IN 1903 Skipton magistrates prosecuted a speeding motorist for the first time - and the driver was a woman.

Dorothy Levitt, 21, had been taking part in a race between Glasgow and London and was clocked by constables as she tore up a straight stretch on the Gargrave to Skipton road - at a mind blowing 21mph.

Magistrates were told how Miss Levitt - who was absent from court - had seen placards in Hellifield warning of policemen lying in wait and how later, three men had leapt out in the road, ordering her to stop.

But, thinking they were tramps, and as ‘she had no interest in tramps’, she ploughed on, forcing them to jump out of the way.

Using an argument still used today, her solicitor put it to the magistrates that there was no actual proof she had been the driver of the car, however, her case was proved, and she was fined 40 shillings.

The fiery Miss Levitt appeared later the same year at a London court for an identical matter. Her comment that she wished she had run over the police sergeant earned her little favour with the magistrates, who fined her more than double that given out to other speeders on the same day.

Skipton’s first speeding motorist is one of the very many entertaining facts discovered by former Craven Herald editor, Ian Lockwood, and included in his book, The History of Skipton.

Mr Lockwood adds that Miss Levitt was the first woman to take part in a motor car race, was glamorous, and was the secretary to the director of the Napier motor company, Selwyn Edge. He says she was probably also her boss’s mistress - although why he believes that, he doesn’t expand.

The History of Skipton, is the most comprehensive to be published about the town since William Dawson’s History of Skipton almost 150 years ago.

At 550 pages long and including illustrations, many of them from Skipton Library’s Rowley Ellwood Collection, the History of Skipton is the culmination of 12 years of research by the former Craven Herald editor.

It covers the town’s history from the Norman Invasion until 2000 with an emphasis on the social life of its inhabitants.

Sections include the Health and Wealth of the town; Skipton at Work; Crime and Punishment; Life in Skipton During the World Wars; Education; Skipton at Play and the Development of the Town’s Infrastructure such as its gas, water, electricity and telephone services.

One might think Skipton was not big enough to have a whole chapter devoted to murder - but it does. Included in the book is the case of the baby discovered in 1870 in a pile of rubbish in Back Victoria Street, and the gruesome double murder in 1882 by a man who slit the tghroats of his wife and daughter and then tried to do the same to himself at the entrance to Skipton Woods.

Mr Lockwood, who edited the Craven Herald between 1993 and 2008, claims to reveal many new facts about the town, including a major scandal about the amount of alcohol being distributed to inmates at the Skipton Workhouse, as well as the prosecution of Dorothy Levitt.

Much of the source material comes from long forgotten archives and previously undiscovered sources, including the pages of the Craven Herald.

He reveals Skipton has had several lucky escapes from development and reveals plans to fill in the Springs Canal to concrete it over to provide a car park and a scheme to drive an elevated dual carriageway through the town, crossing Skipton Woods on a viaduct.

“A lot of people think of Skipton as being affluent and perhaps a bit posh. But I would contend it is a working class town with much in common with the mill towns of East Lancashire,” he said. “Happily the fact that it has a historic castle, a picturesque canalside and busy market means that it had a lucky escape and has become the lovely place we all know today but it retains those working class roots.”

He has no qualms about admitting to being critical of more recent architectural additions to the town.

“Indeed,” he writes in the book’s acknowledgements, “I would suggest that a decent building has not been out up in Skipton since 1900 - consider 9 High Street, the telephone exchange, the former tax and unemployment office, the Skipton Building Society tower on Providence Place, the old Co-op supermarket on Swadford Street. I rest my case.”

He also makes a very valid point about how much of his research was done from old copies of Skipton’s two newspapers - the Craven Herald and the Craven Pioneer, from the days when the local press ‘recorded key events and debates with a small army of reporters and correspondents’. “The internet will not leave such a legacy for future generations,” he says.

Mr Lockwood will officially launch The History of Skipton at Skipton Library on Tuesday, June 19, at 2pm.

“The book is the result of 12 years of investigation, much of it into previously unknown or unused sources. I’m really looking forward to launching the book at Skipton library, where I did much of my research.”

Tickets to the launch cost £1. Email skipton.library@northyorks.gov.uk or call 01609 534548 to book a place.

The book is published by Austin Macauley, priced at £18.99 and is also available online.