page_title: Dorothy Levitt
section_title: 1904
hierarchical_section_title: Dorothy Levitt / Pioneer feminist and female motorist / 1904
caption_attribution_description: English: Low resolution, Watermarked, Preview image of&#160;: Miss Dorothy Levitt, in a 26hp Napier, at Brooklands, 1908.
context_page_description: Dorothy Elizabeth Levitt was the first British woman racing driver, holder of the world's first water speed record, the women's world land speed record holder, and an author. She was a pioneer of female independence and female motoring, and taught Queen Alexandra and the Royal Princesses how to drive. In 1905 she established the record for the longest drive achieved by a lady driver by driving a De Dion-Bouton from London to Liverpool and back over two days, receiving the soubriquets in the press of the Fastest Girl on Earth, and the Champion Lady Motorist of the World.
  Levitt's book The Woman and the Car: A Chatty Little Handbook for all Women who Motor or Who Want to Motor, recommended that women should "carry a little hand-mirror in a convenient place when driving" so they may "hold the mirror aloft from time to time in order to see behind while driving in traffic", thus inventing the rear-view mirror before it was introduced by manufacturers in 1914. She also advised women travelling alone to carry a handgun; her recommendation was an automatic Colt, as in her opinion its relative lack of recoil made it particularly suitable for women.
context_section_description: During 1904, Levitt suffered some ill health and spent time convalescing in Madeira.
  In September Levitt drove an officially entered 8 horse-power De Dion car in the Hereford 1,000-mile (1,600 km) Light Car Trial, entirely alone, without mechanics. Her diary records that she "did everything myself, Had non-stop for five days."  Only mechanical problems on the final day, which she repaired herself, prevented her from winning a gold medal.
  The Times of 5 September 1904 reported:
  It is satisfactory to note that no cars disappeared from the list, although one of the De Dions – the one driven by Miss Dorothy Levitt – which had up to Saturday afternoon run without any loss of marks, came to a standstill owing to a needle valve in the carburetter[sic] (which regulates the flow of petrol) getting loose and consequently closing. The trouble took more than the official 20 minutes to locate, with the result that not only did the car lose its chance of any non-stop award, but the fellow to it was also cut out, as similar cars have to run as a team. This was hard on both drivers after a week's work.
  In October she won two medals at the Southport Speed Trials (Blackpool) driving a 50 horse-power Napier (or 20 hp). (Touring cars £750-£1200, second place behind Leon Bollee Syndicate (40 hp Léon Bolllée).
  According to a November 1906 interview with the Penny Illustrated Paper Levitt balanced "the fearful excitement of automobile racing by quietly going fishing, and described trout fishing as her favourite sport. She also described poker as her favourite game and claimed significant expertise at roulette. Outlining her "most wonderful secret system with which she is going this winter to attempt to break the bank at Monte Carlo."
  Levitt was noted for her ever-present, yappy, black Pomeranian dog called Dodo. A gift from Mademoiselle Marie Cornelle around 1903, he had been smuggled into England by being drugged and then hidden in the repair box of an automobile.
  Levitt sometimes mixed at the highest social levels, such that her appearances were reported in advance in the Court Circulars of The Times. To wit her attendance at Major General Sir Alfred Turner's "Salon reception" at the Picadilly Hotel on 14 July 1909.
  In the book The car and British society: class, gender and motoring, 1896–1939, Sean O'Connell described Levitt as "arguably the best known of the early women drivers" in an age when male prejudices against women drivers were typified by a 1905 item in Autocar that opined the hope that "the controlling of motor cars will be wrested from the hands of ... these would be men". Thus, in the preface to the first edition of her book The Woman and the Car: A chatty little handbook for all women who motor or who want to motor, the editor, C. Byng-Hall, stated that:
  The public, in its mind's eye, no doubt figures this motor champion as a big, strapping Amazon. Dorothy Levitt is exactly, or almost so, the direct opposite of such a picture. She is the most girlish of womanly women.
  She was described as "slight in nature, shy and shrinking, almost timid". Her book went on to state that "[there might] be pleasure in being whisked around the country by your friends and relatives, or ... chauffeur, but the real intense pleasure only comes when you drive your own car."
caption: Dorothy Levitt, in a 26 hp Napier, at Brooklands, 1908
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