Dorothée Pullinger - Infinite Women

Born: 13 January 1894, France
Died: 11 January 1986
Country most active: United Kingdom
Also known as: Dorothée Aurélie Marianne Martin

The following is republished with permission from Magnificent Women in Engineering and was written by Nina C. Baker.

Aero and automobile engineer and entrepreneur. Daughter, eldest of the 12 children of Aurélie Bérénice Sitwell and Thomas Charles Pullinger. Her father was a car designer who worked for several automobile manufacturers: Sunbeam, Humber and, finally, Arrol Johnston’s at Paisley. Dorothée attended Loughborough Girls Grammar School, then joined her father, at the Arrol Johnston to train in the drawing office and foundry, and converted German designs from metric to imperial measurements for UK use.
When Arrol Johnston built a plant at Tongland, Kirkcudbright, making spare parts for aero engines, Dorothée helped design the Beardmore-Halford-Pullinger aero engine, known as the Beardmore. In World War 1, Vickers hired her to work at their massive factory in Barrow-in-Furness, to supervise 7,000female munitions workers. She started an apprenticeship scheme and football team for the women (That’s her behind the goalie in the photo). she persuaded Arrol Johnstons to use women at the Tongland factory to build a car she designed for women – The Galloway (10/20 CV , 4 cylinders, capacity 1528 cc.). This was the first ever car designed specifically for women and it is still the only one to go into general production on that basis. It remained in production in a variety of versions until 1925. After her marriage in 1924, Dorothee undertook the sales side of the operation, but annoyed at accusations of stealing a ‘man’s job’, she opened an innovative industrial steam laundry in Croydon, with her husband. In 1940, Nuffield recruited her to organise women recruits to munitions. She managed 13 factories during the Second World War and was the only woman on a post-war government committee formed to recruit women into factories. She moved to Guernsey where she established a new chain of industrial laundries, just in time to service the hotels in the post-war tourism boom. Awarded an MBE, she became a member of the Institute of Personnel Management and was the first woman member of the Institute of Automobile Engineers (1923). There is a plaque to her memory at Vickers, Barrow-in-Furness. She was the first woman to be inducted in the Scottish Engineering Hall of Fame (2012).