The motor-cycles for pacing the riders have arrived, and will be used in the races this afternoon. This will be the first time that motors have ever been used for this purpose in the city, and the spectators will have their first opportunity to compare the work of human muscles with that of the steel sinews of the machines in racing.
—“Paced by Motor Cycles,” St. Joseph (MO) Daily Herald, October 8, 1899
“Miss Anderson is built for riding and in appearance is a perfect athlete.”1 So stated the St. Joseph Evening Record at the start of the brief fall racing season of 1899. There were September and October races in St. Joseph and Kansas City, then a final race in Cleveland over Thanksgiving week into early December—and that was it for those four months. The point system, which never really worked as intended, was largely forgotten; instead, the narrative focused on the dramatic rivalry between Tillie, Lizzie, and Lisette as they battled for the unofficial title of “champion of the world.” Words between the three became increasingly bitter, with escalating charges of fouling or conspiracy or both. Despite the drama, fewer cities seemed interested in hosting races: indeed, after the skimpy fall season, the first race of 1900 wasn’t held until Memorial Day. That year there were just ten major races—half of them in Zanesville, where the women again spent the entire summer. They made return trips to Nashville, Winnipeg, and Des Moines and held a Christmas week race in Cleveland, but they made it to only one new town—Lima, Ohio. The racing itself remained competitive, but signs of decline were everywhere.
The endless accusations traded among the Big Three dominated any news coverage. Racing against lesser-known women in Kansas City, Lisette repeatedly claimed the championship for herself—or at least the promoters did. News of this got back to Zanesville, where on September 1 Tillie fired off a letter to the Kansas City Journal:
I have been noticing articles in your paper regarding the ladies’ bicycle race held in Kansas City last week. Mlle. Lisette was represented as the champion lady rider of the world. This is not correct. I, Tillie Anderson, won that title from Mlle. Lisette a year ago at the Exposition building, Minneapolis, Minn. Since then I have defeated Lisette eleven different times. Lisette has never won a race where Glaw, Farnsworth or I have been the contestants. Hoping this will convince you that people are not always what they are represented to be, I am ready to defend my title, and willing to meet all comers. Yours respectfully,
Tillie Anderson2
The cross-country war of words climaxed when the two racers met for a series of races in St. Joseph and Kansas City in early October. Tillie was quoted as calling Lisette an “amateur.” Lisette claimed through the papers to have defeated Tillie numerous times—in Minneapolis, St. Paul, Nashville, and Newark, Ohio. “I never rode a race in St. Paul,” Tillie responded, “so the writer must have been misinformed as to that.” As to losing in Minneapolis and Newark, she said, “I would like to know where I was at the time it was done.” Tillie granted that Lisette had beaten her in several heats in those cities, but that hardly constituted victories. “What does a heat amount to,” she asked, “when we are riding six-day races?”3
What irked Lisette and her husband, Émile, it turned out, was the very idea of a “championship of the world” title. Tillie’s claim seemed absurd to them. There were, after all, championship races in Europe as well. “There is in Europe, since 1896,” wrote Émile in St. Joseph, “a championship of the world for ladies—sprinters. It is raced once a year, in August, in Ostende, Belgium.” He explained that Lisette had never entered that race because she was a “stayer,” specializing in paced races. Still, he pointed out, “Miss Anderson’s name is not found among the riders.” In addition, Émile went on, “there is, in Paris, since 1895, a championship for ladies, ‘stayers,’ with pacemakers.” This race Lisette did enter—and won every year before she moved to America. “When,” he asked, “was one won by Anderson?”
Émile also cited the five-day championship races at the Aquarium in London, which Lisette had won in 1896. Since then, he said, others have won, so Lisette would never call herself champion. “But who gives Miss Anderson her perpetual title?” he asked. “Is it an hereditary title? And can she transmit it to her children? Her answer is that she won many races and that a tire factory gave her a medal with the title Champion of the World! She says also that in 1896 Lisette beat in London Frankie Nelson and that she beat Lisette in 1898 in Minneapolis. It is a good way to save railroad fare and travel expenses. But from 1896 to 1898 they have raced twenty championships in London, two in Belgium, and two in Paris. Which of these were won by Miss Anderson?”4
Titles and records were indeed difficult to pin down. Through the 1880s and 1890s, the LAW regulated and recorded men’s cycling. In January 1900 the National Cyclists’ Association took over while the LAW shifted its focus to advocating for better roads, eventually giving way to the American Automobile Association. In Europe the International Cycling Union sanctioned women’s racing as early as 1893. But there never was an official U.S. organization that sanctioned the women’s tracks or recognized the women racers. Officially, at least, Tillie Anderson never actually won anything.
To settle the dispute, a twenty-mile race was arranged at Athletic Park in St. Joseph between Tillie, Lizzie, Lisette, and three other riders. Tillie suggested that, since Lisette was supposedly such a good rider with pacemakers, they use pacemakers for the match, so that was also arranged. It was something new in the sport, at least in America. To add to the novelty, Jack Prince decided to bring in “motor cycles” for the job, the first time such machines were used in women’s competitions.5
It was a great race—and also characteristic in every way. A thousand people turned out to see the riders make a fast and steady pace right up to the final laps, when they burst into a full-out sprint. Lizzie, now recovered from her “near-fatal” injuries, had the lead going into the final lap, when “both she and Anderson were apparently riding at a breakneck pace, and for either to increase her speed seemed an impossibility.”6 But with half a lap to go, somehow Tillie did find some kind of reserve, and she passed Lizzie on the homestretch. After Tillie passed, said the Daily Gazette, Lizzie “sat erect on her wheel and seemed to give up.” After having championed both Lisette and Lizzie in the previous week’s war of words, the Gazette now sided with Tillie. “There is very little difference in the sprinting abilities of these two riders,” the paper concluded. “It was perhaps Anderson’s generalship more than her speed that won her the race from Glaw. . . . Glaw made a determined effort to hold her own but failed.” No final time was reported, but the outcome was clear enough, with Tillie firmly in command, “settling to the satisfaction of everyone present her disputed ability to defeat Glaw and Lisette.”7
In early July 1900 Phil left Chicago on the advice of his doctor for the warm, dry climate of Los Angeles. The young couple’s hopes for Phil’s recovery were fading. His Chicago doctor admitted there was little left to do, in terms of treatment, other than follow his simple instructions regarding diet and exercise.
Phil felt guilty about surrendering his responsibilities. He reported trying hard but failing to patch up an old Kokomo tire of Tillie’s, and he gave her last-minute advice about which tires to use on sunny days and which to use on rainy days. “Well,” he wrote, “I sincerely hope you will not have any falls or trouble with your wheels.”
Phil waited until Tillie was out of town to send her, by registered mail, his wedding ring, “as I do not care to have it along for several reasons.” In the package was a brief poem that Phil composed:
Years have gone, since I received,
From thee this token dear.
The emblem of your love towards me.
It brings to me a memory,
Of your love, and goodness to me.
And now that I am going
To a distant place from thee,
Then please keep this token,
For memory’s sake of me.
Tillie received the ring in Zanesville, where she was back at the Kirk House for another extended summer stay. The people of Zanesville were only too happy to host the women once again, but the fact was that Manager Harry Jeffs simply couldn’t find anywhere else to go. Overall it was a depressing season. The new century held few good omens for women’s racing. Tillie was bereft off the track and listless on it, leading an uninspiring quartet that included Lisette, May, and Ida. The same four women raced over and over again, starting with regular six-day races the weeks of June 27 and July 5. Rain delays extended the second race into a third week, so they tacked on a three-day race to take them through another Saturday. They tried for Cleveland and Buffalo, but those engagements fell through, so they stayed for another three-day race and after that a two-day race.
Frequent rain dampened the crowds and slowed the racers, even Tillie, who, the Zanesville Times-Recorder noted, “has gone back considerably and is not near as fast this year as she was last.”8 Tillie hung back and let the others take the sprints—or even a night’s race. Ida Peterson even finished first one night. Gone was the intensity of the early years of the new era. On the last night of the first six-day race, Lisette suffered tire punctures on both her bikes and lost a total of fifteen minutes while the others continued to make laps. But in order to preserve some semblance of a competitive finish, Jeffs announced that the lost laps would not count against the French champion, and she was able to rejoin the race on an even footing with the other riders—quite a contrast to the urgent haggling and rounds of protests witnessed in previous years. Crowds expected to watch the women swoop around the track for sixty or ninety minutes and then sprint hard to an exciting finish, so management made sure that’s exactly what they got.
The rest of 1900 was high on drama but short on racing. Lizzie beat Dottie in Des Moines in September before a three-month stretch with no races whatsoever. That didn’t stop Tillie and Lizzie from continuing their feud, however. In Iowa Manager A. J. Stackpole floated a rumor that Tillie had quit racing altogether, prompting her to insist she was “active as ever in the racing game” and still champion, based on her Nashville victory over Lisette and Lizzie in early June.9
Lizzie dismissed the Nashville race, which she insisted “was declared no race at all on account of a mistake made by the referee.” Then she produced a list of the last seven “big six-day races,” going back to Chicago in 1897, of which Lizzie claimed to have won four. Tillie, she said, won just two of them, while the last one, in Nashville, didn’t count. “These races were for the championship,” Lizzie said, “and my record shows very plainly who is the better rider of the two.”10
“Does Miss Glaw only remember races she wins?” Tillie retorted the next day. “She has done that talking for years.” Tillie then produced a list of her own, organized by year going back to 1896. “I just happen to have a memorandum of all the races I have ridden,” she explained, with twenty-seven victories out of thirty-three races between the two rivals. Tillie’s list closely matched the public record, but of course Lizzie’s point was that she herself had won most of the “big” races, and there was some truth to that. In any case, Tillie challenged Lizzie to a match race. “Let Glaw do all the talking in the papers,” she said. “I shall try, as usual, to do the riding.”11
The two finally did meet again, beginning Christmas Day, at Tomlinson Hall in Indianapolis, to close out the year. It was the last of what Lizzie would call the “big races”—big city, spacious venue, eager reporting, and the three top racers in the sport, along with the trailing La Tour sisters, Edna and Mollie. It resulted in one of the strangest finishes of the era.
Managers Watkins and Ruschaupt squeezed the twelve-hour race into five days, with two two-hour heats on Christmas Day, two ninety-minute heats later in the week, and a special one-hour afternoon session prior to the final night’s racing. In each format, the women tore around the eighteen-lap track with a relentless intensity. It was no race for amateurs. Edna La Tour lasted just six miles, and Mollie lost laps every hour. It was all about the Big Three. “There is great bitterness of feeling between Glaw and Anderson,” reported the Sentinel, “and the French rider is by no means in a good humor.”12
The first several heats echoed previous races. Lisette sprinted early and often but fell back in the final laps. She finished second five times, including the final night. The race for first was between Tillie and Lizzie. Lizzie won the first two heats, and some observers felt that Tillie was loafing. She was recovering from a cold, she said, and to prove that she was all right she came back and won the next three heats. “She has learned something this week,” said the News, “and that is that the most effective way to defeat Glaw is to carry a long sprint at the end.” On the nights she won, Tillie often took the pace, but she also started her final sprint a full ten minutes before the finish. “Many who have watched the two riders closely,” the News explained, “believe that in a minute-and-a-half race, or for ten laps, Glaw is a little faster, but when it comes to digging for a mile or a mile and a half, Anderson’s greater strength enables her to win.”13
Lizzie disagreed, blaming her finishes on the poor coaching of an unnamed trainer. After Thursday’s racing, she sent a telegram to Chicago, asking her old trainer, Fred Stobbart, to take charge of her for the final two days of the contest. The three leaders finished in a virtual dead heat on Friday night, setting up the Saturday finale. That’s when things got very strange.
There’s no report of the one-hour heat that finished midafternoon. The racers then retreated to their shared hotel for supper. Harry Jeffs later reported that shortly after the meal, Tillie fell asleep so deeply that she had to be repeatedly roused in order to make the carriage back to Tomlinson Hall on time. Even on the track, she couldn’t shake her drowsiness, and an hour into the race she had called for an ammonia-soaked sponge to keep herself awake. “This seemed strange to those who have witnessed her great work all week,” said the Sentinel. “Her riding was not as brilliant as on previous evenings, and caused considerable comment.”14
By the finish, Tillie seemed completely lost. “She said when the final sprint came she did not realize that she was falling behind,” reported the Journal, “and was unable to make a fast sprint or the finish because of feeling so sleepy.”15 In the last laps, Lizzie sprinted away from Tillie and Lisette and won easily. Lisette finished second, and Tillie dropped to third place. “Glaw’s win was a clean one,” concluded the Sentinel. “She sprinted away from both Lisette and Anderson in a manner that gave her the unquestioned right to the race and showed her to be the greatest general on the track.”16
But something clearly wasn’t right. Had Tillie run herself out by finishing those three successive heats with the long ten-minute sprints? Was it the lingering effects of the cold she’d suffered earlier in the week? In any case, reported the News, “Anderson had to be helped from the track, and was evidently suffering.”17 It was not unusual for men or women racers to be severely spent at the end of a race, but it was quite unusual for Tillie Anderson.
Tillie’s condition seemed more serious than mere fatigue. “When the race had concluded,” said the Sentinel, “she did not know in what position she had finished, speaking in a dazed sort of manner.”18 The Journal asked Tillie what she thought happened to her, but she had no idea: “Anderson said it was the first time she ever experienced such a feeling and does not know how to account for it.” She assured the Journal reporter that she had taken no stimulants, as some riders did, so she couldn’t have had an adverse reaction. Oddly, she didn’t seem to be upset about it. “She had no complaint,” the story concluded, “to make over her defeat.”19
Evidently, it didn’t occur to Tillie—or to Harry Jeffs, or any of the reporters—that someone could have spiked Tillie’s food earlier that afternoon. Fred Stobbart, Lizzie’s old trainer from Chicago, had arrived in Indianapolis just the day before to help Lizzie beat her longtime rival. It seems likely that something happened back at the hotel to cause Tillie’s lethargy and confusion. The end result, in any case, was another victory for Lizzie in a “big” race between the two riders.
Fairly or not, Lizzie Glaw was able to enjoy another long off-season as champion. The 1901 season began over Memorial Day, and not much had changed in women’s racing. Tillie and Lizzie had split the only two 1900 races they entered together and dominated the others. The Indianapolis Sentinel had praised their racing, and Lisette’s too, over Christmas week, but the editors pronounced the attendance only “good” and added that the relatively small crowds were “not deserving of the high-class racing.”20
The motorizing of American culture continued: one of the highlights of the Indianapolis race was when Mr. Carl G. Fisher exhibited his new, specially built “motor-bicycle” on the track at Tomlinson Hall. He claimed that on an open road the cycle could hit sixty miles an hour, although he himself had not yet reached that speed. “I’ve tried to let it out several times,” he told the Press, “but it gets too fast for me before its speed is up, and I’ve got to shut down on it.”21 How fast he could go on the indoor track couldn’t be determined, as Mr. Fisher had trouble handling the steep banks. But it was clear that with skilled riders, motorcycles would soon outpace bicycles on any track. Just as the safety bike had pushed aside the high-wheel, the motorized cycle was now getting ready to push aside the bicycle.
And, as in 1900, women’s racing again sought out fresh ground, this time settling in upstate New York, where a women’s “eastern circuit” had been more or less active since 1895, running single-stage races outdoors on unbanked quarter-mile tracks or gently banked coliseum tracks of eight or ten laps per mile. The Memorial Day race in Troy was the first women’s six-day race in the state since the failed Madison Square Garden race in January 1896. Over the years, several solid riders had emerged from New York and joined the “western circuit,” beginning with Pearl Keyes, Jennie Brown, and Kittie Staples. More recently, Alice Adams had appeared in St. Joseph, Kansas City, and Nashville, but in each case she finished well behind even May Allen and Ida Peterson. Through 1901 the competitors rarely varied: it was the Big Five of Tillie, Lizzie, Lisette, May, and Ida. Jennie Brown of Rochester did enter the race held there in late June, but she couldn’t handle the pace and had to drop out.
The summer season in New York was successful enough for the same reasons that racing had been successful in other states: the uninitiated were astonished by the tiny tracks and thrilled by the dizzying speeds, impossibly tight formations, and seemingly endless record breaking. All summer the women routinely averaged over twenty-two miles per hour. And then, of course, there was the threat of accidents. William Benedict, back as a manager of the races, made a special point to warn the Syracuse crowd, for their own safety, about leaning too far onto the track. “He laid great stress upon the fact that accidents are liable to happen,” reported the Post-Standard.22 This prospect evidently pleased the crowd. “The spectacle has just enough of an element of danger in it,” said the Evening Telegram, “to please the average American.”23
In addition, these women were now nationally known, so people in Troy, Syracuse, and Rochester jumped at the chance to see them in person. “Miss Anderson is too well-known to demand extended notice,” said the Troy Sunday News when she arrived in town. Lisette was generally regarded as the most famous of the bunch and was consistently named the favorite of both the bettors and the cheering spectators. Also for 1901 Lisette acquired a new nickname to add to her list: the French Demon.
As presumed champion by virtue of her December victory in Indianapolis, Lizzie also got a good share of the publicity. She was poised to challenge Tillie’s long-standing reign over the sport. Her engagement flagged, however, and she was capable of listless third- or fourth-place finishes. She needed a good coach. But as corporate backing dried up and the prize money shrank, unmarried racers like Lizzie found themselves less able—or, perhaps in Lizzie’s case, less willing—to support a full-time trainer. In 1901 Lizzie would go it alone, and her performance became even more uneven. She began talking about quitting the sport altogether.
Late getting to Troy, Tillie missed the first six-day race, and Lisette, the French Demon, lived up to her hype and won over a listless Lizzie and the others. With Tillie back in the mix the next week, however, Lizzie woke up, and the competition once again narrowed to the two Chicagoans. In the end Tillie edged Lizzie out by “not more than half a dozen inches.”24 Lisette finished five yards behind. In two follow-up short-distance races, Tillie also won, this time trailed by Lisette, then Lizzie—who again seemed to lose interest in competing.
The following week in Syracuse, Lizzie announced her retirement. This would be her last race, she said, and she wanted to go out a winner, as “champion” once again. Her heightened determination, plus the extra-small nineteen-lap track, made for an exciting race that mesmerized the local crowds. It was like 1896 all over again, only instead of Minneapolis or Cleveland, it was Syracuse that went bike-crazy. The track itself was such a novelty that the first night’s racing was delayed by “droves” of small boys who couldn’t resist sliding down the embankment from the stands. “How [the women] set the pace they do around the short oval is surprising,” said the Evening Herald, “but why they don’t get so dizzy they drop is more surprising.”25 According to the Evening Telegram, the audience was hooked almost instantly: “Before one mile had been reeled off the large crowd was of the undivided opinion that they were witnessing the greatest indoor entertainment ever brought to Syracuse.”26 “There’s something infatuating about the affair,” added the Journal, “and you are bound to become enthusiastic in spite of yourself.”27
Just as they had done in Chicago years earlier, incredulous local sportsmen gathered on the infield to time the women’s laps. When a crash occurred during Wednesday night’s closing laps, many feared the worst as Lisette, Ida, and May were carried off with seemingly debilitating injuries—but the next day the women delighted the crowd by appearing on the track fresh and ready to go. Among the cheering crowd were the city’s mayor, James K. McGuire, and state senator Horace White. As in so many cities in the past, “fashionable society” was generously represented in Syracuse.
A determined Lizzie got her wish—with an asterisk. All week she’d run exactly the race she wanted, “sticking to business all the time,” letting Tillie and Lisette take most of the leads as she pushed the pace from behind.28 With just one minute left on Saturday night, Lizzie jumped from third position and rode half a dozen laps halfway up the incline. With twenty-five hundred people on their feet and cheering, Tillie kept the lead until two laps were left, when out of a turn Lizzie swooped down, “and in so doing cut in too soon,” reported the Post-Standard, “nearly running into Anderson.”29
Tillie fell back and, after finishing second, immediately lodged a protest to the referee. Lisette backed Tillie’s claim, as did many in the stands. Tillie then followed form and challenged Lizzie to a match race. All of this was unsettling what Lizzie had hoped would be a conclusive final victory. Finally, they arranged to hold a ten-mile competition, with all five riders, as well as some individually run one-mile sprints against time. Lizzie had to prove herself one more time.
The results wouldn’t negate Lizzie’s victory, but for Tillie they showed the Syracuse faithful which of the riders could rightly be called fastest. Tillie won the ten-mile race in 26:08 (23 mph), with Lisette in second place and Lizzie in third, and rode the fastest of the miles, in 2:14 (26.9 mph). Lizzie and Lisette finished their miles in 2:15. Just like that, Lizzie was no longer the undisputed champion.
Taking advantage of the controversy, Manager Benedict added another six-day race to begin the very next night. A personal side bet of $200 was reported between the two rivals, and the crowd’s attention was focused on them throughout the week. Unfortunately for Lizzie, not having a dedicated handler hurt her midway through the final night when she experienced trouble with the front of her bicycle. She changed bikes, but “her second wheel suited her no better than the first.” A team of local men set to work on her first bike. After fifteen minutes they still hadn’t made any progress. The crowd could see that Lizzie was growing increasingly frustrated. “Stop looking at it,” she finally called out, shocking the crowd with her anger, “and fix it!”30
After several more minutes, the men pronounced the bicycle ready to ride, but by then Lizzie had given up on them and stubbornly refused to make the change. Fifteen minutes later she lost the race.
Evidently hoping to regain her form, Lizzie went to Rochester for one final race. She lost this, too, however, claiming to be pocketed by Lisette in the final laps as Tillie won once again. She called it quits in disgust and returned to Chicago, having won just two of the nine races she’d run against Tillie since claiming the championship in December 1899. She would never beat Tillie again.