Barbara Skinner

Barbara Skinner was a British driver who raced in the UK and at Le Mans.

From Birmingham, her family was connected with the engineering side of motoring; Herbert Skinner was the founder of SU (Skinner Union) carburettors. Her own father, Thomas, made his fortune from the Lilley & Skinner shoe brand.

She became associated with Morrises in 1932. Her first car was a 21st birthday present from her father. It was a Morris Cowley Special which had previously been his. Although it was a tuned development car with a sporty engine, it was Barbara's road car as well as her first racing car. Her first major achievement in it came five months after she acquired it, when she won the MAC award for a lady driver in a sportscar at the Shelsley Walsh Amateur Hillclimb. She set the same time as Alec Issigonis in an Austin. Issigonis would find fame as the designer of the Mini in 1959.

The Cowley Special wasn't especially competitive and was quickly replaced by a Morris Minor in 1933. This was the "White Minor", which was given to her by William Morris and still exists today. She knocked three seconds off her Shelsley best time in 1933, before setting a ladies' record in 1934, in a supercharged Minor. She achieved this at the 30th MAC Meeting in June, going up the hill in 46.6 seconds. She set exactly the same time as her brother Peter and they were joint third in the 850cc class. At the Open meeting in September, she was not quite as quick, but still picked up another Ladies' award. Away from Shelsley, she won her class in the Lewes Speed Trials.

She excelled at hillclimbs and sprints and competed all round Britain, although Shelsley Walsh was her home track. Normally, she drove a Morris Minor, but she did try other cars, including a larger, borrowed Alta in 1936. She used this car for that year's Brighton Speed Trials, finishing second in the Ladies' Unlimited racing car class behind Eileen Ellison's Maserati. Kay Petre was third in a Riley.

Both she and Peter drove the family's Skinner Special at Shelsley.

In 1933, she also entered her Morris in the RAC Rally and came 30th overall. Finishing positions for her second attempt in 1934 are not forthcoming. This experience of endurance driving would have stood her in good stead for her attempt at Le Mans later.

She occasionally raced at Brooklands, reasonably competitively, and made the trip to Le Mans in 1935, as part of the legendary "Dancing Daughters" MG works team. This was an all-female squad organised by George Eyston. The Dancing Daughters epithet probably came from a radio programme and the team wasn't referred to as such as often as it was referred to as "George's Young Ladies". She and Doreen Evans were 25th, the second of the team's three cars to finish. 

She was also an early competitor at Donington, then billed as "the only road racing circuit in the country". In March 1936, she entered her supercharged Minor into a Frazer Nash Car Club meeting. There was a Ladies' five-lap handicap that weekend, which she pulled out of, before finishing second in the Third Short Handicap.

Later, in October 1936, Barbara married racer and motoring writer John Bolster. The pair had been competing against each other, albeit not always in the same class, for years. She continued to compete in hillclimbs under her married name, in either the Morris or the Skinner Special. This car, which she and Peter raced at Shelsley Walsh in 1937, started life as a Morris Minor, but had an eight-litre Hudson engine.

She was killed in a traffic accident in 1942, aged 31.

(Image copyright Shelsley Walsh)

Daisy Hampson

 

Daisy in her 120hp Fiat, 1906

Daisy Hampson was known for driving extremely powerful cars in Edwardian beachfront speed trials.

She was a rather enigmatic driver, active in a variety of cars from about 1904. She was from Southport near Liverpool, very wealthy, and could drive from at least 1903. Her first car appears to have been a Lanchester, which she did not race. When she presented trophies at the 1903 Southport Speed Trials, she was described as an “experienced motorist”.

In 1904, she entered the Bexhill Speed Trial, possibly her first big seaside meeting. She drove a 60hp Mercedes in the Touring class and was defeated in her heat by Sidney Girling. It was claimed afterwards in The Motor that she had borrowed the car and was not as familiar with it as she might have liked. It is unclear whether she was driving the same car for the event’s opening “Parade of Motor Vehicles”, although the Bexhill Observer described her car as a “powerful-looking Mercedes.”

The Dublin Daily Express was similarly impressed by the Mercedes when she entered it into the Portmarnock Motor Races shortly afterwards, calling it “the largest car ever driven in a race by a lady.” The results of the Portmarnock races themselves are not forthcoming.

At the end of 1904, she is documented as breaking a women’s endurance record, with a 317-mile journey made in one day in a 60hp Mercedes, although perhaps not the same one she used at Bexhill. She was driving through Wales as part of a 1035-mile tour.

After familiarising herself with racing on asphalt and sampling an actual beach race in Ireland, she set her sights on mastering promenades. Her next British event was the 1905 Blackpool speed trials, in the Mercedes. She is described as an entrant in “Class 4”, but she does not appear to have been among the leaders.

From 1906, she owned an even more powerful car, a 120hp Fiat. A report on the Manchester Motor Show from February 1906 claims that the Fiat was the Gordon Bennett runner-up driven by Felice Nazzaro, which was exhibited by coachwork builders Cockshoot. Further articles suggest that Daisy won some prizes in this car, perhaps in speed trials, but no results are forthcoming. A 1915 article about female motorists in The Gentlewoman mentions an Itala “of large horsepower”, although this may have been a road car, like the Rolls Royce that Daisy enthuses about in the same article. Talking about the Fiat in a 1906 edition of The Car, she does say it is “too speedy” for British roads, which suggests its intended use was touring. In the same interview, she expresses sadness that the Blackpool and Brighton events have been stopped, and states that “I mean to enter any races, however, which may suit my cars and try my luck.”

She is mentioned again in The Gentlewoman in 1917, with the Rolls referenced once more.

Her motoring career also hit a low point during 1906, on the open road rather than the circuit. She was sued for damages by a motorcyclist who was involved in a crash with her car in Southam, Warwickshire. The accident itself happened in October 1905, when a Mr GH Field was knocked off his motorbike, over a bridge and into a field by Daisy’s car, causing serious injuries. She was sanctioned as the owner of the car, but it may well have been her chauffeur driving.

Like Dorothy Levitt who was active at the same time, Daisy’s origins are mysterious and her disappearance from public life abrupt. One clue as to who she was comes from a 1996 edition of the Liverpool Echo, in which a 1963 interview with a “veteran motorist” called John Dickinson was quoted. Dickinson describes the first lady motorist he ever saw, in Ormskirk in 1904. “Her name was Daisy Hampson, and she too hailed from Southport, as did her car, a Vulcan”.

The Vulcan car company was run by brothers Thomas and Joseph Hampson between 1902 and 1916. Research by Nina Baker shows that there was a large Catholic family in the Southport area called Hampson, although she was unable to place Daisy within it. Her given name was probably not Daisy; no records for a “Daisy Hampson” exist.

After around 1917, she stops appearing in the press, save an article in the Sunday Dispatch from 1935, in which Sir Harry Preston describes being driven around Brighton in a “mighty Mercedes” by Daisy in 1905, in preparation for that year’s Speed Trials. Their trip occurred early in the morning, before daytime traffic built up. “She had to go out in her monster at dawn,” he recounts. “I could not appear timid before a good-looking young woman, so I said I would be charmed.”

Daisy had made some modifications to her car, removing the windscreen for greater streamlining. This proved prescient, as a flying detached mudguard whizzed harmlessly over their heads instead of shattering the glass. That said, Sir Harry asks to finish their ride at this point. Sadly, he offers no further information on what she was doing at the point the article was written.

It is possible that Daisy married and started using a different name, but public records provide no supporting information for this.

You can read more of Nina Baker’s research here.

(Image from The Car, 1906, via prewarcar.com)