Museum discovers motorbike link to Capt Tom
THE WALKING marathon in his back garden which raised £32m for NHS charities was not the first time Sir Tom Moore had proved himself a champion, it has emerged.
A motorbike on which the 100-year-old war veteran rode competitively in the 1920s has been discovered by museum staff near his old home in Keighley.
Captain Tom was pictured astride the machine, a Scott Flying Squirrel, clutching a collection of trophies.
It was one of several bikes designed, built and sold by the renowned engineer Alfred Agnas Scott of Shipley, on which Capt Tom competed – at a time when Scott’s cycles were considered among the best of their day.
The bike is now on longterm loan to the Bradford Industrial Museum, having been bought and rebuilt in the 1950s by Charles “CH” Wood, a well-known commercial
A small but significant link with a true national hero. Sarah Ferriby, of Bradford Council.
photographer in the city and himself a retired motorcycle champion. Mr Wood’s son, David, currently owns the machine.
Maurice Rispin, a Leedsbased expert on Scott bikes, who is almost the same age as Capt Tom, has told museum staff that he remembers him buying or borrowing it from Oliver Langton, a local speedway champion.
Sarah Ferriby, of Bradford Council, which runs the Industrial Museum, called the bike a “small but significant link with a true national hero of our times”.
She said: “We couldn’t believe it when we found out that one of the bikes that we have on display in our Bradford Industrial Museum was once rode competitively by Captain Tom.”
The Flying Squirrel, twice the price of most bikes, continued to be made in Shipley until the start of the Second World War.