My grandma does talk about being a housekeeper, but mainly it’s the quirks of the people she worked for. She really liked the lady of the house, but her husband… not so much.

Her headgear is interesting. It is not a skimmer or one of the various types of small, jaunty hats, some unbrimmed like sailor’s caps, some be-feathered, that you see in pictures of lady bicyclists of this time. Instead it is just like the sleek, fitted, visored cap you would traditionally see on male bicyclists.

Now, this photo was not taken in a studio but outdoors, in summer sunlight, on a road fringed by a park-like landscape. Her husband can be seen in the same photo, also on a bicycle, and he looks like a bicyclist straight out of a period fashionplate (he actually organised and competed in bicycle racing). My impression, therefore, is that these are the clothes they both would really have worn when out bicycling. It all looks as very natural and relatively unstaged (despite the bicycle supports), not like people putting on their Sunday best for a formal studio sitting.

You’re welcome! Based on a cursory glance at periodicals of the day, I think roller skate manufacturers were already in some type of manufacturing business. There was a lot of money to be made during the craze, and no doubt when it collapsed, those who didn’t invest all of their money into skates and roller rinks switched to manufacturing something else.

Your personal story is really neat! Did your great-grandmother wear a cycling costume (bloomers or divided skirt), or her regular skirt in the photograph?

And LOL, about visitors being so interested in how servants were treated. I wonder why we’re so sensitive about that particular issue.

Would you happen to know who or what type of businesses manufactured the roller skates and what happened to them once the craze was over?

On a personal note, my great grandparents were among the first to import and sell bicycles in their country. It caused a sensation when my great grandmother took to bicycling through the city as she he was the first woman ever to be seen on a bicycle over there. The novelty was such that it was captured in a formal photograph (of which I own a faded copy). It makes me wonder whether she ever heard about rollerskates or tried them!

I used to be a docent in a historic mansion, and visitors were very sensitive over the class issue whenever it was brought up. Racial issues didn’t seem to be a big deal, but they ALWAYS asked how the family treated their servants.