Reverend Edward Tickner Edwardes (1865–1944) was an English writer, beekeeper, medical officer and priest. He wrote one of the earliest accounts of hitchhiking in 1910 – Lift-luck on Southern Roads. He served in the Royal Army Medical Corps during the First World War in Gallipoli and then running a laboratory in Egypt. After the war, he was ordained as a priest in the Church of England and became the vicar of Burpham.
Beekeeping and writing
Edwardes wrote on nature and the countryside, published several works of fiction and a history of the RAMC in Egypt but in particular he was an enthusiastic beekeeper and wrote many books on the subject. He was an active member of the Sussex Beekeepers' Association and attended their meetings regularly. He designed the 'Tickner Edwardes' beehive which took standard British frames but was heavily insulated, and the simplified Unit Hive for commercial beekeeping which had identical brood chambers and honey supers.
At that time he lived in the Red Cottage on the main street of Burpham. He also had another cottage as a literary retreat as he continued to write books and contribute to periodicals.
Lift-Luck on Southern Roads is thought to be the earliest published account of hitchhiking. In it Edwardes describes a journey across Southern England saying “My plan consisted in waiting by the roadside or strolling gently onward, until something on wheels, it mattered not what, overtook me...by dint of laying under use the whole gamut of country perambulation, at length, after many days of travel, I found myself at my journey's end."
