By: Rénald Fortier
Ingenium – Canada's Museums of Science and Innovation
A brief portrait of a dynamic duo of dentists from Québec, Québec, Henri Edmond Casgrain and Marie Wilhelmine Emma Casgrain, born Gaudreau, during the Belle Époque – and a little something on their first horseless carriage, a Bollée Voiturette, part 2
Léon Auguste Antoine Bollée and a young woman aboard a typical Bollée Voiturette, circa 1896. Max de Nansouty, Chemins de fer – Automobiles (Merveilles de la Science, 5) (Paris: Ancienne Librairie Furne, 1913), 43.
Hello again, my reading friend and welcome to this 2nd part of our article on a dynamic duo of dentists from Québec, Québec, during the Belle Époque, a 2nd part in which the names of Henri Edmond Casgrain and Marie Wilhelmine Emma Casgrain, born Gaudreau, will be mentioned very rarely.
After all, yours truly had mentioned to you my intention to satisfy your desire to know more about the Bollée Voiturette.
Léon Auguste Antoine Bollée, circa 1913. Anon., Les Journées Léon-Bollée. (Angers: Éditions C. Hyrvil, 1920), unpaginated.
Let us begin with the beginning. Léon Auguste Antoine Bollée was born in April 1870, in Le Mans, France.
His father, Amédée Ernest Bollée, was a bell founder and automobile pioneer who oversaw the manufacturing of a 12-seater steam vehicle, the first family motor vehicle in the world, L’Obéissante, in 1873, of a 6-seater steam vehicle, the first mass-produced (around 50) motor vehicle in the world, La Mancelle, in 1878, and of other steam vehicles, and this during the 1870s and 1880s.
Léon Bollée was a brilliant young man with a strong talent for mechanics. Around 1883-85, he built a “vélocipède nautique, métallique, insubmersible,” in English a nautical, metallic, unsinkable velocipede. He subsequently obtained a patent and…
Yes, yes, my reading friend, you are absolutely right. The dentist at the heart of the 1st part of this article, in other words Casgrain, also made a “vélocipède nautique,” in English a nautical velocipede, but in 1886, however.
Could it be that Casgrain had heard about Bollée’s watercraft, you ask? That is quite possible, especially since an engraving of said watercraft appeared in a December 1884 issue of the excellent French popular science weekly La Nature, a publication which might have been available in Québec, Québec, where Casgrain lived.
In addition, that same magazine had published, in November 1883, an engraving of the water tricycle that an English sailor named Terry had used to cross the Channel, from England to France, at the end of July 1883. Yes, yes, the Channel, I kid you not.
Would you believe that an October 1881 issue of La Nature contained an engraving showing the heir to the British throne enjoying himself in Windsor Great Park, a suburb of London, England, aboard a “water velocipede” designed by a Swedish engineer, a certain Captain Lundberg? Yes, yes, Albert Edward “Bertie” of house Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, the future King Edward VII, mentioned in November 2018, April 2023 and August 2023 issues of our excellent blog / bulletin / thingee, but I digress.
A little before or after the design of his nautical velocipede, Bollée designed a chainless bicycle and a machine for checking railway tickets.
Anxious to help his father, then struggling with the creation of new numerical tables linked to the manufacture of bells, Bollée, yes, Léon, the son, designed and built two mechanical calculating machines in 1888-89. The second one won a gold medal at the Exposition universelle de 1889 held in Paris, France, from May to October.
Family tradition had it that a great American inventor mentioned in July 2019, January 2022 and October 2023 issues of our blog / bulletin / thingee, Thomas Alva Edison, was so impressed by what he read about the Bollée’s calculating machine that he went to the site of the Exposition universelle de 1889 to see it. Better yet, he invited the young man to come work for him in the United States.
Mind you, Edison officially went to Paris in early August 1889 to take a look at the electrical installations located at the exhibition site and that he had had installed there.
Before I forget it, Bollée completed a third mechanical calculating machine in 1895.
At least one of the calculating machines designed by Bollée seemed to have been produced in (a small?) series, but let us now get to the heart of our subject, the Voiturette.
Bollée began work on a two-seat gasoline tricycle vehicle in January 1896. The construction of that prototype, patented in December of the previous year, occupied him for approximately 2 months.
This Voiturette, a term for which Bollée might have obtained the rights, was the first fast automobile vehicle in the world. It could in fact reach or even exceed 30 kilometres/hour (almost 20 miles/hour). Wah!
It went without saying that Bollée travelled the roads surrounding Le Mans in order to refine his vehicle. He traveled many hundreds of kilometres (several hundreds of miles) in several weeks. Bollée had plenty of time to confirm that his vehicle consumed very little fuel and that it was easy to handle, simple, solid and stable, at least when roads were dry. If those were wet, however, the Voiturette could spin, or even make a 360 degree turn, and that in the blink of an eye.
On the other hand, the presence of quickly removable tires (2 minutes versus 15) improved handling and, to a certain extent, comfort, as the Voiturette was not equipped with shock absorbers. By the way, those tires were manufactured by the French tire manufacturer Michelin & Compagnie. Yes, that Michelin.
Bollée presumably also had plenty of time to note that the positioning of the control lever, on the left side of the vehicle, affected handling somewhat. Likewise, the presence of a passenger seated in front of him reduced visibility somewhat.
Speaking (typing?) of Bollée or, more generally, of the driver of a Voiturette, allow me to present the following sentence, translated here, taken from the chronicle “Causerie scientifique” of the supplement to a January 1899 issue of La Croix of Paris: “His job is easy and his position is all the more enviable because his companion, or his female companion, serves as a windbreaker.”
I know, I know, Somsoc, the unidentified scientific columnist of that daily newspaper which displayed its religious obedience in the clearest way possible, through a large drawing of Jesus of Nazareth dying on the cross on the first page of every issue, was not what you would call a very great romantic.
This being said (typed?), the qualities of the Voiturette, combined with a potentially low selling price, made that machine a vehicle which could interest many buyers. The Voiturette seemed to have a bright future.
A little after mid-April 1896, I think, Bollée set out on the road which linked Le Mans to Paris, an altogether daring hike given the distance, more than 200 kilometres (more than 125 miles), which separated those cities. That journey went off without a hitch.
Once in the city of lights, Bollée showed up at the offices of one of the most important French daily newspapers of the time, Le Petit Journal. The director of that newspaper, Hippolyte Auguste Marinoni, already knew Bollée. That brilliant mechanic, designer of a rotary press which had made possible the production of ginormous numbers of daily newspapers, at the risk of deforesting entire continents, had been impressed by the calculating machine that Bollée had shown him in late 1895, early 1896.
Marinoni was very impressed by the vehicle that Bollée presented to him, a vehicle which differed from both motorcycles and automobiles.
Indeed, the Voiturette was so different from what existed that, in the spring of 1896, the Automobile Club de France, the first (1895) automobile club in the world and a temple of misogyny for nearly 130 years, saw itself forced to add to the automobile and motorcycle categories a category called miscellaneous vehicles or something of the sort, for its competitions, but back to Marinoni.
The latter was so impressed by the Voiturette (In translation, “I am looking for what could possibly be missing. Nothing is missing!”) that he reserved the first page of the 3 May 1896 edition of his daily for an illustrated article on that motor vehicle.
One of the first illustrations showing a Bollée Voiturette, published in May 1896 by Le Petit Journal of Paris, France. If the driver of the vehicle was undoubtedly Léon Auguste Antoine Bollée, who was single at the time, the identity of his female passenger was much less certain. Pierre Giffard, “La Voiturette de M. Léon Bollée.” Le Petit Journal, 3 May 1896, 1.
The only item which was not swept away by that decision was the day’s episode of the serial that Le Petit Journal then published, namely La Joueuse d’Orgue, a work by the popular French novelist Xavier Henry Aymon de Montépin or one of his ghostwriters, a work which gave rise to an eponymous play dating from 1897, and…
Yes, yes, ghostwriters. Like several successful French authors of the Belle Époque who seemed to produce serials by the kilometre (0.6214 miles), at the risk of deforesting entire continents, de Montépin resorted to ghostwriters who, for the most part, are unknown.
Accustomed as we are to the polluting and dangerous presence of myriads of automobiles in the streets, promenades, boulevards and avenues around the world, we cannot imagine the impact that Bollée and his Voiturette could have had. Thousands of Parisians from all social backgrounds froze in amazement in the streets. Many of them had seen automobiles before, of course, but none which could move that fast or with such agility.
Rumours circulated according to which Bollée had obtained 350 (firm?) orders in the space of a few days. Each vehicle would sell for 2 000 francs, it was said, a sum which corresponds to approximately $22 500 in 2024 currency. And yes, if Lady Rumour was to be believed, Bollée had obtained (firm?) orders worth 700 000 francs, or nearly $8 000 000 in 2024 currency, in a few days. Wah!
One of the sales which became reality concerned Marie Didon, born Boisseau, one of the first French female motorists. Fascinated by what she had read in May 1896 in Le Petit Journal, that 48-year-old lady went to Le Mans and bought one of the first Voiturettes.
One of the gentlemen frozen in the streets of Paris was a representative of British Motor Syndicate Limited, an English firm founded in November 1895 from Daimler Motor Syndicate Limited, a firm itself founded in May 1893. That representative may very well have been the commercial director of said firm, the English racing bicyclist / journalist and pioneer of the British automobile industry Herbert Osbaldeston Duncan.
In any event, said representative was so impressed that he invited Bollée to go to London so that he and his Voiturette could be present during a private visit carried out by members of the Honourable the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain in Parliament assembled on the site of an automobile exhibition organised by England’s Motor Car Club.
And yes, the speed and handling of the Voiturette generated complimentary comments.
The following day, the co-founder and chairman of British Motor Syndicate, a former bicycle designer and racing cyclist, said he was ready to acquire the British production rights for the French vehicle. Henry John “Harry” Lawson seemingly mentioned to Bollée the modest sum of £20 000, or approximately $5 600 000 in 2024 currency. Bollée accepted on the spot. Lawson might, I repeat might, have given him a check for a fifth of that sum, the remainder to be paid at fixed instalments.
Why such enthusiasm, you ask, my reading friend who is very close to her / his money? You see, British Motor Syndicate wished to acquire the production rights to various types of French, British, etc. vehicles in order to produce them, or have them produced, under license in England.
Let us be blunt, Lawson wanted to control the British automobile industry through the British Motor Syndicate and an English firm which controlled it, Great Horseless Carriage Company Limited. The objective of that cunning businessman was seemingly to get his hands on as many patents as possible in order to subsequently resell them at a high price to firms which would manufacture the vehicles.
Two days after their remarkable performance in London, Bollée and his Voiturette were in Coventry, England. Children, gentlemen and ladies froze in amazement in the street when they saw them go by. It went without saying that Bollée happily agreed to offer brief rides to various people, including the mayor of Coventry, John Baird Loudon.
Even though he did not put the pedal to the metal, Bollée still went rather fast and that was where the shoe pinched. You see, British motorists were still living under the yoke of the Locomotives (Amendment) Act 1878.
Would you believe that this legislation still limited the speed of automobiles to 6.5 or so kilometres/hour (4 miles/hour) in the countryside and 3.25 or so kilometres/hour (2 miles/hour) in cities, I think, and required the presence of a pedestrian walking 18 or so metres (60 feet) in front of any automobile, in order to warn other road users of the presence of said automobile? Local authorities might, I repeat might, have had the right to require that person to wave a red flag. In 1896. The mind boggles.
In such circumstances, one would have expected the Coventry City Police to crack down on Bollée and his speeding violations. Indeed, some local residents expected that too. However, that was not at all the case. Worse still, members of said police department opened the way for Bollée and Loudon so that they could race ahead at their leisure.
If yours truly may take the liberty of paraphrasing a famous sentence from the short novel Animal Farm, published in 1945 by George Orwell, the pen name of the English essayist / journalist / writer Eric Arthur Blair, all human beings are equal, but some human beings are more equal than others.
And yes, the Voiturette driven by Bollée seemed to have been the first automobile to circulate in the streets of Coventry.
In July 1896, soon after Bollée’s return to France, with his precious check for £4 000, or approximately $1 125 000 in 2024 currency, a fire broke out in the Humber & Company Limited factory which was to produce the Voiturette. That factory was more or less destroyed. The bundle of plans prepared by the firm’s staff as well as the Voiturette left in Coventry by Bollée, in order to help said staff, suffered the same fate.
Lawson immediately requested that Bollée provide him with a replacement vehicle. Judging the 2-month deadline mentioned by his French partner to be unacceptable, he decided not to pay the second payment due to Bollée. Deeming that unilateral decision unacceptable, Bollée refused to send the replacement Voiturette. Things were deadlocked.
Appalled by what was happening, the aforementioned Duncan managed to convince Lawson to prepare a check for £16 000, or approximately $4 475 000 in 2024 currency, in Bollée’s name. He also convinced the latter to give him a vehicle in exchange for said check. With that agreement in place, or before contacting Bollée about it, Duncan took a train to Dover, England, then a ferry to Calais, France, and finally a train to the city of Le Mans.
Bollée welcomed his visitor with the greatest kindness. Indeed, he made Duncan enjoy France’s proverbial hospitality for 4 days, under constant surveillance, while his bank cashed the check signed by Lawson. I kid you not. Confidence, it seemed, did not reign.
The check having been cashed, Duncan took possession of the much-desired Voiturette and promptly returned to Coventry.
Bollée was one of the rare people who made money off Lawson’s back, the opposite being usually the norm.
The first examples of the Coventry Motette, the British version of the Voiturette produced in England by Coventry Motor Company and, perhaps, Humber & Company, hit the streets no later than May 1897. Those vehicles, most of them equipped with an English engine, were among the first series-produced automobiles in England.
One of the first vehicles produced in England, or one of the Voiturettes imported into England, allowed an English mechanical engineering student passionate about cycling and automobilism to travel at a good speed in the spring of 1897, between Coventry and Cambridge, England, where he studied, at the University of Cambridge. His name? Charles Stewart Rolls. Yes, yes, that Rolls, the co-founder of Rolls-Royce Limited.
Would you believe that a Motette took part in the June 1897 celebrations surrounding the 60th anniversary of the accession to the throne of Queen Victoria, born Alexandrina Victoria of House Hanover, a monarch mentioned in several of our non-monarchical blog / bulletin / thingee, and this since November 2018?
To be more precise, the Motette in question took part in the 1897 edition of the Godiva Procession, an annual event which commemorated the legendary passage through the streets of Coventry, in the 11th century, of Countess Godgifu / Godiva, spouse of Leofric, Earl of Mercia and lord of the city.
Yes, that Godiva. The one who, according to legend, crossed Coventry on horseback, in her birthday suit, to convince her spouse to eliminate the heavy taxes which oppressed the inhabitants of the city. Said spouse eventually did so, by the way, according to the legend.
The Coventry Motette which took part in the celebrations surrounding the 60th anniversary of the accession to the throne of Queen Victoria, born Alexandrina Victoria of house Hanover, in June 1837, Coventry, England, June 1897. St. John Nixon, “Coventry Car Pioneers Tried Hard to Impress the Public – ‘Fool’ Was Driver of 1897 ‘Motette’.” The Coventry Evening Telegraph, 4 June 1959, 17.
Aware that the streets of Coventry would be crowded with people, Lawson had the idea of placing said Motette on a sort of structure itself placed on a gasoline truck. A punch line was on each side of the truck. It read: “A fool can drive the Coventry Motette.” A child’s wooden horse placed in front of the truck drivers completed the ensemble.
Two Coventry Motor male employees sitting on the Motette’s seats waved to the crowd. The young man sitting in the driver’s seat, Percival Lea Dewhurst Perry, was dressed as a clown and held a ginormous parasol. The one in the passenger seat, William Malesbury Letts, was disguised as a young woman. Yes, yes, a young woman and a clown in an automobile advertised with the phrase “A fool can drive the Coventry Motette.” Ow.
Do the names of those two young men mean anything to you, my reading friend aware of many things? Yes? No? Never mind.
Letts, later Sir William, was one of the most notable personalities in the history of the British automobile industry.
In 1928, Perry, then Sir Percival, became president of Ford Motor Company Limited, the British subsidiary of Ford Motor Company, two firms mentioned moult times in our blog / bulletin / thingee, and this since February 2018. Before I forget, Sir Percival was raised to the peerage as Baron Perry of Stock Harvard in February 1938.
A typical Coventry Carriette or Motette Trader. Anon., “The Coventry Motette Trader.” The Autocar, 6 March 1897, 155.
Incidentally, before the end of the winter of 1896-97, Coventry Motor commercialised a commercial version of the Motette, the Coventry Carriette, or Motette Trader, whose two parcel racks were easily detachable. The front parcel rack could even be replaced by a seat.
A typical Coventry Sociable Motette. Anon., “The New Coventry Motette.” The Autocar, 6 November 1897, 712.
Coventry Motor also commercialised, even before the end of 1897, a version of the Motette known as the Coventry Sociable Motette. Yours truly wonders if that vehicle with a double seat at the front and none at the back was not in fact the so-called ladies’ version of the vehicle.
By the way, the standard version of the Motette could be equipped with an easily detachable waterproof awning. We are entitled to wonder if the Coventry Sociable Motette could be so equipped. We all know how delightful the weather in England can be, do we not? Sarcasm, you ask? Nah…
And yes, yours truly assumes that the Voiturette entered production in France as early as 1896. The firm involved in that project was a French manufacturer of machine tools, sewing machines and bicycles, Diligeon & Compagnie.
Incidentally, the aforementioned Michelin & Compagnie bought all the Voiturettes produced between July and September or October 1896, or about 200 vehicles. It also acquired 100 motorised tricycles produced during the same period by the great rival of Bollée and Diligeon & Compagnie, the French firm De Dion-Bouton & Compagnie, one of the largest automobile manufacturers in the world.
Michelin & Compagnie wanted to sell all of those vehicles in August 1896, during a sealed bid auction. The starting price for each Voiturette was 2 600 francs, a sum which corresponds to approximately $ 29 000 in 2024 currency. A quarter of the money raised would go to Michelin & Compagnie. Another quarter would go to the Touring-Club de France, an organisation dedicated to the development of tourism in France. The rest would go to the aforementioned Automobile Club de France.
The Touring-Club having politely declined the offer of Michelin & Compagnie, yours truly cannot say how the sums drawn from the automobile sales were shared. In fact, I do not know how the auction went.
Mind you, a firm called the Société anonyme des voiturettes automobiles was founded in January 1897 at the latest to make Voiturettes. Bollée might have been financially involved therein.
While I think about it, please note that an intense etymological dispute brought together said Société anonyme des voiturettes automobiles and another French automobile manufacturer, the Société Nouvelle des Établissements Decauville Ainé, during the year 1897. The latter was in fact outraged by the fact that its rival wanted to claim exclusive use of the term voiturette. Ultimately deciding that it was not worth the effort, the Société Nouvelle des Établissements Decauville Ainé decided in 1897 to name its small 4-wheeled automobiles voiturelles, but I digress, and this for the last time today.
The rest and end of the fascinating story of the Voiturette will reach you shortly.
Rénald Fortier
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