Sydney Savory Buckman

One of Gloucestershire’s forgotten celebrities is Sydney Savory Buckman of Cheltenham, arguably the foremost geologist of the Victorian era. His constantly evolving ideas upset the geological establishment, who thought their subject was set in stone. For much of his life he scraped a living by selling fossils and writing freelance articles for the newspapers.

I first encountered him because of his interest in rational dress, rational being the Victorian buzzword for anything right-thinking people should adopt. In this case it meant the divided skirt, a euphemism for women’s trousers.

Sydney Buckman espoused it because it meant his wife and four daughters could accompany him and his four sons on their bikes on fossil-hunting expeditions in the Cotswolds.

Buckman’s family fossil-hunting somewhere in the Cotswolds. He was the photographer.

He set up the Western Rational Dress Club, of which Lady Harberton, the champion of rational dress, who spent the summer at Great Malvern, became president.

His skill as a journalist ensured it got widespread publicity. Among the people who responded was J. D. Ainsworth, who had just established the Yoroshi Wheel Club in South London. Together they dreamed up the idea of a rational dress cycle ride from London to Oxford.

It was a dreadful day. The last ladies arrived for an 8.30pm dinner at 3.30am the next morning.

if you would like to find out more about the history of the rational dress movement Don Chapman's book, Wearing the Trousers: Fashion, Freedom and the Rise of the Modern Woman, is available from Amberley Publishing.