Get Out and Get Under: Motoring Fifty Years Ago

by JOHN E. HUTTON

1

As A BOY I used sometimes to drive what I believe was one of the two biggest steam traction engines ever built. It was named “Jumbo" after a famous circus elephant, and it was especially designed to operate the Fiskin plowing gear. By an ingenious arrangement of steel ropes and pulleys the engine would plow a field several hundred yards distant from it. I felt very proud to be in control of this huge machine, which, as it inched along the road, would be preceded by a man carrying a red flag.

That man with the red flag was prescribed in Great Britain by the “Red Flag Act” of 1865 — a law which naturally enough had the backing of the railroads seeking to stifle the early threat of competition from motor trucks. No vehicle propelled by technical means could use a public road unless preceded by a man carrying a red flag, and the speed must not exceed four miles per hour in the country and two miles per hour in the city. That was the gist of it. But in 1896 a new act was passed, enabling “mechanically propelled vehicles,” within certain weight limits, to dispense with the courier and his flag; and at the same time the speed limit was raised to twelve miles an hour. At first this latter restriction worked no hardship, for while you might attain the giddy speed of twenty miles an hour while coasting downhill, no car could exceed the twelve-mile limit on the level, and the slightest uphill grade reduced the progress to a crawl. When we came to a real hill, the driver jumped out and, holding on to the steering wheel, pushed for all he was worth — and if lucky we just got over the brow.

Cars in those days had the nose of a setter dog and could smell an adverse grade long before it became apparent to the driver. Butchers’ boys in their light dogcarts delighted to overtake, with the utmost ease, a car in labor on a grade. The badinage that passed on those occasions was all one way and rather distressing — to the motorist.

My first experience with a car was in 1897 when, as an undergraduate at Cambridge, I accompanied the late Charles Rolls (of Rolls-Royce fame) in a Benz from Cambridge to London. It took us just ten hours to cover fifty-six miles and we stopped every ten miles to empty twenty gallons of boiling water and replace it with cold. It is an amusing commentary that at the very end of the run we were stopped by a policeman for exceeding the limit and were duly hauled into a police court. Fortunately, the magistrate treated it as a joke and dismissed the case. Of course in those days no driving licenses were required nor were cars numbered.

The following year — 1898 to be exact, just half a century ago — I bought my first car, a twocylinder, four-horsepower Panhard dogcart — tube ignition, tiller steering, and so forth. Not having the slightest idea how to drive or how the creature worked, I persuaded Rolls to give me a lesson — which he did, in all places in the world, in Rotten Row at the height of the season. Now Rotten Row is where the elite display their elegance on “insanitary quadrupeds,” many of which were spurred from their usual gentle gait to an exhibition of haute école with disastrous results. If telepathy were a real force I would have dropped dead instantly.

After an hour, Rolls said he thought I would be “all right” and left me to my own resources in making a perilous journey of some 225 miles to the North. I arrived there filthy and exhausted after a lapse of three days, much of which had been spent under the car or gazing into its entrails wondering what was wrong. My delay was caused by a slipping clutch: an entirely unprotected leather-faced cone, constantly lubricated where not needed by oily exudations from the engine. After much experiment I paradoxically enlisted the service of my rival, the horse, by using handfuls of the droppings which liberally marked his progress, mixed with sand.

Another cause of delay was the odd method of ignition, which was effected by means of a Bunsen burner, fed by gasoline, under a platinum ignition tube. Sometimes when you incautiously went too fast over a bump — and believe me solid tires exaggerate every unevenness — the infernal burners went out and, of course, the engine stopped. Three years later when I was enough of an “expert" to be called on to write the chapter on ignition in the Badminton Library volume on motoring, I devoted several pages to “tube ignition.” It was several years before electric ignition was universally adopted, although a few makers such as Morse and de Dion were using it.

Shortly after I arrived home I had a letter from a friend — a keen hunter — solemnly warning me of the danger of driving my machine on the road at twelve miles per hour and prophesying that it could only be a short time before I killed myself. I have often wondered whether his concern was due to fear for my life or was caused by the extraordinary contortions of his steed whenever it met mine. Some years later, when I was racing, I had a somewhat similar warning from Charles Rolls. We were entering some mild competition when he learned I had made some alteration to my car which I hoped would beat his. I received a very friendly letter in which he reminded me that the speed I hoped for was in excess of that for which the car was designed and that I should very likely kill myself— “which would be too bad for the motor industry,” on which he was then embarking. It is funny how we contemplate other people’s misfortunes in relation to our own interests.

2

AT THIS time there were thousands of miles of roads in Europe with good macadamized surfaces, but no treatment was given them to overcome the raising of dust by passing cars. He who has never driven over dusty roads cannot imagine the misery and danger caused to drivers of vehicles and pedestrians. The passage of each car raised a solid wall of dust which, on calm days, remained suspended in the air for several minutes in an impenetrable fog. Passengers in horse-drawn vehicles, perhaps dressed up in their Sunday best, emerged from the dust fog looking as though they had visited a flour mill. On wet days pedestrians were inundated by a shower of mud and filth squirted at them by the car tires. It was not until several years later that anti-dust treatment became general. At first tar was used exclusively, and of course cars were liberally spattered with it and required arduous cleansing-

No one who has not experienced it can have any conception of the hatred and malice engendered by the advent of the motorcar. As I lived in a noted fox-hunting country I had to endure the full blast. The whole population was divided into two camps: pro-motor and anti — the latter representing some 90 per cent of the whole. Masters of foxhounds were particularly acrimonious and offensive, and the luckless driver of a car was ostracized from “polite society.” Even the drivers of horse cabs and buses used to hurl epithets at us, of which the least indecent was “sparrow-starver,” to which we retorted by reflections on the anatomy of their “ insanitary quadruped.”

The press overflowed with “letters to the Editor,” mostly advocating the banishment of the car. Amongst these protesters, W. S. Gilbert, the playwright of Gilbert and Sullivan operas, was incisive and acid. Soon after a particularly vile letter from his pen appeared in the Times, I had the misfortune to cause a minor catastrophe. At that time, cars were exceedingly noisy. My father used to aver that he always knew when I was arriving, because he could hear my car leave the town three miles distant. Naturally the horses were scared of them. As I was laboriously mounting a hill, on the Great North Road, there suddenly appeared upon the crest a smart wagonette filled with people and drawn by a pair of horses which, as soon as they saw and heard my car, bolted and turned over the vehicle. Fortunately no passenger was hurt and I gave the driver my name and address and proceeded on my way.

Some weeks later, I received from the Marchioness of E. a letter — adorned with the insignia of a Marquis — which in most formal tones apprised me that the damage caused to the carriage and harness would cost 85 pounds to repair and she would appreciate my check. To this I replied regretting the occurrence, which was no fault of mine. To this she replied by enclosing a clipping of Gilbert’s latest letter from the Times. By great good luck, on the day I received her letter there appeared an amusing answer to Gilbert’s letter from—of all people — a M.F.H. of the Kilkenny Hunt, in which he said “every old woman that owns an ass-cart thinks she owns the road.” Gleefully I sent this to the Marchioness with my compliments, to have it returned to me with the laconic commentary: “Rubbish.” So ended that particular incident.

Prejudice was so extreme that it was sometimes impossible to get a meal at a roadside inn, or even in more pretentious establishments in country towns. It was a little embarrassing to be told by Boniface to “take yourself and your stinking machine to hell out of here.”

For the first ten years of motoring there were no service stations at all — not one. Nor could any mechanical help be obtained except from the local agricultural machine shops. One had to do most of the repairs oneself on the road. Nor were there any storage tanks or pumps for gasoline. I remember that the first gas put on the market by a British firm was called “ Petrol,” a label which has survived to the present day. It was packed in two-gallon cans and had a specific gravity of .680. Petrol was followed by “Pratt’s Spirit” (S.O.) in green cans and “Shell,” which was sold in red. Incidentally, I was responsible for installing the first underground tanks in London — they had a capacity of ten thousand gallons and were run with Bowser pumps — but I got them down only after a year’s negotiation with the civic authorities and the insurance firms.

3

THE early car had tiller steering, chain drive, solid rubber tires, ignition by a flame-heated platinum tube, no radiator — and I almost added, no brakes. The latter were simple external bands on drums for each wheel, and as they operated through the driving chains it was just too bad if one of those chains broke. What a messy business it was, replacing a chain thickly lubricated with oil and graphite!

The car body was modeled on those of the horsedrawn carriages. My first two cars were dogcarts. Unless the occupants of the rear seat were securely strapped in, they were likely to fall out into the road each time the car started. There were, of course, no windshields in the early models—in fact, not for several years was the motorist afforded any protection from the wind and weather. In selfdefense the driver dressed himself up in a black leather suit with goggles while the ladies wore thick veils and dusters — all of which proved a godsend to the cartoonists.

When the bodies were not of wicker the cars were laboriously painted with “coach” paint. As many as twenty coats of filling, paint, and varnish would be applied by hand, each coat being meticulously “rubbed down” to ensure the smooth, glossy finish so dear to the old coach builders. So delicate was the varnish that it was imperative, if the luster was to be preserved, to wash ears immediately on the completion of a journey. Even a few drops of rain alighting on a dust-covered engine hood would leave unsightly spots which had to be removed with the aid of “revivers.”

During these pioneering years we had to improvise and we had to improve wherever possible. We had wheel steering, radiators, and pneumatic tires. But those tires! Before the introduction of the cord tire, which came years later, the cover was built up of canvas like a bicycle tire. We had no detachable wheels or rims, and when a tire punctured or blew out, which was quite likely to happen every few miles, the tire had to be detached with levers and the tube patched. As likely as not, when the cover was replaced, the tube was pinched and the wretched contraption had to be removed again. The tires were provided with a very smooth, plain tread which skidded on the slightest provocation. It was common to see a car suddenly turn completely about in a city road, and the driver was lucky if he hit no other vehicle.

Early drivers often became expert at correcting skids except under extreme conditions. This risk prompted Parsons to invent the attachable chain which is still in world-wide use for snow-covered roads. The first step in tire construction intended to overcome skidding was the insertion of metal studs in the tread. These worked fairly well on wet roads, but were liable to skid badly on smooth dry asphalt. It was not until several years later that the molded rubber non-skid tread was introduced.

The tube was inflated by the aid of a hand pump which needed some two hundred strokes to generate the necessary wind. On a hot day it was a devastating experience. To make matters worse, some of the most rabid anti-motorists deliberately cast handfuls of horsehoe nails on the road, with disastrous results. The first detachable tire carrier was the “Stepney wheel,” which was bolted onto the rim of a deflated tire. After this came the detachable rim, followed later by the detachable wheel. The “Stepney spare wheel” duly served its purpose with humorists wishing to describe a man’s mistress!

There was, of course, no starter and the engine had to be cranked by hand. Headlights were lit by acetylene gas from carbide generators which stank abominably. The side and rear lights were of a simple wick and oil description, and they usually smoked so badly as to make the light invisible. The ignition on most cars was still of the heated tube type, although electric ignition was making headway and the magneto was taking shape.

One of the oddest gadgets fitted to all early cars was the sprag — an iron rod, spiked at the end, which could be lowered at the will of the driver to prevent the car from running backward down a hill when the motor stalled, as it frequently did, on a steep incline. One could never depend on the brake to hold a car on a hill. Sometimes the driver would forget to lower the sprag until the car had gathered a backward momentum, in which case it would “jump the sprag,” which would then be pointing forward, requiring the driver to crawl under the car and unbolt it to permit the machine to go ahead. Jumping the sprag usually resulted in the car running backward into a wall or ditch or sometimes over a precipice. In the latter event the driver was in no condition to bother any more as to which way the sprag was pointing.

Not for many years was glass, fitted to front and side windows, to be of the non-splinterable type. Once when I was driving at over sixty miles an hour, a cock pheasant tried to cross the road and crashed through my front window, landing on my lap. I was nearly blinded with feathers and blood running from the scalp of my head, which I had instinctively lowered to take the force of the collision. Fortunately the car stayed on the road. Since it was Sunday, I had difficulty in finding a doctor at home, and the horror and astonishment inspired by my bloody appearance made it difficult for me to get intelligent answers to my inquiries for a medical man.

The years 1901 and 1902 were to see a revolution in car design. The German Daimler firm introduced the Mercedes, which embodied so many innovations as to justify the statement that it. was the prototype of the modern automobile. The car produced a first-class sensation when it appeared on the Promenade des Anglais at Nice.

4

No ACCOUNT of the early days of motoring would be complete without reference to the electric carriage which was developed in the first years of this century. The French produced a beautiful little electric Victoria intended for town use by women drivers. Their artistic design and silence would have made these cars enduring favorites had it not been for their very limited radius of action. Paris Singer invested a substantial capital in supplying London with a large fleet of electric broughams and cabs which were much sought for dinner parties, dances, and the theatre. They survived for many years. But I suspect battery upkeep proved their undoing.

Although not strictly an electric car, the Austrian Daimler Company produced about 1902 a Mercedes car without gears. The engine was coupled to a dynamo which generated power to drive an electric motor built into each front wheel. This is probably the first example of electric transmission and of front-wheel drive in an automobile. The car was very silent in operation since the absence of gears, which in those days were abominably noisy, removed the cause of most of the din of early cars. In the absence of non-skid tires it suffered greatly from front-wheel skidding.

A French manufacturer produced a very light runabout car called the Decauville, with air-cooled engine and bicycle wire wheels, which ran quite fast until the engine overheated, and then the car had to have a rest for cooling. One day I was driving merrily in Hyde Park when I was startled by a strange noise and was astounded to see the flywheel spinning at an incredible speed across the road. The crankshaft had broken. Fortunately the wheel hit nobody.

It was in 1901 that I made some cars: they were called the “Simplex.” A single-cylinder, four horsepower engine, with battery ignition, drove a canvas belt onto three pulleys carried on the back axle. The center pulley was “idle,” and by shifting the belt onto one or the other pulley one had the choice of two speeds forward. Reverse was effected by pushing the car backward. The chassis and wheels were of bicycle construction, and being very light the car went quite well. I sold the few I built, but it was not a profitable venture since they were hand-made. About this time I bought the first American car I had seen, a Stanley Steamer in which you sat right on top of the boiler, hoping it would not explode. You got adept at expanding the boiler tubes with a little gadget you carried for the purpose.

In those early days I took a car over to the west of Ireland on a fishing holiday and penetrated hundreds of miles of road on which no car had been seen. The reaction of the natives was startling. As soon as they saw what they took to be “the Divil himself” they would abandon their ass-carts on the narrow road and take to the bog. If I happened to drive at night, the acetylene headlights scared them still more, and it cost me many a good shilling to persuade them the Divil at least carried currency. Incidentally, when one is touring in Ireland the natural desire of the Irishman to answer a question in a way he thinks will please you may be embarrassing. The reply to an inquiry as to how far it is to the next village will invariably be “A mile and a bit.” The “bit” may be five, ten, or twenty miles.

During the early days we organized little competitions of a mild sort, but road racing was entirely out of the question because of the speed restrictions and the prejudice of the pedestrians. True, more and more people who could afford it were using cars, and some hardy fox-hunters actually went to the meet in Panhardsor Daimlers. In the meantime the Continental manufacturers were taking advantage of their more liberal laws, to organize serious road racing. So it was that in 1901 I engaged in my first Continental road race in the French Riviera, which I shall recount, in my next article.

(Mr. Hutton’s next article on Racing and Touring will appear in the Atlantic for December.)