Harry Fitzpatrick ran a bicycle shop and small bicycle factory in Burnley, England. The company name was H. Fitzpatrick Ltd.. It was possibly established in 1900 and was still going strong in 1936.

The business was best known for its 'Captain' brand of bikes, which were, to quote its adverts, not only 'guaranteed for ever' but also 'guaranteed for all time' - making them the perfect mounts for any of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse who fancied a spot of cycling. I am sure that Harry Fitzpatrick would have been more than happy to supply them in white, red, black or beige.

Harry Fitzpatrick is featured on this web site because, in the early 1940s, during the Second World War, he, along with one Arthur Fitzpatrick, patented a sequence of astoundingly competent and sophisticated designs for derailleurs. The drawings in these patents are so polished that it seems almost inconceivable that these devices were not produced. The only (rather slight) evidence for their real existence is that one of their drawings appeared in a January 1947 Le Cycle magazine in a report of 'news from England'.