Last week, we looked at Belva Lockwood’s way of getting around in DC and the reactions to it. We ended with John W. Forney’s appreciation of her mode of transportation.
Most seemed to agree with Forney, and there was real dismay in the Washington Evening Star when her tricycle was damaged while parked outside the White House: “A coupe suddenly turned the corner, and before the horse could be checked the wheels of the carriage became badly tangled in the tricycle. Fortunately the horse was easy to manage, and the tricycle was rescued with bit little damage.”
Just a few days later, Lockwood’s tricycle escaped a worse fate when it was stolen – but almost immediately recovered by the police.
In fact, the only one who seemed to have an issue with Lockwood’s form of locomotion was an (unnamed) tricycle manufacturer, who was quoted in the St Paul (Minnesota) Daily Globe saying that he believed “that if it had not been for Belva Lockwood he would before this time have sold a thousand tricycles in Washington. He said that the notoriety of Belva as a tricycle rider had prevented nearly everybody else from using them, especially women.” He concluded with “Now if it had only been Mrs. Logan who had bought the tricycle, then everybody there would be using them before this time.”
As can well be imagined, however, Lockwood took no notice of what others thought, and even took her conveyance to London when she was there in 1889. She did not, however, use it to get around Whitechapel on an excursion to visit the scenes of Jack the Ripper’s crimes. The Pittsburgh Dispatch noted what she saw in one of the alleys in which a victim had been found:
Among other things witnessed by the ex-candidate for President was a fight in Castle alley, brought about by a talkative woman. “Finally,” said Lockwood, in describing the fracas, “a man raised his fist and dealt the talkative woman a blow in the face, from which she bled freely, but still continued to talk.”
A police officer who arrived shortly thereafter was admonished by Lockwood for his late arrival. He rejected the criticism with the words “oh, madam, this is a matter of hourly occurrence.”
Lockwood’s tricycling was even given the honor of being the subject of a poem. Sadly, though, it was a poem by the pseudonymous “Bulbul of Pohick” who will probably not go down in history as one of our great literary lights. Certainly nothing of her oeuvre beyond this single poem and a cartoon purporting to represent her, and to be seen above, seems to have survived:
Oh, Belva Lockwood, she
Rides on a tricycle.
And Speaker Reed you’ll sometimes see
Out on a bicycle,
But Arthur P. Gorman, He
Didn’t get a thing this fall but an icicle.
The reason why Gorman, long-time Senator from Maryland and one of the most powerful men in that institution throughout its history, had only a spear of frozen water in the fall of 1895 has disappeared into the mists of history along with all other couplets from the Bulbul of Pohick. (Perhaps the Bulbul was dismayed by Gorman’s disenfranchisement of Black voters–MHC)
While Belva Lockwood would continue to be active in politics, including the women’s suffrage movement as well as world peace, either she stopped using her tricycle around this time, or interest in her form of mobility waned. Either way, no mention pf her tricycle is to be found after this time, although she did live another 22 years. She is buried in Congressional Cemetery.