Dorothy Levitt was one of Britain’s earliest female racing drivers and probably the first to become a media sensation.

Her finest year was 1905, when she won the Daily Mail Sweepstake at the Brighton Speed Trials, ahead of several men. At the same event, she set a Land Speed Record for women of 92mph. This was her second speed record, having already set a Water Speed Record of 19.3mph in 1903.

Between 1903 and 1908, she raced first boats, then cars for the Napier company, initially in the UK and then in France and Germany, where she was awarded a silver plate for a penalty-free run in the Herkomer Trial.

In the UK, she was a regular in the beachfront speed trials popular in Edwardian Britain. In 1904, she won her class at the Southport and Blackpool speed trials, driving Napier cars. Her Southport victory was her second in a row at that event. As well as the 1905 Brighton trial, she appeared at Bexhill in 1907.

Hillclimbs were another favoured event for her. She knocked minutes off the ladies’ record at the Shelsley Walsh climb in 1906, driving a 50hp Napier. At the same track, she challenged a driver called Freddie Coleman to a race in his steam-powered White car, but he was faster.

She was a real favourite with the press of the time. Reporters lapped up her racing victories and her many adventures. These included a string of run-ins with the law for motoring offences, setting long-distance speed records on public roads and competing with a Pomeranian dog by her side. “Dodo” the black Pomeranian was mentioned in the Guardian’s report of the 1905 Scottish Motor Trial, described as “her motoring mascot on her lap”. The Guardian writer also praised her performance in a De Dion, which she “steered...round the bends with perfect sureness”.

Her media fame led to a journalistic career of her own and becoming something of an expert on motoring for women. The high point of this was the publication of her 1909 book, The Woman and the Car: A Chatty Little Handbook For Women Who Want To Motor. In it, she discusses choosing, buying, driving and maintaining a car, as well as offering handy hints on practical motoring fashion. One of the most famous suggestions she makes is that ladies carry a hand mirror with them, in order to see behind. This is one of the first-known uses of a rear-view mirror. Thankfully, her suggestion of a revolver alongside the mirror, for personal protection, did not catch on.

The Woman and the Car and the newspaper interviews that preceded it paint a picture of Dorothy as an upper-class country lady who lucked into motoring with the help of a “family friend”, before training as a mechanic in France and working as a society driving instructor. In some versions of this story, like the one featured in a 1906 edition of the Penny Illustrated Paper, state that the nameless family friend helped her to escape an arranged marriage. The same interview expands on her activities as a driving instructor; she claims to have taught Queen Alexandra and her daughters to drive. (This is untrue; Alexandra was driving herself around in an electric car from at least 1901).

The truth was very different and this is where the East End comes in.

Dorothy was actually a Jewish woman from Hackney called Elisabeth Dorothy Levi. Her father anglicised their family name to Levitt, although Dorothy used both throughout her life. The link between her two identities is Hena Frankton, a  co-plaintiff with Dorothy in a 1903 court case against a GPO driver who hit her car. Hena is listed as a guest of the Levi family in the 1901 Census, staying with Elisabeth Levi, who like Dorothy, worked as a typist.

The Levi family was a large, long-established British Jewish family with its roots in Portsmouth. The patriarch, Dorothy’s grandfather Leman Levi, was a prosperous jeweller. The family lived in two houses in Colvestone Crescent, Hackney. Her mother, Julia Raphael, was originally from Liverpool and her family later lived in Manchester.

Her route into motorsport was via Selwyn Edge, a director of the Napier motor company who initially employed her as a typist, before promoting her to secretary and arranging for an unwilling apprentice named Leslie Callingham to teach her to drive. SCH Davis, who knew Dorothy, Edge and Callingham, tells the story in his book, Atalanta.

As the official agent for Napier, Minerva and De Dion, Selwyn Edge provided her with cars for all of her motoring exploits. The pair may well have been romantically involved.

The Napier motorsport programme was wound up after 1908. Towards the end of the programme, its efforts had been concentrated on a series of speed records at the recently-opened Brooklands circuit. The main organising club at Brooklands did not accept entries from female drivers until 1920 so Dorothy was excluded. She did try to enter a Napier car into the 1907 Easter meeting, but it was refused. Her position with Edge and Napier was now becoming vulnerable and her racing career ended when Napier pulled out. The rift between the two is obvious in The Woman and the Car, which makes no mention of Edge at all, although his estranged wife Eleanor is named as a distinguished lady motorist.

Dorothy continued as a motoring writer until about 1912, with a hiatus in 1909 when she intended to become a pilot. It is unclear whether she ever got her pilot’s license. She then disappears from public life until her death in 1922, aged 39. The cause of death was given as morphine poisoning, with heart disease and a bout of measles implicated. She is buried in the Meadow View Jewish Cemetery in Brighton. 

Author

Rachel Harris-Gardiner is a journalist who writes about both contemporary and historical motorsport. She is the editor of Speedqueens, a long-running blog about women throughout the history of motor racing. When not researching the history of female racing drivers, she reports for Autosport and Motorsport News, among other publications.

Twitter: @rachelwaxinglyr

Further Reading

Davis, S. C. H., Atalanta, Women As Racing Drivers (1956)

Grace’s Guide to British Industrial History, Dorothy Levitt, https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Dorothy_Levitt (Last accessed 09/12/2020)

Levitt, Dorothy, The Woman and the Car: A Chatty Little Handbook for the Edwardian Motoriste (Reissue: Bloomsbury, 2014)