In 2008 I bought a New Rapid ordinary. I knew almost nothing about old bicycles, but quickly learned that the marque was well regarded and that a number of New Rapids survived on both sides of the Atlantic. The badge on the backbone declared that it had been made by St. George’s Engineering Company of Birmingham, England. As luck would have it, a reproduction of the 1888 catalogue of New Rapids was readily available[1] and therein was my bicycle, the Light Roadster, in all its glory.  The catalogue strenuously promoted two distinctive features of New Rapids; the True Tangent wheel and the Palmer handlebar. This whetted my appetite and I set off to find out more about Palmer and his bicycle. The tale I unraveled revealed a man who was a remarkable athlete, innovator, entrepreneur, businessman, public citizen and philanthropist. Moreover, the life and times of Charles Palmer highlight some of the seminal moments in the development of cycling as a sport and an industry.

The story begins with one of the most notable English sewing machine pioneers, William Newton Wilson. In 1858 he began to import sewing machines from the United States but quickly progressed to manufacturing his own. A somewhat erratic business man, Newton Wilson was dogged with lawsuits for patent violations throughout his career and he lurched in and out of insolvency, but his company spawned several famous innovators. Most notable was James Starley, who worked for Newton Wilson in London from about September 1859 until May 1861, but there were also George Singer, William Hillman and William Herbert - all of whom subsequently went on to fame and glory in the cycle industry.

In 1866, while his acolytes prospered in Coventry, Newton Wilson took over an existing foundry in Birmingham at 52 Pope Street and renamed it St. George’s Foundry.[2] Pope Street is in the Jewellery Quarter, which at that time was a maze of small workshops devoted to all manner of precision machinery. The factory was primarily used to make sewing machines, but Newton Wilson was quick to cash in on the craze for velocipedes at the end of the decade. He loved publicity stunts, so in July 1869 Mr. R.J. Klamroth from the firm of Newton Wilson attracted a lot of press coverage by riding over 400 miles from London to Edinburgh on a velocipede, sustaining himself along the way with enormous breakfasts and liberal amounts of sherry.[3]

Newton Wilson went bankrupt in 1877 and the St. George’s Foundry appears to have been ceded to the mortgagee, John Cornforth[4]. When William Newton Wilson emerged from bankruptcy in 1880 he continued to market sewing machines which were made at St. George’s and he was also selling “A.B.C” or “Acme Bicycle Company” machines, emphasizing their high quality ball bearings - presumably also made at the St. George’s Foundry. In the 1880s, Newton Wilson gradually withdrew from business, closing down his London showroom at 144 High Holborn at the end of 1882 and moving to other premises. The A.B.C. name disappeared, but St George’s Foundry (still owned by John Cornforth[5]) continued to make cycles and continued to trumpet the quality of its bearings.

The new name St. Georges Foundry chose for their products was Rapid. It is clear that it is the bearing which is called Rapid, whence the cycles derive their name. They produced various types of tricycle; the Rapid tricycle introduced in 1882 attracted most attention with its relatively elegant two-speed gear mechanism. By means of a lever controlled by the cyclist, the 40 inch driver could be geared down to 34 inches for hill climbing or to 48 inches for going on the level and slipped into a freewheel position for sailing downhill. The ordinaries, on the other hand, were -well- rather ordinary. Henry Hewitt Griffin’s 1882 annual review of bicycles devotes most attention to the design of the bearings and is not enthusiastic about any of the other features. St. George’s produced three classes of ordinary: the cheapest (Class 1) sold for ₤15; the best (Class 3) sold for ₤24. They continued to offer these same cycles with minor improvements until the 1884 season, but then things were to change in a big way. On September 1^st 1884, Charles Palmer joined the company as foreman of the cycle department, and within months his incredible energy and enthusiasm were propelling the company in a new direction.

Figure 4 Charles Palmer (courtesy of Handsworth Golf Club)

Charles Andrew Edward Talbot Palmer was born in 1858. His father, Thomas Palmer, was a machinist who - like so many small-scale businessmen in Birmingham - turned his hand to whatever was in demand at the time. Like William Newton Wilson, Thomas Palmer and his brother had plunged into the velocipede business in 1868. And also like Newton Wilson, the Palmer Brothers sought publicity through the sporting world: John Henry Palmer, their ‘racing representative’ rode to victory at a championship race in Paris in 1870 and came in second in Aston the following year. However, when the velocipede bubble burst they turned to other business and in 1870 Palmer Brothers were listed in Hulley’s Birmingham Directory only as sewing machine and breech-loading gun-action makers. Although Thomas Palmer of 21 Victoria Road, Aston, was still listed as a maker of breech-loading gun-actions in 1878, in that year he decided to resume the production of bicycles. Wire-spoked wheels and better cheaper steel had transformed the clumsy boneshaker into a more rideable machine, bringing about a revival in demand.

Palmer and Son, as the business became in 1879, touted the fact that their bicycles were produced on the ‘Interchangeable System’. In other words, parts were machined with such precision that they did not require custom finishing to ensure they fitted together. Broken or worn out components could be readily replaced by standard parts ordered directly from the manufacturer.

Thomas Palmer’s son, Charles, the hero of our story, left school at the age of sixteen and was apprenticed into the jewellery trade. Two years later he followed his elder brother, John[6], into the employment of the National Arms Ammunition Company, but it was not where his enthusiasm lay. Charles was a keen sportsman, excelling in swimming and football before taking up the new sport of cycle racing. He first crops up as a champion cyclist in July 1878 when he was 20 years old. Two years later, he became the centre of a bitter controversy which gives us an insight into the status of competitive cycling in England when it was still struggling to gain a measure of respect and autonomy from traditional sports associations.

On June 5^th 1880, a cold, windy and drizzly day, C.A.Palmer took part in a one mile handicap cycle race at Aston. According to The Cyclist magazine, after shooting into the lead, Palmer mysteriously eased up and let rival Vaughton win by a couple of yards. Although Palmer raced “tooth and nail” against R. Baugh in the subsequent three mile race (but neither man managed to overtake the overall winner, Vaughton), he “was greeted with hisses and groans on all sides in condemnation of his performance in the mile.” When he was hauled up before the committee of the Midlands Counties Amateur Athletic Association (the MCAAA) and asked to account for himself, Palmer explained that “he had been ill for some weeks and being out of training was suddenly run to a standstill.” Although neither he nor anyone on his behalf had bets upon the race, the MCAAA suspended Palmer for three months noting that it had been asserted that, prior to “roping” the finish, Palmer had deliberately called upon his competitor to “come on”.

The Moseley Harriers Sports Association, who had hosted the racing event at which Palmer supposedly misbehaved, asked him to leave the club. Although the initial reporting by the Cyclist had been skeptical in tone, the journal now swung firmly in Palmer’s favour. “We feel the MCAAA have placed themselves in an absurd position, and they have Mr. Palmer in an unjust one… No sensible person would ever believe that if any rider really wanted to ‘rope’ he would be such a simpleton as to do it by a sudden stoppage a few yards from the post.” The Cyclist reported that the Charles Palmer suspension was ‘the talk of the Midlands’.

Cycling clubs affiliated with the MCAAA took matters into their own hands and passed resolutions ignoring the suspension. Foremost among them was the Birmingham Cricket and Football Club - since Charles Palmer was its Honorable Secretary - and he competed under its name in cycle races a few weeks later. The North Warwickshire Bicycle Club and the Speedwell Bicycle Club also took Palmer’s side. The Cyclist was now in full cry, eager to excite a full scale rebellion, calling upon all the bicycle clubs who belonged to the MCAAA to withdraw their names and give their adherence to the Bicycle Union. ‘Every man in the Union is a practical rider’. It was risible that cyclists’ issues should be adjudicated by committees of cricketers and footballers. Cycling as a sport was coming of age.

Charles Palmer continued to be a champion bicycle racer for the following two years, winning many trophies including the Speedwell Cup and the North of England Championship Cup. Perhaps his most memorable triumph came in 1882 when in April he fought J.F.Griffith of the London Bicycle Club to a dead heat for first place in a fiercely exciting ten mile race. At a specially arranged play-off which took place in June, Palmer romped home with a clear win and thus became that year’s winner of the Surrey Challenge Cup. By beating the “safe” (as in sure-fire) winner from London, Palmer earned himself the moniker as the “safer” man. Perhaps because he suffered injuries from some cycling mishap in that year, he gave up competitive cycling, but he was to be a keen sportsman for the rest of his life.

Perhaps his father became ill or died in 1883? Then perhaps Charles was given leave by Andrews to return to the family firm to sort out its future[8]. Very tentatively we may suppose that having engineered the absorption of his father’s struggling business into Andrews in July 1884, he felt free to seize the opportunity at St. George’s of being a bigger fish in a bigger pond. In August Palmer patented his detachable handlebar (which was likely an improvement on the Andrews’ detachable handlebar, patented six months earlier) and on 1^st September he took up the position of manager of St George’s cycle business.

The Foundry was re-named St. George’s Engineering Company and the cycles were re-launched as the New Rapids at the beginning of 1885 at the Stanley Show. The bicycles won enthusiastic reviews on account of their True Tangent wheels. Unlike radial spokes, tangential spokes effectively transmit the torque from the axle to the rim. The innovation was not new; J.K. Starley had beaten them to the punch with a patent some time earlier, but the New Rapid wheels were immensely strong and uncompromising. The spokes weren’t merely crossed; they followed the rigorous dictates of true tangents, crossing no fewer than seven other spokes from flange to rim and being tied at the sixth and seventh crossings. The new wheels were exhibited at the Stanley show, the Speedwell exhibition in Birmingham and, later in the year, at the International Inventions Exhibition at the Crystal Palace in London, where they won a gold medal. (There were 88 exhibitors of innovations in the cycle industry, reflecting its status as the high technology growth industry of the day.)

The C.T.C. Gazette drew attention to the fact that "the present makers of the “Rapid”, although the
successors of, are by no means identical with, the St George’s Foundry Co., a firm whose cycles a few seasons since were alleged to give but qualified satisfaction in several instances that came under our notice. The St. George’s Engineering Co. is practically a new firm, and the master mind that presides over the mechanical detail is that of Mr C.A.Palmer…” He was 27 years old and already a star. On September 19^th 1886 the dashing young 'master mind' married the petite 23 year old Miss Aida Pountney at Trinity Church, Handsworth, near Birmingham.

Samuel Clark of Baltimore, Maryland (a founder member of the League of American Wheelmen and an importer of bicycles since 1879) had been the U.S. agent for Palmer’s former employer, Andrews. When he heard that the New Rapid had won the Gold Medal at the Inventions exhibition in 1885 he came over to England and struck a deal with Palmer to become the exclusive agent for the new bicycles[9]. He held a sale to unload his inventory of Sanspareil and Coventry Machinist cycles and by the late spring of 1886 was aggressively promoting the New Rapid and recruiting distributors around the United States. He took an initial consignment of 250 bicycles from Charles Palmer and thenceforth represented only New Rapid bicycles and Quadrant tricycles.

Demand for New Rapids was strong so on Tuesday and Wednesday 13th and 14th September 1887 the company held an auction to dispose of all their sewing machine manufacturing equipment, the tools, patterns, patents and inventory, to make room for the expansion of their bicycle facilities.[10] The following year Charles Palmer bought St. George’s Engineering Co. – probably from John Cornforth.[11]

The 1888 catalogue of their US distributor (who had become The Clark Cycle Co. at 340 North Charles Street, Baltimore - presumably they too were prospering) was offering both the New Rapid Roadster and the New Rapid Light Roadster for $130 for a 50 inch model in enamel - a reduction of $5 from the previous year. It was still offering the ordinaries in its 1890 catalogue but had cut the prices again by $5: it was very close to the end of the road for these bikes.

Prices had always been lower in England.[12] The 1890 British catalogue priced its Roadsters at ₤18 each (the equivalent of just $87), but as a last desperate effort to sustain demand they also offered a ‘special’ at the knock down price of ₤13 without (quelle horreur!) the True Tangent wheel, and solid rather than hollow rims. Together with longer saddles, the rear wheels of the roadster and light roadster were increased from 18 inches to 20 inches, a belated move to shift the center of gravity back and give the ordinaries a slightly safer and smoother ride. In 1891 the ordinaries were offered with little comment or exposition, the bulk of the catalogue being devoted to lengthy and somewhat defensive explanations of the various features of their five different models of safety bicycles and the pros and cons of cushion versus pneumatic tyres. Although still more expensive than the ordinaries, their No.3 (₤20) and No.5 (₤23) safeties adopted the diamond frame and their weights were down to less than 39lbs. Pneumatic tyres were offered for ₤5 extra. Having been pre-eminent in ordinaries they were me-too in safeties.

They continued to make a fuss about their True Tangent wheel, noting a further improvement which was to use perfectly straight spokes attached to nipples which were inserted in holes in the flanges of the hub. This eliminated the weak point where a conventional spoke was bent to attach it at the hub. Originally patented by Palmer in December 1885, this more expensive system of spoking a wheel does not seem to have been deployed on ordinaries but it was used on the rear wheels of some of the solid-tyred safeties.

Production of ordinaries had almost certainly ceased when, on 1^st October 1893, the business of St. George’s Engineering was reorganized into a limited liability company prior to an offer of stock to the public in April 1894. The prospectus for the issue reveals that the business achieved profits of ₤9,054/0/9 in the fiscal year ending September 30, 1891, ₤8,584/0/7 in fiscal 1892 and ₤10,335/4/4 in fiscal 1893. The company was to have total capital of ₤60,000 consisting of ₤40,000 in ordinary shares and ₤20,000 of debentures (bonds). The company was probably producing at least 7,000 cycles per year by 1894.

Charles Palmer retained one third of the stock and subscribed to half the issue of debentures. He undertook to remain the chief executive for five years and to hold his stock and debentures for that period. But his business interests had already extended well beyond St George’s Engineering: he had become the chairman of Hudson & Company Limited, ‘tube and bicycle manufacturer of Selly Oak and Bournbrook’ in 1892, and shortly thereafter the chairman of the R.F.Hall Manufacturing Company, manufacturer of cycle components and accessories. In 1894 both companies were absorbed into the newly formed Cycle Components Manufacturing Company Limited.[13]

Of course, cycle components were lucrative, but nothing compared with the opportunities in pneumatic tyres.

John Boyd Dunlop’s (re)invention took the cycling world by storm in May1889, when a safety cycle equipped with pneumatic tyres defeated two of the famous du Cros brothers on ordinaries in a cycle race at the North of Ireland Sports Club in Belfast. Their father, Harvey du Cros, turned the setback into an opportunity, enlisting Dunlop in an enterprise to exploit the invention, ‘The Pneumatic Tyre and Booth’s Cycle Agency Limited’.

The new firm had barely been incorporated in December of that year when C.A. Palmer arrived on the doorstep eager to do business. Palmer, as proprietor of St. George’s Engineering, partnered with M.D. Rucker of the Humber company to lead a group of the most powerful cycle makers to secure a license for supplying and fixing pneumatic tyres from du Cros’s newly formed company. In those early days the method of attaching the tyre to the rim and the puncture repair technique were still in flux and it was envisaged that such activities would be a lucrative business requiring specialized professional expertise and equipment. The initial reaction from the directors of the Pneumatic Tyre etc. company was favourable, but the consortium was too greedy, proposing that licenses be granted to only four companies at a royalty of 9d per wheel. The board reconsidered their position and on December 27^th 1889 resolved “to throw the pneumatic tyre open to the trade.”[14] The decision was instrumental in ensuring that Dunlop's pneumatic tyres would quickly become ubiquitous.

Starting with capital of less than ₤15,000, over the following six years under Harvey du Cros’ leadership, the ‘Pneumatic Tyre and Booth’s Cycle Agency Limited’ grew as fast if not faster than any internet technology company a century later. In April1896 it was bought for ₤3 million by the stock promoter, Ernest Terah Hooley, who promptly stuffed the board with aristocracy and floated it on the London stock exchange as the Dunlop Pneumatic Tyre Company for an astounding ₤5 million.

But his interests were not limited to business; he was becoming a pillar of the local community:

Although not yet out of his thirty-eighth year, Councillor Charles Andrew Talbot Palmer has won for himself a position in the commercial world which is distinguished even in these days of rapid progress. Thorough-going, eminently practical, quick to see and prompt to act, filled with a laudable ambition and endowed with robust health, it would indeed have been strange had he not risen above the common level. Whatever his hands have touched has been well done. An enthusiastic sportsman, he was a few years ago famous throughout the length and breadth of the country for his remarkable cycling feats; a manufacturer of the first rank, he is the controlling genius of companies whose names alone are a guarantee of the best work and the best workmanship; a philanthropist, willing and able to assist in charitable enterprises, he is a governor of the General Hospital, the Children’s Hospital, Dental Hospital, the Graham Street Dissenting Charity School, and similar institutions.[15]

He was a councillor on Handsworth District Council, a Justice of the Peace and a notable philanthropist. In 1898 he donated a drinking fountain (which still survives) to Victoria Park in Handsworth, and he and his wife hosted events for the local horticultural society. He was admired as a man of phenomenal energy, engaged in so many activities as would exhaust a lesser person.

1896 marked the height of the cycle share mania. Having rushed to put together and float The Tubeless Pneumatic Tire and Capon Heaton Ltd, Palmer decided to do the same for St. George’s Engineering. But the rather dowdy name would have to go. The business of St. George’s was acquired by the newly formed New Rapid Cycle Co. Ltd. Fellow Handsworth councillor and fellow director of St. George’s Engineering, George Henry Capewell Hughes (the founder of St Stephen’s Ariel Wheel Works, who was already deputy chairman of The Tubeless Pneumatic Tire and Capon Heaton Ltd.) was invited to become chairman of New Rapid Cycle Co. Ltd, which listed 130,000 (one pound par value) shares on the Birmingham stock exchange in March 1897. The original debentures of the St. George’s Engineering Co. were replaced with New Rapid debentures, of which Palmer continued to be the largest subscriber, taking over half the issue.
 

Charles Palmer was almost too late. The cycle industry in total raised over ₤17 million in capital in the space of twelve months, triggering an over-expansion of capacity, a glut, and the consequent collapse in profitability. To make matters worse, the export market (mainly the United States) collapsed in the second half of 1897. Less than a year after the flotation, the New Rapid Co. warned that business was unlikely to meet expectations for the year. Things deteriorated further and the company reported an operating loss of ₤5,682 for the year ending September 1898 and other expenses and a write-down of a bad debt resulted in a total loss to shareholders of ₤14,037. The company slashed prices by 40% in an attempt to retain market share.

The company was still losing money two years later. It lost ₤4,304 in the year ending September 1900, and the stock price had fallen from the issue price of ₤1 to a mere 6d by the middle of 1900.The shareholders meeting was mutinous and after some altercations Palmer was ready to submit to a reconstruction of the company, offering to convert his holding of ₤13,000 of debentures into ordinary shares provided “shareholders found the money to pay off the bank overdraft of ₤12,000.” In other words, if he were to do his bit to ensure the survival of the company, the other equity holders ought to chip in some more money to eliminate the debt of the company.

In the early years of the new century there was trade press speculation that New Rapid would imminently introduce a motorcycle, but it almost certainly did not. Instead New Rapid gradually faded away.[16] The last year the company appears in Kelly’s directory for Birmingham is 1909.

By then, the St. George’s works had another occupant, The Armstrong Triplex 3-speed Co., manufacturer of three speed hub gears. It had been incorporated in 1907 and in 1908 it moved to the St. George’s address. The New Hudson cycle company [17]acquired Armstrong Triplex 3-speed Co., Ltd. in 1915 and used the St George’s Works to produce bicycles in the subsequent decade, before switching over to motorcycles. Perhaps Armstrong Triplex acquired New Rapid, or merely took over the facilities as New Rapid closed down.

Why did New Rapid fail? From the tenor of the catalogues and what we know of the bicycle industry at that time, it is likely that New Rapid never properly adjusted to the harsh realities of mass production. Their emphasis was always on their premium product (one of the reasons their ordinaries have survived and are prized so much today) whereas by the late-1890s the safety bicycle had become commoditized and the key to survival was ruthless efficiency and economies of scale. In contrast, New Hudson used the latest machine tools to maximize productivity while pitching a product aimed at the new mass market and as a result, while New Rapid was still hæmorrhaging losses, New Hudson was actually profitable in 1899/1900 and survived until it was absorbed into BSA in 1942.

Palmer’s other famous business, Capon Heaton, fared better - although it was also in financial trouble by 1900. The Fleuss tubeless pneumatic tyres didn’t prevail but Capon Heaton continued to manufacture conventional bicycle tyres (Boothroyd Cycle Tyres)[18] and other rubber goods for many years. It continued as an independent business until it was sold to Avon Rubber in 1964.