TT Icons: Beryl Swain!

Beryl Swain was born on January 22, 1936 in Marlowe Road, Walthamstow.  She was working as a Personal Assistant to a retired Admiral at the P&O Line shipping company when in 1952 she met Eddie Swain, the owner of a motorcycle dealership and garage.

Eddie and Beryl married in 1958, moving into the ground floor flat at 18 Grosvenor Park Road, Walthamstow, and in 1959 Eddie gave Beryl her first motorcycle.

Beryl soon took to the track in the ultralight 50cc class, racing in domestic series at circuits such as Brands Hatch and Snetterton. At just eight stone, Beryl’s weight gave her a useful advantage in the class and she won a number of prizes.  But it wasn’t long before prejudice reared its ugly head. In a meeting at Brands Hatch she should have been near the front of the grid but was consigned to the back. Beryl was dignified about this injustice, saying: “I presume that because I am a woman, I must be lucky that I am allowed to race at all.”

The year 1962 saw the FIM grant the 50cc class an international standing, with the Isle of Man TT introducing a two-lap race in the new class. Beryl’s racing experience meant she was able to submit her entry form. A woman taking part in the TT gathered a lot of attention, but the press of the day took the angle of her being a housewife when, in fact, she worked full-time, paying her own race fees and insurance premiums.

The authorities were not happy at the idea of a woman taking part, and in April 1962  introduced a minimum weight of 9.5 stone (this was the only class to which the limit was applied), invoked for ‘safety reasons’.  Beryl bulked up, but still had to gain permission to wear a lead-lined diver’s belt to make up the weight!  This put her at an immediate disadvantage, as did riding a privateer Itom against a number of works machinery. Her Itom also lost top gear (leaving her stuck in 2nd) for the whole of the second lap. Despite this, Beryl finished 22nd out of 25 finishers from a 33-strong field with an average speed of 48.3mph.

Beryl’s feat – the only woman at that time to have taken part as a solo rider in the TT (Pat Wise was the first female competitor, riding sidecar in Eric Oliver’s outfit) – gathered more media attention, and she was a guest at that year’s Motorcycle Show. She declared she intended to contest the next year’s TT, possibly on a 500!

Allegedly Honda was taking an interest when the authorities shut down her hopes. The FIM – terrified of the negative response should a woman be killed on the notoriously perilous TT circuit – announced that solo women riders were banned from international racing.

Beryl put her case to the press. ‘I have never been guilty of bad or dangerous driving – the usual reason for withdrawing an international licence,’ she wrote. ‘It’s a matter of female prejudice under a thin veneer of safety first.’ The press response was sexist as ever, one national newspaper making a sneering reference to ‘This wordy wife’.

Beryl petitioned the Lieutenant Governor of the Isle of Man and the Queen to no avail, and it would be another 16 years before a solo woman would be allowed to compete, Hilary Musson taking part in the 250cc class in the 1978 TT.

Beryl continued to race at domestic level for a couple more seasons, but with options running out, rode her last road race in October 1963. She briefly tried Speedway but did not get along with the style and was unable to compete with male riders on an equal footing.

Sadly, around this time Beryl and Eddie’s marriage foundered. She went on to become a Personnel Manager for Sainsbury’s, rarely speaking about her racing career (in later life she shunned the subject). On retirement she volunteered to deliver Meals on Wheels.

Beryl passed away on May 15, 2007, two years after Maria Costello took 3rd place in the Ultra Lightweight class at the Manx GP. It seemed her exploits were forgotten, but in 2019 local historian Kirsten Sibley mounted an exhibition ‘Beryl Swain – Need for Speed’, and in June that year a mural by noted local artist Helen Bur was painted in Wood Street, near where Beryl was born. A Waltham Forest Heritage plaque was placed at 18 Grosvenor Road.

Words by Bob Pickett. Photos: Mortons Archive / Bob Pickett

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