Post

Across four or five years in the 1890s, Jules Beau's photographic albums contain 80+ images of women on bikes, three dozen different women in all. Some were society ladies, some theatre performers, some pro riders.

Feargal McKay@cycologies.com

Jules Beau's Women

24/10/26, 4:38 pm4 reposts5 likes

Feargal McKay

@cycologies.com

Obviously, it's the pro riders that interest me the most. Some of them I've written about in the past, in relation to the Hour record. Most rarely get mentioned by cycling historians. Forgotten as they are today, their memory lingered on after the 1890s. Here's Desgrange in 1921:

Angela Mills-Bannon

@genkigalcycling.bsky.social

Do you know who was the first British female rider to race in an international road race - where and when?

Feargal McKay

@cycologies.com

Clara Grace was racing on the track and the road in England and in France in the 1890s, so I'd start with her and look for something earlier. How you define international road race though could push it much later and into Eileen Grey's era and the Circuit Lyonnais-Auvergne.

playingpasts.co.ukMrs Grace versus Lisette: A comparison of the English and French women’s cycling champions Part 2 Mrs Grace – the women’s champion of England | Playing Pasts

Angela Mills-Bannon

@genkigalcycling.bsky.social

@cycologies.com could Dredge be one of the first British women to represent GB internationally in an international road race, if not the first?

Feargal McKay

@cycologies.com

And here's Robert Dieudonné in 1932:

Feargal McKay

@cycologies.com

The issue of these women has come up because of an email I received last week, but it also ties into something @genkigalcycling.bsky.social's has written about the women written about in her great-uncle Bill Mills' magazine, The Bicycle, in the 1930s and 1940s.

thebicycle.substack.comIntroducing the Heroines of ‘The Bicycle’This is the first of a series exploring the achievements of female cyclists in the 1930s-1940s who were well known to their contemporaries but have largely disappeared from cycling history.

Feargal McKay

@cycologies.com

The narrative today is that, even in their time, these women were being ignored. But as the historical record shows, this simply is not true. For sure, you can argue less was written about them than their male counterparts. But they were not being ignored.