Name: Annie
Surname: Cohen, in Kopchovsky
Pseudonym: Annie Londonderry
Birth: Riga (Lettonia), 1870
Profession: A seller of advertising space for Boston newspapers.
Her adventure began with a bet: two wealthy Bostonians claimed that no woman would be able to travel around the world by bicycle, as they were incapable of taking care of themselves. Annie took up the challenge: she set off with only the clothes she was wearing and no money, aiming to return to Boston with $5,000 after fifteen months.
Annie left Boston on June 27, after spending almost two days at Towne’s photography studio, which provided her with pictures to sell during the journey (and gave her the first $30), and printing flyers explaining her endeavor. She also secured a sponsor: the Londonderry Lithia Spring Water Company of New Hampshire. She attached a sign with the company’s logo to the rear wheel cover and received $100 in exchange for adopting the new surname, Londonderry.
On July 2, she arrived in New York, where she stayed for nearly a month, selling advertising space affixed to her bicycle and clothing for $1,900. When she reached Chicago, her journey came to a halt due to her lack of sporting experience, her clothing, significant weight loss, and an unsuitable bicycle for her physique. She managed to continue after switching to a new bicycle and changing her outfit: she had started with a long black skirt, a tailored blue jacket with leg-of-mutton sleeves, a fitted blouse with a striped collar, and a bow tie. Along the way, she swapped the skirt for bloomers and, in Buffalo, bought a pair of trousers, cut several inches off them, and secured the lower part with elastic bands in the style of knickerbockers. She completed her outfit with black stockings, garters, a blue sailor-style hat, a vest, and a tweed overcoat.
She embarked for France on La Touraine, but upon arriving in Le Havre, her bicycle was confiscated, she was robbed of her money, and she was harshly criticized by the press for her masculine attire. The next day, she managed to reach Paris, where she stayed for three and a half weeks. On December 30, she set off again and, alternating between bicycle and train, triumphantly arrived in Marseille on January 13, 1895, with an inflamed Achilles tendon and countless stories of alleged assaults, thefts, and ambushes she had encountered. On January 20, she boarded the Sydney, making stops in Alexandria, Port Said, Colombo, Singapore, Saigon, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Nagasaki, Kobe, and Yokohama, from where she sailed back to America. After several more stops and a total of fifteen months of travel, she arrived in Chicago on September 12, 1895.
Women’s Rights Issue: “The restrictive fashion of the time—corsets, multi-layered, long, and heavy skirts worn over petticoats or hoop skirts, blouses with long sleeves and high collars—was the attire Annie started her journey with. It inhibited freedom of movement and seemed to symbolize the constraints that women of that era were expected to conform to“.
“In 1896, Susan B. Anthony told Nellie Bly of the New York World that bicycling ‘had done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world.’ […] A woman with a bicycle no longer had to rely on a man for transportation—she was free to come and go as she pleased. She experienced a new kind of ‘physical power,’ made possible by the speed of the vehicle. The bicycle provided a sense of equality with men that was both novel and exhilarating. Soon, more and more women began to see the bicycle as a ‘freedom machine’”.
Next: Gertrude Bell