In the 1890s, cycle racing was the world’s No 1 sport, and in the boom years the cycle industry could not make bicycles fast enough to supply the demand from chaps who wished to emulate their racing heroes and maybe even set their own records on the country’s roads. As well as the established manufacturers catering to this market, hundreds of smaller companies bought parts through the trade to build their own bicycles. After Humber brought out their safety bicycle with an upward sloping top tube in 1892, many of the trade suppliers copied the design. It was usually described as a ‘Humber Pattern Frame’. As you can see in the trade advertisement below, it was offered without a transfer (decal) so that the “maker or agents may put their own transfer…”
1894 ‘Humber Pattern’ Safety with upward sloping top tube
Possibly ‘The Hudson’ made by Hudson Edmunds & Co, precursor of New Hudson Ltd
23″ Frame
Front wheel 28 x 1 3/8″
Rear wheel 28 x 1 1/2″
Frame No 20903
Location: Australia (Farren Collection, Melbourne)
Free book included: ‘Bicycling Through Time’
As you can see from the various advertisements of the period, many bicycles of this design were sold as frames only for smaller cycle builders (at home and abroad) to add their own names and transfers (decals). If you compare the frame illustrated in the Hudson Edmunds & Co advertisement below, you can see that it could be ‘The Hudson Humber Pattern.’ Hudson Edmunds & Co exported to Australia and New Zealand, and the bicycle is in Australia.
Of course, as they were sold as frames + components it is now impossible to know how many surviving examples of the upward sloping top tube safety were made by Hudson Edmunds & Co. But the information provided below confirms that they were a busy company (200 bicycles a week), and they presumably had a brisk enough trade to develop into one of Britain’s leading companies, New Hudson Cycle Mfg Co.
The bicycle needs new tyres as it has been in storage for a long time. Otherwise it’s in good all round condition and ready to ride.
HUDSON EDMUNDS & Co
Made the ‘Hudson’ in Sheepcote St., Birmingham, Warwickshire, before 1892. Hudson, Edmunds & Co. were brass tube manufacturers. Edward A. Wilson worked for them and had also entered into partnership with George Patterson who was making ‘Gem’ cycles. The firm displayed various ‘Hudson’ safety bicycles at the 1891 Stanley Cycle Show. In 1892 Wilson went to Adelaide with samples of ‘Hudson’ cycles. In 1893 the firm displayed their “well-known” ‘Hudson’ cycles at the National Show. They then erected a new four-storey factory close to their old works in Sheepcote St. to enable them to turn out up to 200 machines per week. Became the New Hudson Cycle Mfg. Co. Ltd from January 1894. The former company was liquidated c.1895 [‘An Encyclopaedia of Cycle Manufacturers’ by Ray Miller]
A FEW MORE ‘HUMBER PATTERN’ FRAME SUPPLIERS
