Louie Dingwall
Louie Dingwall (née Louisa Foott) (1893–1982) was one of the first English female racehorse trainers.
During World War I Dingwall worked as a driver for the Canadian Army who were in Britain preparing to enter hostilities in France. She owned a Model T Ford, possibly a gift from the Canadians, when she moved to Sandbanks in Dorset after the war. At first she lived in a sea-side hut but by hard work moved to a bungalow on Panorama Road.[1]
She built stables and a garage with a petrol pump in a shed close by from where she ran a taxi business with her husband[2] and an independent bus service in the Poole area until the outbreak of war in 1939 when she provided transport for officers stationed in the area.[1][3] She trained horses on the beach at Sandbanks, though her husband owned the licence for the Jockey Club, who looked unfavourably on women licensees.[2]
References
[edit]- ^ a b The Remarkable Mrs Louie Dingwall (née Louisa / 'Louie' Foott) (PDF), The Aye Ma'am Project, retrieved 23 October 2014
- ^ a b Saville, John (2008). Insane and Unseemly : British Horse Racing in World War II. Troubadour Publishing. p. 10. ISBN 978-1-848-76034-9.
- ^ Horsepower at Sandbanks – the remarkable Louie Dingwall, Poole Museum Society, 8 March 2014, retrieved 23 October 2014