Dorothy Levitt came from a middle-class Jewish family and was born Elisabeth Dorothy Levi in Hackney, London, on 5 January 1882. Her path into motorsport was anything but straightforward. She started out as a typist at the engine manufacturer Napier & Son. There, director Selwyn Edge quickly recognised her talent and made her his brand ambassador. She learnt how to work with engines and technology and was able to complete a driving course. This alone made her truly unique in her time.
Dorothy Levitt celebrates World record in Ireland
However, she celebrated her first successes on the water. Her victory in the "Harmsworth Cup" in Ireland in the summer of 1903, which cemented her reputation as a pioneer at the age of 21, came before she celebrated her first victory by car in Southport in October of the same year. In doing so, she set the world's first water speed record for women at 19.3 miles per hour.
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In the early days of professional motor racing, she prevailed against the exclusively male competition in various races and was quite rightly regarded as the "fastest woman in the world" in her day, after she set a women's world land speed record of 79.75 miles per hour in Brighton in 1905 and increased this to 90.88 miles per hour in Blackpool in 1906.
Pioneer in racing
She was much more than a racing boat and racing car driver. Levitt was an accomplished mechanic who could often repair her boats and cars herself under full racing conditions. She developed her own ideas and proved that women could play a serious role in racing at a time when many thought it was impossible.
As early as 1909, in her manual "The Woman and the Car", she recommended taking a hand mirror with you when driving in order to observe what was happening behind you - an idea that would become standard years later as a rear-view mirror.
An independent and consistent woman
She was also many years ahead of her time outside of her sporting successes. Levitt fled home when her parents tried to marry her off. Instead, she lived independently in a women's flat-sharing community and financed her life through motorsport and journalistic projects. She consistently maintained her unconventional course at the time, even off the racetrack.
She attracted attention on several occasions for travelling at excessive speeds on the road. The fact that she always carried a weapon for her personal safety on long journeys only emphasises the toughness of this woman, who paved the way for all subsequent generations of female racing drivers.
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David Ingelfinger
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