Was there anything a motorcycle could not do?
Pete Kelly gets the memory buds flowing again as he looks at the staggering variety of uses that motorcycles and combinations were put to during the tumultuous years of the 20th century.
In smoky industrial Lancashire in the 1950s, the energetic ringing of a handbell echoing from the walls of the cobbled back lane between two rows of terraced houses was quickly picked up by the local children, and, within minutes, we were spilling from our backyard entrances clutching well-worn copper coins to queue for our tuppenny cornets which, if we asked for it, would be sprinkled with ‘raspberry’ from a vinegar bottlestyle dispenser.
Some of the ice cream men pushed handcarts while others pedalled tricycles steered by the rail at the back of the front box with its swivelling Perspex top lid. Sometimes a pony and cart came round, but our favourite was a Dot commercial trike with a Villierspowered back end that had a distinct list to port, and to this day I associate those creamy cornets with the trail of 20:1 two-stroke exhaust it always left in its wake!
One of the jobs I always looked forward to at Old Bike Mart was covering the Vintage Motor Cycle Club’s annual Banbury Run, and, in 2015, Peter Old’s gorgeous 557cc
BSA ice cream outfit immediately rekindled memories of those long-lost days. It started life selling cornets, wafers and shells on the seafront at Penzance and was still playing a useful role at charity events, lifeboat days and hospital fetes.
In 2014, Sammy Miller sent us a stunning photo of a Dot trade tricycle that he’d restored to absolute perfection. Powered by a twin-port 122cc Villiers two-stroke engine with a three-speed gearbox, the 1947 Dot delivery truck (to give its correct description) was always popular for bread or ice cream deliveries, but even with an ex-works price of £143 it would have taken quite a few three-halfpenny ice lollies, threepenny wafers and fourpence-halfpenny briquettes to pay that back!
During the first half of the 20th century, the sheer variety of small commercial enterprises and local services utilising motorcycles and combinations was mindboggling, embracing everything from chimney sweeps, rat-catchers and poultry farmers to the doorto-door delivery of milk measured straight from the churn and freshly baked bread delivered in baskets from local bakeries. During the 1920s, motorcycle manufacturer Chater-Lea even used a large box combination and trailer to deliver its products far and wide.
When the internet was a far distant dream – or nightmare, according to your point of view – and relatively few people had access to a telephone, the quickest way to send a message was by Post Office telegram. Throughout the 1950s in particular, the ideal machine for delivering these brief strips of messages, particularly in built-up areas, was the simple, light and reliable BSA Bantam.
The Bantam’s origin lay in Germany’s DKW RT 125 two-stroke single, whose design was taken by the Allies as part of reparations after the Second World War and the first 125cc Bantam to be built here came off the assembly line in 1948.
More than 4000 of them were delivered to the Post Office for telegram delivery use, and, as they buzzed around our streets, the bright red machines boasting full legshields became a muchtreasured British institution – in fact it was on one of them (at the age of 15 and with a flagrant disregard for the law) that I rode a motorcycle for the first time in my life.
The invitation came during a chance meeting along a quiet country lane with a friend of mine who’d just become a GPO telegraph boy, and the brief but exciting solo excursion ended in a bed of nettles after I forgot what the left handlebar lever was for – fortunately with no harm suffered by bike or rider.
Telegram deliveries preceded the little two-strokes by many years, having been introduced during the Victorian era and first operated by the railways and private companies. In 1870, the UK’s inland telegraph companies were nationalised and thereafter operated as part of the General Post Office. For many years, the messages were delivered by telegraph boys on bicycles who were expected to conduct themselves in a manner befitting anyone wearing the uniform of Queen Victoria and her successors, and throughout the years of the First World War these messengers were required to supplement their daily drill sessions with morning exercise.
During the 1930s, boosted by the introduction of colourful special greetings telegrams in 1935, some 65 million telegrams per year were being delivered in the UK, mainly by telegraph boys on pedal cycles. A scheme to use motorcycles, allowing boys aged 17 to volunteer for training with their parents’ permission, was launched in Leeds in 1933.
During their deliveries, the riders were expected to average 15mph, but with ever-increasing phone ownership during the Bantam era, such deliveries had dropped to 10 million by the 1960s. When the Bantams were finally replaced by Puch and Raleigh mopeds due to tighter restrictions on young riders, the end was nigh and, in 1977, the Post Office abolished the telegram delivery scheme altogether.
It was much the same story with local police patrols who had ridden majestic shiny black ‘sit-up-andbeg’ bicycles since Victorian times. I remember their mounts being mainly Sunbeams and Raleighs, with fully enclosed chain cases to keep their immaculate uniforms free from the tiniest specks of oil. We even got to know their names, such as ‘Frisby’ and ‘Frankie Lanky Lee.’
My first encounter with one of these quiet upholders of law and order came one bright summer’s evening in 1951 when, after tea, I asked Mum if I could take my four-year-old brother Geoff to the swings at the local park. It was only a few minutes’ walk away, and I promised I’d be back by six o’clock. “Keep tight hold of his hand, then, and don’t go near the pond,” she said, so off we went.
Just before the park entrance, where a short railway bridge spanned the road, I spotted a hole in the wire fence separating one of the embankments from the cobblestoned ‘backs’ of a row of nearby houses and, still holding Geoff ’s hand tight of course, I decided to crawl through it and climb up to track level. Looking along the line, I noticed a slow goods train approaching, and decided that we’d watch it go clanking by at a dangerously close level before scrambling down again.
The old locomotive looked huge as it wheezed past with its long string of coal wagons, but the sharp eyes of the brake van guard, standing on his balcony at the back of the train, had spotted us and, as he swept by, he pointed his pipe at me in a kind of “Thee booger off!” gesture.
We’d just started to climb down when we spotted a bicycle-mounted bobby, notebook in hand and rain cape folded immaculately over his handlebars, who’d seen the whole escapade and was giving me a stern ‘come here’ signal. Fearing that we’d be locked up (I was only seven after all) and still holding my brother’s hand tightly, I ran across the line and scrambled down the other side and into the field where the park’s majestic wooden bandstand stood. Spotting a hole in the base surround, we dived inside and quivered with fear for at least an hour until we were sure the policeman had gone.
It could all have ended much more tragically than the “Where on earth have you been?” reception I received when I finally brought my little brother home safely, and I still think about it more than 70 years later.
The old saying: “If you want to know the time, ask a policeman” goes back to the days when the vast majority of ‘bobbies’ patrolled towns and cities on foot day and night, building up an encyclopaedic knowledge of every dark corner, alleyway and back passage along the way and getting to know many of the local characters. They communicated with each other by the use of whistles and special blue police telephone boxes, and the era was immortalised by the longrunning TV series Dixon of Dock Green, starring Jack Warner, which appeared in black and white from 1955 until 1968, and in colour from 1969 until 1976.
In more rural areas, policemen first used tricycles by the 1880s, and, in 1896, Kent Police was recorded as having bought 20 bicycles. By 1904 almost 130 police bicycle patrols were in operation, and the use of bicycles continued well into the days of motorcycles and ‘panda cars.’ A breakthrough in local police patrolling followed the introduction of the whisper-quiet 149cc LE (‘Little Engine’) Velocette at the 1948 Earls Court Show. While ordinary everyday motorcyclists had reservations about the sophisticated but pricey newcomer (£120 against a BSA Bantam’s £76), it held great promise for local police patrol work with its water-cooled, horizontally opposed side-valve engine, handchange three-speed gearbox, shaft drive, built-in legshields and foot boards and unmistakable body style.
While some forces opted for small batches of the Mk I machines, the floodgates opened wide after the introduction of the beefed-up, 192cc Mk II version of 1951, which also had a slightly larger fuel capacity. While not much quicker than the 50mph of the Mk I, it had slightly better acceleration and was more suitable for heavier patrolmen and the police radio equipment that was fitted. So successful did the LEs become that police forces bought more than half of the total ever built, and they were so quiet that sometimes their riders could only tell whether the engine was running by checking the ignition light.
Once, when I was well under the then-legal firework buying age of 13, a police LE crept up on me just as I placed a banger under an empty soup can and lit the protruding fuse. I’m sure there was just the hint of a wry smile on his face as the resulting explosion lofted the can high into the air, and, after carefully parking his machine, he strode over and asked: “What are you doing with fireworks at your age, son? Don’t you know you could burn or blind yourself? Leave it to the older ones next time, and if I catch you doing it again I’ll be around to see your parents.”
On another occasion, the shout, “Get that kid off the crossbar” seemed to come from nowhere as a patrolman’s LE Velocette whispered by – but what carefully measured, fair and effective policing they doled out!
Four years ago, when I was editing Old Bike Mart and writing about the same subject, a discussion arose in the readers’ letters pages about eight 150cc single-cylinder Triumph Terrier motorcycles being sent to the ‘Chief Engineer, New Scotland Yard, Westminster, London SW1’ on May 26, 1955 for evaluation against the LEs.
Mike Estall, of the Tiger Cub and Terrier Register of Survivors and author of the brilliant Triumph Tiger Cub Bible (ISBN 978-178-7117-341), kindly sent us two photos, one showing five of the eight Triumphs among a group of patrolmen leaving Hendon Police College, and another showing two immaculately uniformed patrolmen, one standing alongside Terrier RLE 351 and the other alongside an LE. In the end, though, it was the whispering LEs that got the job!
It wasn’t all plain sailing for LE patrolmen, though, and I couldn’t resist adding the heading: ‘Journey into Space – on a Noddy Bike!’ to another great letter which came from former motorcycle patrolman Derek Marrable in April 2018 recalling the night he was launched into dark space on an LE Velocette!
While on patrol around Beckenham, he’d just introduced an LE-mounted colleague to some of the back streets, alleyways and footpaths of his rounds before heading to West Wickham where he knew of a long alley, running between a school and the back gardens of some houses and that was often checked for suspicious loiterers.
In the dead of night, riding at about 25mph, with the feeble glow of the six-volt headlamp just about indicating the path ahead, Derek had just realised that his colleague was no longer following him when all hell broke loose! “The fences on both sides were flashing past about a foot away from the handlebar ends when suddenly the rolling tyre noise stopped dead,” he wrote.
“It was like floating in a dream, and for a split second I was panicstricken. The engine was running, the headlight was on and I was still travelling forward between the hedge and railings.
“Then there was an almighty impact at the front end, the engine died, the handlebars seemed much closer to me than they’d been a few seconds ago, the tyre noise returned and I was still riding between the hedges!”
He’d been concentrating so much on keeping straight as he rode down the alley, staring into the deep void ahead, that he’d completely forgotten about the six steps that dropped the level of the alley down about five feet a few yards short of where it came out on to the road. So he’d literally flown the Noddy for several yards off the top of the steps until it came to earth front wheel first, forcing all of his 13½ stone weight on to the bars and pushing them down.
Apart from a cut lip after hitting the top of the windscreen, he suffered no other injuries and the bike remained in reasonably good shape as well.
The ‘bump stop’ protrusion brazed around the front fork leg had hit the bottom of the top shroud with so much force that it had curled up a small strip of the metal for about a quarter of an inch, just like a miniature sardine tin lid, but that was all, and it was easily fixed.
He later learned that the colleague who’d been following him had returned to Beckenham to fill in a police service form after his bike had developed clutch slip.
Other uniformed motorcycling services were many and various, even including a local water board inspector in my home town who was issued with a 350cc Royal Enfield Clipper for the job, but back in the days when breakdown help was more of a club affair than merely an insurance scheme with multiple marketing spin-offs run by giant companies, the services most associated with motorcycles
– or motorcycle combinations to be more precise – were the Royal Automobile Club and Automobile Association, founded in 1901 and 1905 respectively.
A few years back I really enjoyed researching a feature headed ‘Service with a Salute’ for OBM . At the beginning of the 20th century, Britain’s inbuilt class culture was thriving, and those from the upper echelons of society who could afford automobiles could also afford the uniformed chauffeurs to drive them.
Back then, anyone in a position of service, from the nannies who pushed the perambulators of landed gentry’s offspring in city parks to the household servants who cleaned out fireplaces, polished the brass and silver and peeled potatoes and, of course, the chauffeurs, wore some kind of uniform – but they wore them with pride, because at least it announced to the world that their wearers had respectable jobs to do.
It was only natural, then, that when the RAC introduced mobile patrols to Britain’s roads, their riders would wear a uniform not unlike those worn by the military, including tailored jodhpurs, polished boots, durable tops and of course caps and gauntlets. They were trained to give respectable salutes to members’ vehicles sporting the RAC badge, and their careers were advanced through a ranking system including corporal, sergeant, and so on. Carefully secured inside the organisation’s original Matchless box car outfits were comprehensive toolkits, cans of petrol and a selection of everyday spares including radiator hoses, fan belts and spark plugs.
The saluting, which was discontinued in 1963, was seen as a mark of respect, but when a patrolman did not salute, it was no rebuff but probably a warning that a police speed trap was just around the corner. Nowadays, if we flash an oncoming rider or driver to warn of a speed camera vehicle ahead, it could be seen as obstructing the police in the execution of their duty, but, there again, the light-flashing requires us to actually do something, whereas simply not saluting required an RAC patrolman to do nothing at all!
Until around 1930, the only way an RAC or AA control office could direct a patrolman to a stricken vehicle was by telephone, so, as well as patrolling the roads in the hope of coming across someone in trouble, the patrolmen spent many hours beside the organisations’ telephone boxes awaiting a call. Over time, the standard motorcycle used by the RAC became the long-stroke, singlecylinder Norton ES2, with a pedigree stretching back to 1927.
By the time the AA was formed at a meeting of motoring enthusiasts at a London restaurant on June
29, 1905, the Motor Car Act of 1903, introducing fines for speeding drivers, had come into effect, and a prime aim of the new organisation was to help them avoid police speed traps. The AA erected thousands of roadside warning and danger signs, and continued doing so until local authorities took over the role in the 1930s. Its first patrolmen, known as cycle scouts, didn’t appear until 1907, but, by 1909, their numbers had grown to almost 1000. They patrolled local streets on bicycles, helping drivers and motorcyclists with rudimentary repairs, warning them of speed traps or cycling off to summon assistance. It must have been sweltering work, too, because their heavy uniforms were similar to those of the RAC!
Following the introduction of solo motorcycles in 1912, the first AA sidecar outfits (known as ‘road service vehicles’ or ‘mechanical firstaid outfits’) were issued in 1919, with early examples being supplied by the likes of Chater-Lea, Triumph and BSA.
By 1923 the AA had 274 combinations and 376 cycle patrolmen, but, just 15 years later, it boasted no fewer than 1500 combinations and 860 cyclists, with a membership of 725,000 representing some 35% of the two million cars then on Britain’s roads. After the Second World War, BSA became the standard supplier of AA sidecar outfits.
Radio telephones were introduced to both organisations in the late 1940s, but, by the end of the 1950s, with the rapid growth of car ownership, the launch of the Mini van (which gradually took over patrol duties) and the 1959 opening of the Preston Bypass heralding the motorway age, the days of sidecar patrolmen were numbered. The AA stopped using combinations in 1968, and, although the RAC ran some outfits until the early 1980s, the writing had been on the wall from the moment it placed a £38,000 order for 100 Austin and Morris Minis in 1963.
Many tradesmen and women also used ‘uniforms’ of a kind as they delivered their services by motorcycle and sidecar to all parts of the United Kingdom. Nowadays so many people buy their milk in plastic cartons from convenience stores and supermarkets that it’s difficult to imagine the creamy stuff being transported to the front door in a box sidecar ridden by a young lady in an immaculate dairy coat and being measured into those lovely old wide-rimmed bottles with cardboard tops – but one of the accompanying photos shows just that at Pewsey, Wiltshire, in 1938.
Another shows a private poultry farmer dressed in full ‘country gentleman’ uniform delivering live birds on a P&M sidecar outfit which, he maintained, saved him a fortune in railway fees!