The Victorian era was a time of growth and change. With the industrial revolution, a middle class appeared, having free time, even if less than upper classes.
Leisure activities were numerous: croquet, tennis, skating, water sports, horseback riding and, later, cycling. Initially the fad of the elite, its practice was so popular and widespread that, towards the end of the 19th century, the bicycle became a major tool of liberation for women,
Easily acquired by men, the right to pedal was a battle for women.
Doctors predicted terrible consequences: riding a bicycle could lead to infertility, trigger orgasms, and cause permanent disfigurement due to the effort required by pedaling.
The problem had already been raised with horseback riding. A woman of quality had to keep her legs closed and covered. To get on a horse, she would have had to pull up her clothes, revealing her ankles and calves, or even more in windy conditions. As a result, riding was only permitted side saddle and in the countryside.
In cities, women were therefore dependent on cars for long distances, which limited their freedom of movement. The bicycle had the same drawbacks as the horse, but it was so coveted that it gave rise to many inventions.
1. At the beginning
After seeing a draisine, the Scotsman Kirkpatrick MacMillan, a blacksmith by trade, began in 1839 the construction of a vehicle equipped with a system of levers connected to the rear wheel, moving rigid connecting rods for rotation.
In 1866, Pierre Lallement, a French expatriate in America obtained the patent for a velocipede called a "bicycle".
If men could use bicycles, women were deprived of them because they wore bulky skirts and petticoats. A short outfit was invented but not adopted for reasons of decorum.
After 1870, the improvement of the velocipede continued, especially in England, aiming at gaining speed. The front wheel got bigger while the rear wheel got smaller.
The first Ordinary, created in1871, met an overwhelming success with the men of the upper-middle class who alone could afford it. It was nicknamed "penny-farthing" after the respective size of these two coins, by analogy with the wheels.
The penny-farthing was very popular among sportsmen until 1880, but not used by amateurs because of its dangerousness.
It was replaced a few years later by the so-called “safety” bicycle, invented in 1884 by John K. Starley. A gear turned the rear wheel faster than the pedals, allowing the machine to go fast even without a giant wheel.
Women were offered the tricycle (one seat) and the sociable (two seats) that could be used wearing skirts. Despite the efforts of their community to dissuade them, rich women, from 1880, took the right to use them. Chaperone associations were immediately formed to provide them with seemly accompanying.
Anyway, heavy and bulky, they did not meet the aspirations of agility and freedom awakened by bicycles.
2. Clothing as a stage of women's liberation
In France and America, women pedaled without causing too much scandal.
In America, as early as 1849, Amelia Bloomer and Elizabeth Stanton, two suffragettes, preached against bulky skirts.
In 1851, they received the visit of Libby Miller who had come by bicycle and wore baggy pants of her design. They were later dubbed "bloomers", despite Ms. Bloomer's efforts to publicize the true designer.
The new clothing item appeared in manufacturers' advertising and dances were reserved for ladies in bloomers and their companions.
In France, from 1868, women rode velocipedes, wearing baggy pants with lace, considered rather daring.
In Victorian England, it was different: the rules of decent dressing imprisonned women in heavy petticoats and corsets. They were in fact kept away from the cycling trips that delighted men.
Fortunately, in 1889, the Starley Brothers company offered a Rover bicycle for women, with a low frame and a skirt guard. Its price was significantly more economical than that of previous models, which put it within the reach of a class of women less encumbered by conventions.
But the skirts sometimes got stuck in the mechanics. Exasperated by such illogicality, Lady Florence Harberton founded the "Rational Dress Society" dedicated to ridding women of the unnecessary fabric that encumbered them, and asserting their right to a dress code that no longer constrained their movements.
It offered "trousers", a kind of panties going to below the knee.
Public opinion was shocked and suggested that the "bifurcated" clothing would make cyclists unnatural women. At the same time, the skirts shortened a little "picking up less manure and spitting in their folds", according to the progressives, and a look under them would have revealed that the countless petticoats had remained in the closet, to be replaced by "knickers", that is to say…simple underwear.
The debates about female cyclists paint an eloquent portrait of the social anxiety caused by the increasing autonomy of women. For those who could afford it, the bicycle was more than a means of getting around and exercising; it signaled a refusal to comply with the restrictive rules of the Victorian era, and a desire to enter fully into modernity
3. Violet Smith’s clothes
Violet belonged to a new generation of women who, at the end of the 19th century, began to work to be independent and move as they wanted, thanks to the advent of the bicycle.
In the Victorian era, the education of young girls was essentially limited to preparation for marriage and to the acquisition of the talents of amenity intended to enable them to decorate their husband's house with dignity, such as watercolor painting, embroidery, singing, playing the piano... As a result, a woman wishing to earn her living outside the domestic service could hardly do more than exercise the professions of schoolmistress, governess or music teacher.
In the upper class, and even in the growing middle class, homes were equipped with a piano and, depending on financial means, lessons were given either by the mother or by a teacher.
Violet's father having been a conductor, she escaped being a servant by marrying an electrical engineer. In addition, thanks to her knowledge of music, she could teach the piano. Mr. Carruthers' offer was a godsend: "He offered me a hundred a year which was, certainly, a splendid pay" and, as noted later by Sherlock Holmes, double the usual rate.
Violet wore neither a blouse nor an apron to exercise her profession, but probably the Victorian outfit in use for young girls of her condition, with a corset and long ornate skirt brushing the floor :
On the other hand, we must not forget that Violet returned every week to her mother: "You must know that every Saturday forenoon I ride on my bicycle to Farnham Station in order to get the 12.22 to town."
She covered a great distance for this, as Holmes told Watson: "What sort of a ménage is it which pays double the market price for a governess but does not keep a horse, although six miles from the station?"
For this, the clothes had to be looser than usual to allow pedaling. Here we see the illustration by Sidney Paget:
And here is an illustration from a fashion magazine:
Finally, this photograph is a good illustration of what the "Solitary Cyclist" could have worn:
