Originally Posted by TenGrainBread

Most tourists riding lightweight bicycles over the last 80 years have simply not seen the need for a touring tire over 25-32mm in width, which most sidepull brakes can handle. So your question is somewhat anachronistic in that you are assuming that wide tires (over 32mm) were always available and preferred for touring, which is not the case. A short review of bikes in this thread show that most came stock with 27" wheels with 1 1/8" or at most 1 1/4" wide tires. No problem for most sidepulls to handle.

The notable exception is the wide-tired 650b hiker bicycles of France from the 30s to the 70s, which is what the bikes in your picture are. These bikes generally required cantilevers or long reach centerpulls for clearance as they had tires 38-42mm in width and almost always had mudguards. By the 80s, most French framebuilders had abandoned 650b in favor of skinnier 700c tires even for touring bikes. There has only been a recent resurgence in interest in these wider tires in the last 20 years or so.