I wrote a dissertation on bicycles in France and the United States, 1875-1910, so I know something about "the early days." I also know something about bicycles in England in the same period, but not as much, and almost nothing in Germany, Denmark, Spain, Italy, etc. Glen Norcliffe's book on Canadian cycling to 1900 might be worth checking out if you want to be super-thorough, as would Andrew Ritchie's *King of the Road* (1975) or *Quest for Speed* (2011), but I doubt any of these will have much on theft.

First, the earliest days were the late 1860s, but I did not study them (I will when I turn this research into a book - the period will be 1865-1914). So I don't know.

The next period that could qualify would be the late 1870s-early 1880s. I have nothing in my notes on the police in either the USA or France for that period.

The first mention I have is from 1889, in which Sewing Machine and Bicycle Journal (Journal des Machines a Coudre et Velocipedes), an industry mag, that said the problem of bicycle theft was growing. Nothing about the police, but it might be the local gendarmerie would be collecting the statistics, so the implication is that the police took it seriously. This magazine actually mentioned repeatedly in 1889-1890 that rented bicycles were being stolen pretty regularly in Paris, so rental shops were reporting them to the police. One of the articles suggests that they're stolen from *riders* who rented them.

I also have City of Minneapolis data from 1898 through 1911, and it's presented as number of bicycles reported stolen, and number of bicycles returned to owners. Throughout this period, the number of returns is around half or slightly higher of the number of machines reported stolen. I have to emphasize that this is an undercount, because many people would not have bothered to report them to the police, and that this is data for Minneapolis only - not even for St. Paul nearby, much less any other city. I also have data on the same period, roughly, on bicycles received as stolen for the Detroit police department. So at least two US cities' police departments took the theft pretty seriously - in the case of Detroit, seriously enough to store them for returns if the owner showed up (I think).

This all answers your main question: they took them pretty seriously. It was a very expensive item at the time, even after the price drop in 1895-1899.

As for France, I have a February 1899 article from Cycle et Automobile Industriel, a manufacturers' magazine, about who is responsible if a bicycle is stolen at an outside restaurant: the restauranteur? More and more restaurants were putting up bike racks to combat theft, so while that doesn't answer your main question, it shows how important the problem was becoming.

Finally, your sub-questions:

Horse or carriage theft? I doubt it. I have no evidence, but I do know that a bicycle, though quite expensive into the 1890s, cost much less than a horse, and then by 1900 much, much less - and a carriage was even more expensive, though cheaper than a horse to maintain over the long term (maintenance and repairs would be cheaper, *I think*, than feeding a thousand-pound animal daily). You had to be rich to have a horse and carriage - or be a farmer, and it was a working tool. If you're rich, the police will take you seriously; a farmer? It would depend. Still, as I've shown, I think police took bicycle thefts pretty seriously overall. They possibly took them more seriously when the clientele was upper-middle-class men in the 1880s and early 1890s; when they became factory workers, maybe the police weren't quite so attentive. Maybe - not sure.

A black market? Of course. I have no evidence; I'm just making inferences. But the fact of repeated thefts in Paris in 1889-1890 that are targeted to a very specific type of rider (someone who rented out a bicycle) suggests that it's some sort of organized crime, probably a specialist gang. I mean, with that amount of volume, how are they going to ride them all? They're not - they're going to sell them, probably in a different city.

Sorry I don't have more.