Secret past of a British icon
QUESTION Was the BSA Bantam, the iconic post-war British motorcycle, based on a German design?
The BSA Bantam was a two-stroke motorcycle produced by the Birmingham Small Arms Company (BSA) from 1948 (as a 125cc) until 1971 (as a 175cc).
Though considered the archetypal British lightweight motorcycle, it was, in fact, based on a German design, the DKW RT 125.
In 1916, the Danish engineer Jorgen Skafte Rasmussen founded a factory in Zschopau, Saxony, Germany, to produce steam fittings. he attempted to produce a steam-driven car or Dampfkraftwagen, hence DKW.
After World War I, his engine designer hugo Ruppe created a small, two-stroke 25cc gasoline-powered toy engine. Rasmussen called it Des Knaben Wunsch or ‘the boy’s wish’.
Das K leine W under or ‘the little wonder’ was the name given to an enlarged version of the Ruppe engine for use in motorcycles. It was a huge success and by the late Twenties, DKW was the world’s largest manufacturer of motorcycles.
The RT 125 was designed by hermann Weber in 1939. It was a masterpiece of style and functionality with streamlined good looks and an efficient engine.
The flat-topped piston was a huge improvement over the heat-gathering deflector pistons of conventional two-strokes.
After World War II, German patents, copyrights and trademarks were confiscated and distributed as war reparations. This resulted in the RT 125 being widely copied throughout the world.
The BSA designers made their bike a mirror image of the RT 125 with righthand-side controls and imperial fixings. The original Bantam, the D1, manufactured in Birmingham, went on sale in October 1948.
Though the frame changed out of recognition over time, the engine was essentially unchanged for the whole 23 years of its production.
Many other motorcycle manufacturers took advantage of the DKW design, with models including the harley-Davidson Model 125; Polish ShL M11; Czech 1949 Jawa 125; Japanese 1955 Kawasaki (Meihatsu) 125; Italian 1950 MiVal 125T and the hungarian 1948 Csepel 125.
John Coward, Hull.
QUESTION What is a bezoar stone? Does it have medical properties?
A BeZOAR is a rock-hard hairball or gallstone from the stomach of a goat or llama. It looks like a reddish stone.
The name is derived from two Persian words meaning ‘against’ and ‘poison’. From medieval times up to the 19th century, a bezoar was thought to be a powerful antidote to poison.
It could be taken orally, rubbed over the body or worn. Several were discovered among items salvaged in 1985 from the Spanish treasure ship Nuestra Senora de Atocha, which sank in a hurricane off the Florida Keys in 1622.
In his Complete herbal, Nicholas Culpeper, an english apothecary, prescribed: ‘Take of Pearls prepared, Crab’s eyes, red Coral, white Amber hart’shorn, oriental Bezoar, of each half an ounce, powder of the black tops of Crab’s claws, the weight of them all, beat them into powder, which may be made into balls with jelly, and the skins which our vipers have cast off, warily dried and kept for use.’
Culpeper remarks that ‘four, or five, or six grains is excellently good in a fever to be taken in any cordial, for it cheers the heart and vital spirits exceedingly, and makes them impregnable’.
Rather than having any genuine medical benefit, the popularity of bezoars appears to have been based on folk memory. Charles IX of France was a great believer in their power until a cruel experiment by his barber surgeon, Ambroise Pare.
A cook condemned to death for stealing silver cutlery was given a choice: strangulation or to be given deadly poison followed by the king’s bezoar stone as a cure.
The cook took the second option and was given a large dose of the corrosive poison bichloride of mercury. Despite being treated with the bezoar stone, the unfortunate man suffered from vomiting, pain, bloody diarrhoea and kidney failure for seven hours before dying.
After this harsh proof that it had no medicinal benefit, the king ordered Pare to burn his bezoar stone. however, it lives on in the harry Potter stories. When Ron Weasley is poisoned after imbibing oak-matured mead intended for Professor Dumbledore, harry saves him by shoving an entire bezoar down his throat.
Rachel Matheson, Thetford, Norfolk.
QUESTION People often say: ‘I’m as happy as Larry.’ Who was Larry?
hAPPy as Larry is thought to be of Antipodean origin. The earliest published reference is by New Zealand writer G.L. Meredith in 1875: ‘We would be as happy as Larry if it were not for the rats.’
Another early citation is by Tom Collins (pen name of the Australian writer Joseph Furphy), in Barrier Truth, 1903: ‘Now that the adventure was drawing to an end, I found a peace of mind that all the old fogies on the river couldn’t disturb. I was as happy as Larry.’
Some believe the original was Larry Foley (1847-1917), the father of Australian boxing. however, the phrase is probably linked to ‘larrikin’, a stylishly dressed urban hooligan (think Peaky Blinders). The word was derived from the english dialect larrikin or larrie, a term popular in the West Midlands.
A 1868 citation from the New Zealand letters of h. W. harper reads: ‘We are beset with larrikins, who lurk about in the darkness and deliver every sort of attack on the walls and roof with stones and sticks.’