Dubbed ‘the Fastest Girl on Earth’, Dorothy Levitt was an early motorist who competed in speed trials and long distance races, setting the Ladies World Speed record in the Brighton Speed Trials of 1905, by driving her Napier racing car at 79.75 mph.
A founder member of the Fabian Women’s group, suffragist and gymnastics teacher, she was president of the Gymnastics Teachers Suffrage Society.
Soviet track and field athlete Galina Petrovna Bystrova won a bronze medal at the 1964 Olympics in the pentathlon.
Community and church leader in Palmerston North (New Zealand) for many years
New Zealand philanthropist
Irish soccer player
Irish sportswoman
For a period in the 1920s Fay Taylour dominated motorcycle racing in both Europe and Australia, gaining fame not as a woman-racer but as one who competed and won at all levels on three continents against both men and women. Despite her successes in that area, her fascist politics tend to dominate her legacy.
New Zealand golfer, community leader
She taught girls’ sport and was Olympic champion Shirley Strickland de la Hunty’s first coach. Knowles was called ‘the hyphen’ as she was seen to be crossing boundaries between men’s and women’s teaching roles. In 1944 she was promoted to principal-mistress at Perth Modern School which made her the top woman in secondary teaching. Then she went to the Kent Street High School where, because as it was a practising school, her salary was £10 per year higher. In 1955 she was headmistress of Girdlestone Girls High School before returning to Perth Girls High School as headmistress.