REVIEW: Motor-Cycling for Women (1928)

PHOTOS | JO-ANN McEWAN

Unless you've been living under a rock (which, let’s be honest, is probably a pretty safe option at the moment), a certain global pandemic is probably affecting your day-to-day. While we’d love nothing more than to take off and distract ourselves with petrol based activities, we thought it slightly more responsible to hole ourselves away with books about same. The title in question, The Motorcyclist’s Diary: Motorcycling for Women, was originally published in London in 1928, and harks back to a time where there “were more motorcycles on the road than cars and anyone could ride a motorcycle at 14 without passing a test or wearing a helmet”. The 80-odd pages are a rather polite affair, the contents a “result of actual experience, painful and otherwise”, part manual, part English travel guide, part advice on choosing an appropriate machine, written by sisters Betty and Nancy Debenham (the latter of whom won a gold medal at Brooklands racetrack in 1926, and both BSA poster girls at the time).

“...part of the “fun” of a sidecar journey was to arrive home very filthy or quite often not to arrive home at all, for in these early days motor-cycle engines were unknown quantities, and likely to leave the owner stranded miles from anywhere.”

The book doesn’t discriminate between those who choose to ride their own machine, those who prefer to be pillions, or those in a sidecar situation (with or without puppy mascot; theirs was called Poncho). It suggests, rightly, that some motorcycle repairs and maintenance are easy to keep on top of, and learning to effect such minor repairs will save constant small repair bills: checking for loose nuts and bolts, keeping an eye on oil consumption (especially in a new machine), tightening a chain, and “knowing enough about her machine to detect such small faults as a choked jet, or a dirty or oily plug.”

Understandably, some of the information is out of date, especially that pertaining to being suitably dressed (considering the development in abrasion resistant fabrics in the last close to 100 years) - wearing riding suits made of corduroy rather than silk stockings, and leather helmets or (!) a “better choice for ordinary, everyday touring… the brightly coloured woolly cap or the Beret” - but some points are still bang on: “cheap gloves are a bad investment… only a motor-cyclist knows how painful cold hands can be!”

Personal highlights of the volume are advertisements for (what seem to be shockingly cheap) motorcycles, anti-carbon oil, reference materials, and early wet weather riding gear, and the accompanying images of the authors and their beautiful 1920s bikes, camping, sight-seeing, and demonstrating changing a tyre. It would benefit from being published as a clothbound hardback (and probably was originally), but is available as a reproduction paperback from Classic Motorcycle Manuals UK. An early look into two women (and those they taught to ride) enjoying the crap out of two-wheeled transportation, and a few of their foibles and amusing mishaps/learning experiences, we consider it well worth the £11.99 plus shipping (at time of publishing), from here. If nothing else, it will certainly make you wish motorcycles were still only £50 new, and you’ll get a laugh out of passages such as this one:

“The usual reason for a girl having to sit sideways is that she is wearing the wrong kind of skirt, usually a short, skimpy garment which is very tight around the knees... Then there is the passenger who wriggles! This particular type does not really get comfortable at the start, and gives violent lurches in the middle of a particularly crowded section of Oxford Street.”