Trailblazing Mabel was first female driver in Nottingham
TODAY, MORE THAN 336,000 WOMEN IN THE COUNTY HAVE A DRIVING LICENCE
WOMEN are still sometimes unjustly the butt of male jokes but day-to-day no one bats an eye at the UK’S millions of female drivers.
However, there’s one woman who would have definitely caused a sensation behind the wheel more than 120 years ago.
Fannie Mabel Lambert, who was known as Mabel, was the first female to learn to drive in Nottingham in 1900 - until then she got about by bike.
Despite being a significant part of Nottingham’s history, there seems to be very little recorded about the achievement of Mabel, who grew up at Ellesmere House in Clarendon Street, Nottingham, and later lived at Orston Hall near Bingham.
It was three years earlier, in 1897 that actress Minnie Palmer became the first woman in England to drive and own a car.
A member of a well-to-do local family, Mabel was taught by her fiancé Frank Burton, who inherited the renowned Nottingham grocery store, Burtons of Smithy Row and was later appointed a High Sheriff.
Today 336,182 women hold a driving licence within the NG postcode - and nearly 19 million in Great Britain.
But back then licences didn’t exist. It wasn’t until the Motor Car Act made it law for drivers to have a licence from January 1904.
Miriam Jackson, a member of Nottingham Women’s History Group, told the Post: “She would have created a stir as the first female driver at that time.
“She would have worn a long skirt or dress as it was 1900.”
The roads would have been very different and all the essential car parts taken for granted today were lacking. There’d have been no windscreen wipers nor any seat belts.
Nottingham driving instructor Janet Cheetham, who runs Amazing Driving School, said: “It would have been very unusual to see a woman driver in those days.
“There wouldn’t have been many cars on the roads and I guess the car would have been black.
“She was obviously privileged and from a wealthy family as cars were expensive and a luxury, not like now when most people have a car.
“There were probably no wing mirrors on the car and the roads would have been very different. There would have been no roundabouts and there might not have been traffic lights or road markings.
“She wouldn’t have needed a driving test,” added Janet, who has been a driving instructor for four years around Mapperley and Gedling.
Local historian Adrian Henstock, president of Nottinghamshire’s Thoroton Society, said: “Mabel Lambert was a member of the wealthy Lambert family whose impressive bleaching and dyeing works on Talbot Street is now converted into offices.”
Proof of the family’s wealth was demonstrated by her two brothers, who commissioned the construction of Nottingham’s Theatre Royal at a cost of £15,000 of their own money.
Although there’s a number of old black and white photos in the Lambert family album reproduced in Victorian Nottingham: a Story in Pictures by Richard Iliffe and Wilfred Baguley, there’s none of her behind the wheel.
Mr Henstock added: “There are two excellent photographs of her admiring new cars outside their home Ellesmere House in Clarendon Street - with her future husband, Frank Burton, who appears to have taught her to drive.”
Other women who have made a name for themselves on the road include Alice Astill, from Radford. The former shorthand typist changed jobs to become the city’s first woman taxi driver in 1916.
Nottingham to Derby bus driver Carole Hind was the first ever female winner of the UK Bus Driver of the Year in 2015 in the awards’ 20-year history.
Earlier this year fellow Red Arrow driver Karen Miles went on to scoop the title.