1899 Humber Demountable Lady's (Detachable Joints)

1899 Humber Demountable Lady’s (Detachable Joints)

1899 Beeston Humber Demountable

– Free Wheel Lady’s Safety No 20 with Detachable Joints

Front rim brake

Band brake to back

21″ Frame

28″ Wheels (Dunlop-Welch)

Frame No 74615

(Now sold)

There are only a few illustrations of Humber’s demountable frame, and none of the Lady’s version. Whereas the frame members of the Gents’ model could all be removed, the Lady’s simply detaches above the bottom bracket so you end up with two halves. It’s a very neat party trick, but not as useful.

There was plenty of publicity around the company’s brazeless joints, which pushed tightly into place. The demountable option joins in identical fashion, though with retaining bolts. But it had a very short life. Bidwell was quite critical of the idea and and commented that water might get behind the retaining bolts. As the Demountable dismantled easily, Humber may have had export markets in mind. However, roads were not good in most parts of the world at the turn of the century and I reckon that the demountable frame would have been weak when extra load and strain was applied.

Humber pointed out the advantages of the Gents – it could be dismantled and stored more easily in winter, and if a frame member was damaged you could easily order a replacement. Folding bicycles had recently appeared on the market, and when the Lady’s was taken apart it would have taken up the same amount of space as a folding machine. So Humber may have wondered if this could be a cheaper option to compete with it.

However, folding bicycles did not capture the public imagination. In fact, Humber had presented various interesting concepts at this time: they also built an aluminum model with brazeless joints, a Humber Chainless, the Pedersen, the de Dion Bouton motor tricycle (as well as previously backing the Boudard gear and Simpson chain). Around 1897, the company was encouraged to branch out into new avenues. But by the following year the American cycle industry had started to fail and then the Hooley share scandal hit the British cycle industry, and various Humber companies crashed.

I noticed that Vernon Pugh of Rudge-Whitworth also patented brazeless joints. Around this time, Rudge-Whitworth suddenly lowered the prices of their bicycles, adding to the problems their competitors already had in a poor market. Humber’s brazeless aluminium bicycle was discontinued as well as the demountable, and surviving examples of either are rare nowadays.

This rare surviving example was stripped and serviced last week. Barry removed the retaining bolts – which are tapered cotter pins – and tried to detach the front half from the rear half, but it could not be done by hand; he even rode it round without the bolts in place to see if the tubes would loosen, but only managed to get the top tube to move by a millimeter. I don’t think it has ever been apart. So we gave up and replaced the bolts. As you can see, it’s in excellent preserved condition, and this unique machine is ready to ride and display.