LIFE IN THE FAST LANE

Pioneering motorist Dorothy Levitt set the female land speed record twice and was the first English woman to fly a plane – but her later years and untimely death remain shrouded in mystery

Words by Damon Syson

In October 1906, at the Blackpool Speed Trials, a 24-yearold secretary named Dorothy Levitt drove a 90hp sixcylinder Napier motor car to 90.99mph. In doing so, she broke the women’s land speed record that she herself had set the previous year, earning herself the soubriquet “the fastest girl on earth”. Things might have ended very differently that day, however. As she later recalled, matter-of-factly, “The front part of the bonnet became loose, which could have blown back and beheaded me.”

A daredevil driver who rose from humble origins to become an It Girl of Edwardian society, Levitt is one of motoring’s most enigmatic heroines. Last year, to mark the centenary of her death, motor enthusiast and writer Michael W Barton published a biography entitled Fast Lady. In the course of his research, it soon became clear that much of what is known about Levitt is patently untrue, in particular the suggestion that she came from aristocratic stock.

In reality, she was born Elizabeth Levi, in 1882 in Hackney, the daughter of a jeweller turned tea trader. “She was born into a lower-middle-class Jewish family in the East End of London,” says Barton. “At that time, she would have been expected to marry a boy from her community, produce children and support her husband in his work. But Dorothy did none of this. Instead, she went out and got a job.”

Records show that in 1900 the 18-year-old Levitt was hired as a typist by automotive entrepreneur Selwyn Edge, who, it is believed, also became her lover. Edge held the exclusive British licence to sell De Dion-Bouton, Gladiator, Clément-Panhard and Napier cars, and was looking to expand his market. In Europe he had seen aristocratic women like Camille du Gast excel in the nascent sport of motor racing, and he realised that in his pretty and self-confident new secretary he had someone who could be moulded into a British version of du Gast – thus demonstrating to potential women drivers that there was nothing to be afraid of.

Already an intrepid cyclist, Levitt turned out to be a natural behind the wheel, and Edge was surprised to discover that she also understood how automobiles worked. “She couldn’t just drive cars, she could fix them, too,” says Barton.

An early virtuoso in the art of publicity and selfpromotion, Edge set about reinventing Levitt as a wellheeled country girl who had swapped the adrenaline rush of riding to hounds for the high-octane thrills of motoring. At the time, women drivers were invariably the wives and daughters of wealthy men. These elite pioneers formed an organisation called the Ladies Automobile Club. Levitt –regrettably non-U – was never accepted as a member.

Undaunted, she found other ways to make her mark. Being attractive, stylish, fearless and fun meant that she was soon hitting the headlines not just for her driving exploits but also for her chic outfits and eccentric tales. Her Pomeranian dog, Dodo, accompanied her everywhere – even riding shotgun while she was racing. Dodo had been presented to her as a gift during a sojourn in Paris. In order to smuggle him back to England, she admitted she had drugged the dog and hidden him in a toolbox.

Not content with making a splash in the automotive world, in 1903 Levitt also made a name for herself in motor yachting, winning trophies in County Cork, Normandy and the Isle of Wight, where, during Cowes Regatta Week, she caught the eye of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra, to whom she was presented.

The subsequent years were a flurry of headlinegenerating activity. In March 1905, she drove an 8hp De Dion-Bouton from London to Liverpool and back – 410 miles – setting the record for “the longest drive achieved by a lady driver”. In July of the same year, she set the first women’s land speed record at the inaugural Brighton Speed Trials, taking an 80hp Napier to 79.75 mph. She would of course break this record the following year in Blackpool.

Levitt’s gifts were not solely automotive. She was an accomplished writer who produced a regular motoring column in The Graphic newspaper. She wrote a book, The Woman and the Car, dispensing advice on everything from changing spark plugs to practical driving attire. And she also effectively invented the rear-view mirror by advising female drivers to carry a small compact with which to check the road behind. Less sage, perhaps, was her insistence that women travelling alone should stow a gun in the glove compartment. A Colt Automatic, she wrote, was ideal for ladies because of its minimal recoil.

The fun couldn’t last for ever. Eventually the male racing establishment froze Levitt out before she’d even had the opportunity to test her mettle on a motor circuit. In 1907, she was entered for the very first race at the newly opened Brooklands track, but at the eleventh hour the rules were changed, making her no longer eligible. And by the close of 1908 Selwyn Edge’s interest had waned in motor racing and also, it seems, in Levitt. With no funding and no car, her career was effectively snuffed out.

Instead, Levitt poured her energies into aviation. She travelled to France to train as a pilot and in 1910 became the first recorded English woman to fly a plane. In the same year, she received an inheritance from her uncle, which she immediately put down as a deposit on a Farman biplane. “It was a step too far,” says Barton. “Aviation was just too dangerous and too expensive. She couldn’t afford the remaining payments on the plane, she no longer had a job, and she had burned her bridges with her parents.”

Little is known about the last 12 years of Levitt’s life. According to official records, her death in 1922, at the age of 40, was the result of an overdose of morphine while she was suffering from measles and heart disease. Barton believes her final decade involved a tragic fall from grace, which culminated in her arrest, in 1920, in one of the many illegal gambling dens, known as “spielers”, that had sprung up in the capital. The purpose of women in these shady establishments was twofold: to keep the punters gambling and to sell them cocaine, the use of which was rife in London’s demi-monde at the time.

“There’s no doubt Dorothy had descended into a certain lifestyle,” says Barton. “The characters arrested with her in the spieler were associates of notorious ‘night club queen’ Kate Meyrick – the inspiration for Ma Mayfield in Brideshead Revisited. Two years later she died, penniless, in a grotty flat in Upper Baker Street.”

Levitt had always wanted to be buried overlooking the sea, and her sister, with whom she’d stayed in touch, fulfilled her wish. Her grave lies in the Meadow View cemetery in Brighton. Fittingly, perhaps, the gravestone records her age as 39, when she was in fact 40. An enigma to the end.

“Fast Lady: The Extraordinary Adventures of Miss Dorothy Levitt” is available from butterfieldpress.co.uk at £40 including UK postage and packing.