Ruth Urquhart Dykes

 

Ruth at the 1927 Alvis meeting, on the right and in the car below

Ruth Urquhart-Dykes was a very able racer and speed record setter in the late 1920s, usually at the wheel of an Alvis. She tends to slip under the radar, partly due to her short career and partly because she appeared to be very sporting and uncontroversial.

She was born Pauline Ruth Hegarty in 1894, in the Irish town of Oughterard. She married William (Bill) Urquhart-Dykes in 1921 in Dublin. They later settled in Surrey, England.

She competed between 1924 and 1929, almost always driving an Alvis and often with her husband, Bill. Their cars were variations on a 12/50 model which they kept at home. The second, bought at the start of 1927, was named “William” after its serial number, WM 47, and may have started life as a works car. 

The first big event she appears in is the 1925 Auto Cycle Union London-Gloucester Trial, held just before Christmas. She was recorded as a finisher, alongside another woman, Miss A Dupre. The following June, she was third in her class at the Brooklands high-speed trial. 

After two years of occasional trials competition, she started entering races at Brooklands. At this time, the main organising club at the circuit was not keen on women drivers and only allowed them to run in ladies-only races. Other clubs, however, had allowed mixed competition almost from the start.  In June 1927, she took part in an all-Alvis meeting, winning a scratch race for Alvises “capable of 75mph” and finishing second in a ladies’ scratch race, behind Mrs Maddison Brown. She continued to trial the Alvis too.

Her first international race was the 1928 Coupe Georges Boillot in France, part of Boulogne Motor Week. She was ninth in the Coupe, driving the 12/50. The winner was Ivanowsky in his Alfa Romeo. Her fellow Brit and the only other woman in the competition, Margaret Maconochie, did not finish.

Back at home, she entered the Surbiton Motor Club’s August open race meeting at Brooklands. The Surbiton MC was one of the clubs which encouraged female entries and there was a ladies’ race as part of the weekend’s card, in which Ruth was second, behind Jill Scott. Ruth, Jill and Henrietta Lister then contested the 50 Mile handicap race against the men, with Ruth taking the lead at almost half distance and holding on to win by about a mile. WB Scott was second.

Ruth and Jill renewed their rivalry the following year in May, meeting in the prestigious Double Twelve race and in a two-lap ladies’ handicap at the Gold Vase meeting.

In 1929, she and Bill made their names by setting a new Twelve Hour speed record at Brooklands, driving William. The weather during the run became increasingly wet and treacherous, not letting up into the darkness. Ruth had been worried that she had fallen below the average speed she needed to maintain, but when she handed over to Bill, she had been exceeding the average comfortably, lapping at 87 or 88mph. The existing record was just over 80mph and the Urquhart-Dykes exceeded it with 81.3mph, despite William being considerably less powerful than the previous record holder. That year, Winifred Pink, another racer, wrote a rather waspish piece in The Woman Engineer in which she expressed doubt that women were really capable of handling bigger cars, with the exception of Jill Scott, Ivy Cummings and Ruth.

They were less fortunate in that year’s Double Twelve race and did not finish. Bill and Ruth completed the first twelve hours with few problems and were managing the rain on the second day when a rear spring was found to be broken during a pit stop. Ruth would have carried on, but the mechanics put a stop to that.

Both Bill and Ruth stopped competing shortly afterwards. Bill had decided to concentrate his energies on his growing patent agency, while Ruth also retired as she felt it was unfair to carry on without him. It cannot have helped that they were witnesses to a rather nasty road accident that September, in which a sidecar passenger was killed. Ruth did make one appearance in a Lagonda later that year, but it was in a concours d’elegance.

Ruth was a cheerful and generally non-combative character, but she wasn’t afraid to stand up for herself or other women on occasion. As a member of the Auto Cycle Union, she argued for full female inclusion in the club’s major trials in 1929. She was also not above showing a more frivolous side, talking to the Daily Mirror about her distinctive “egg blue” overalls and helmet, although she stressed that her racing attire was functional. “My overall is only designed for safety, but of course, I try to make it as attractive as possible.”

William was sold in 1934 after “surviving” a road collision, replaced by a Railton Fairmile.

When the war broke out, both Urquhart-Dykes joined up, with Ruth serving as a driver in the FANY.

She died in 1981.

For a more thorough discussion of William by a friend of the Urquhart-Dykes family, Peter Lord’s article can be found here. It was very helpful in writing this biography.

Image copyright Daily Mirror

Ivy Cummings

Ivy and friend at Gaillon, 1921

Ivy Cummings is most famous for being the youngest person ever to lap Brooklands, aged twelve, in 1913. She became a successful racing driver as an adult, and particularly excelled at hillclimbing.

According to the story, Ivy and her father had driven down to Brooklands in her father’s SCAR touring car. While his back was turned, watching the flying from the airfield, the pre-teen Ivy drove off in the car, and got onto the track. She was driving surprisingly quickly, and resisted being caught. She was only apprehended when the car developed a puncture, and she hurt her hand trying to jack it up.

There may have been some exaggeration going on with this story, which has become something of a Brooklands legend, but it certainly started somewhere. No date is ever given for when it happened, but it has remained remarkably consistent over the years. Ivy’s age is often quoted as being eleven at the time, but she was born in 1900, so she was twelve or thirteen.

Just a few years later, during the First World War, Ivy was driving around in her own car, a Peugeot. She helped out at a convalescent home for injured soldiers, and kept their spirits up by taking them out for drives, as well as taking her mother and grandmother on errands.

She started her legitimate racing career after World War I, possibly as early as 1919. In 1921, she raced a Coupe de l’Auto Sunbeam 12/16 in France. It is said that she won a race, possibly on sand, but further details are rather hazy. Pictures from that year show her posing in the car at Gaillon, which ties in with contemporary reports of her entering the hillclimb there, driving a 130hp car.

She won the 1922 Duke of York Long Distance Handicap in the Coupe de l'Auto Sunbeam. Shortly after, she drove well in the Sunbeam in the Car Speed Championship, finishing third in the Essex Senior Short Handicap, and second in the Essex Junior Long Handicap. 

In June 1923, she won a Bexhill speed trial in a Bugatti. Further details about this car are not forthcoming. In September, a second speed trial was held at Bexhill, over a mile. Ivy won this event, too. Her car on this occasion was the famous 5000cc 1913 Bugatti, “Black Bess”, as named by Ivy. In March, she had driven “Bess” in the Kop Hill climb, in Essex.

In 1925, she won her class in the Skegness Speed Trials in this car. Ivy was not the only female driver; Cecil Christie was there with her Vauxhall, and the two seem to become friends. Reports in Motor Sport suggested that this would be Ivy’s last event before marrying, but this does not seem to have transpired just yet.

In between, Ivy also raced the GN “Akela”, normally in hillclimbs. She won her class in the South Harting climb, organised by the Surbiton Motor Club. In the Arundell Speed Trial, which, like the South Harting event, was run over a half-mile course, she also won the 1500cc class, finishing just four-tenths of a second behind the winner, Woolf Barnato in a Hispano-Suiza. The GN appeared at the Spread Eagle Hill climb, the Brighton Speed Trials and the Herne Bay Speed Trails that year. Akela was sold on at the end of the season. For the Aston Clinton hillclimb, she drove the Bugatti instead.

In 1926, she raced the Bugatti in France. She entered the Grand Prix de Boulogne, run on sand, and led for the first three laps, but rolled her car into a ditch and did not finish. After this mishap, she is reported to have telephoned her father, to tell him that she was all right. Motor racing was very much a family thing for Ivy, who sometimes had her mother in the car with her, as her riding mechanic. She had also taken a Frazer Nash along, which she used in the speed trial.

Back in England, she raced again on the sand at Southport, in a Frazer Nash, with Cecil Christie. In June, she was back at Brooklands for the JCC High Speed Trial.

After 1926, she competed much less frequently. She drove a Riley in the JCC Half Day Trial, which seems to have been her last event.

Ivy married a radiologist and this put an end to her racing career. She died in 1971.

(Image from http://gallica.bnf.fr/)