betting at athletic sports after the Heywood magistrates fined the proprietors of a local running-ground £25 and costs for knowingly permitting gaming at their annual sports. Argues that posting placards and ordering bookmakers off the ground does not relieve proprietors of legal responsibility, and that several grounds within ten miles of St. Paul's host wholesale betting.
- The Editor asks a few members to come to 35, Eastcheap on Thursday, September 9th at 5.30 p.m. to help stick the Woodbury-type plates into the Gazette, and requests a reply.
- The Captain and one member of the London Tricycle Club have returned from a nine-day tour of the south of England taking in Redhill, Horsham, Chichester, Bognor, Brighton, Eastbourne, Hastings, Winchester, Folkestone, Dover, Canterbury and Ramsgate. The roads were as a rule very dusty and loose.
- District reports: Ernest Barrett changes the N.E. run to a short circular from Lea Bridge Road ending at Hampstead, and C. H. F. Christie, finding nobody at Syborn's Corner, rides alone to Ongar by Chigwell Row. The N.W. run of Aug. 28 to Radlett went by Finchley, Whetstone, Totteridge, Barnet Gate and Borehamwood to tea at the "Railway Inn", nine riders covering 31 miles in all.
- District Captain Norman B. Morris cancels the Epping run fixed for Saturday 4th September and substitutes a 20-mile circular leaving "Jack Straw's", followed by tea at seven at his house, Oak Hill House, Oak Hill Park, Hampstead. West members are asked to join at Harlesden Green at 4.30, and any S.E. or S.W. man is welcome, "the badge is quite sufficient introduction".
- F. M. Williams alters next Saturday's run to the top of Reigate Hill to see the Surrey B.C. competition, the West and South West having elected to meet the North West instead. The Blackheath Division's run of the 11th is changed by request to East Grinstead, leaving Croydon at 4.30 p.m. and Caterham Junction at 5, with sixteen members already down for it.
- A single entry: a 56-inch all-bright "Humber" light roadster in perfect condition offered for £13 by F. W. Nicholson of St. Edmund's, Upper Richmond Road, Putney.
- R. G. Francis describes leaving King's Cross for Hull on 13th August and shipping two bicycles free in the hold of the Hero to Christiania, where the custom-house officers finally ruled that bicycles were not "on the tariff". From Lillehamer the pair rode up the valley past Fossegarten, Skeggestad and Listad to Laurgaard, seventy-seven miles, on well-engineered roads, dodging restive horses and bolting pigs.
- "Clarion" of the Canonbury B.C., reprinted from a contemporary, asks makers for two small changes: rounding off the sharp edges of the treadle to save shoes, corns and tempers, and a screwed-on cap over the treadle nut to stop greasy smears on a new pair of breeches.
- Tabulated meets for the N.E., N.W., W. and S.W. districts and the Croydon and Blackheath divisions of the S.E., including 3.45 at "Jack Straw's Castle" for the circular run, 4.30 Harlesden Green, 4.15 "Griffin," Kingston for Ockham, and "Hare and Billet" for Greenwich and Farningham.
- "An Essex Member" dismounts at Dalmally station after eighteen hours of railway and rides the road along Loch Awe towards Inverary, finding it far better than its fearsome reputation apart from loose stones, short sharp pitches and a two-mile moorland grind past Claddich. He recommends the Dalmally–Inverary road to any member not too fastidious, noting that another member's "Stassen" spring broke, on the cart track, not the high road.
- McCullum Hill corrects an error he fears he led Mr. Gruggen into: the "Franciscans" of Medmenham were not a religious order but Francis Dashwood (Lord Le Despencer)'s irreligious "Monks of St. Francis", whose motto "Fay ce que vou-dray" may still be seen over the west door.
- Gossip signed "L'Homme Qui Rit": Barker's Zulu experience leading him as hare to make for the bush in the S.E. paper-chase, hounds dragging machines through clover and brambles, the bean-feasting employés of Messrs. Brock the pyrotechnists whose red fire at Godstone was passed off to the Captain as a prearranged tribute, a two-mile race at Aldborough run on a parallelogram-shaped course through a grassy quagmire, and the Norway pair's advice on the Lillehamer–Dombaass hundred-mile course and whether marmalade can be carried on the hub.
- Retells the first L.B.C. paper-chase, run on Saturday 25th March 1876 by the South Western and South Eastern divisions from Surbiton and Croydon, joining at "The Cock" at Sutton. Hares G. P. Coleman (56-inch "Keen") and M. D. Rucker (57-inch "Timberlake") went off at 4.43; only seven of the fifteen hounds finished the twenty miles to "The Talbot" at Ripley, McCullum Hill riding on with a bloodied collar after coming to grief at Ewell.
- A letter from the Beauchamp Hotel, Great Malvern warning members riding westward that the main road by Beaconsfield, High Wycombe, Oxford, Witney, Northleach and Cheltenham is bumpy and in places almost unrideable, and that most Worcestershire roads are bad from macadam. The writer is off to Herefordshire to fish and to meet Dr. Langmore and Law at Worcester for a tour down the Wye valley.
- Thanks Cyril J. Turner for his communication, and prints an erratum correcting "lee'zure" in the previous issue's Answers to Correspondents to "leisure".
- Standing notice that contributions must be addressed to "The Editor, L.B.C. Gazette, 35, Eastcheap, E.C.", bear the author's name, be written on one side of the paper only and reach the office by Wednesday morning. Messrs. Darling supply badge-stamped portfolios for unbound copies at 2s., and back numbers cost 1d. each.