Meet Madame Inès Decourcelle, One of many Very First Feminine Taxi Drivers in Paris (Circa 1908)

For those who can learn this, you virtually cer­tain­ly know the French phrase for a professional­fes­sion­al auto­mo­bile dri­ver. That’s as a result of we use the identical phrase in Eng­lish: chauf­feur. French nouns, in contrast to Eng­lish ones, are available mas­cu­line and fem­i­9 vari­eties, and that –eur finish­ing unmis­tak­ably indi­cates one of many for­mer. What, then, to name a girl who works behind the wheel? Chauf­feuse can be the nat­ur­al possibility, if it did­n’t already confer with a form of fireplace­aspect lounge chair. One may additionally fem­i­nize cocher, anoth­er phrase for dri­ver, however cochère, too, is already tak­en by an arched entry­means (which archi­tec­tur­al element, notably, meets the vehic­u­lar realm within the type of the porte-cochère).

As typically, the dif­fi­cul­ty of pin­ning down the precise time period right here displays the scarci­ty of the below­ly­ing con­cept. In a lot of the world at present, dri­ving isn’t con­sid­ered probably the most fem­i­9 of occu­pa­tions. That was even more true within the Paris of the ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, when the primary lady to get her taxi license made his­to­ry — or quite, when the primary ladies to get their taxi licens­es made his­to­ry. A 1908 dis­patch from the Motor-Automotive Jour­nal’s Paris cor­re­spon­dent describes a cer­tain Made­moi­selle Gaby Pohlen as hav­ing “obtained her dri­ver’s license to dri­ve a motor taxi­cab from the Pre­fec­ture of Police.” Even on the time of writ­ing, “her examination­ple has already been fol­lowed by Madame Decour­celle.”

Accord­ing to Jeroen Booij at PreWarCar.com, how­ev­er, “three girls sup­pos­ed­ly started an appren­tice­ship in 1906 to dri­ve a motor­ized automotive­riage within the Metropolis of Gentle. A girl named Madame Dufaut-Charnier sup­pos­ed­ly obtained her diploma as ear­ly as Feb­ru­ary 1907.” However Madame Inès Decour­celle “is believed to be the primary to obtain her full taxi licence in April 1908, mak­ing her the primary lady in his­to­ry to dri­ve a taxi within the streets of Paris. The actual fact is that she turned the sub­ject of a num­ber of dai­ly information­pa­per arti­cles declare­ing this, as she was seen on so many put up­playing cards from Paris nam­ing her the primary ‘femme chauf­feur.’ ” After see­ing one such sto­ry in Le Jour­nal, anoth­er lady “wrote to the paper in a par­tic­u­lar­ly irri­tat­ed means, declare­ing that not Madame Decour­celle however she, Made­moi­selle Gaby Pohlen, earned the title,” hav­ing begin­ed dri­ving again in 1906.

The com­menters at PreWarCar.com have put some thought towards clar­i­fy­ing the mat­ter. Giv­en the period, when the auto­mo­bile itself was nonetheless a nov­el­ty, one in all them sus­pects con­fu­sion about “whether or not all these named have been licensed horse-drawn or motor cab dri­vers,” clarify­ing that Pohlen and Decour­celles “each report­ed­ly obtained licens­es to dri­ve motor taxi-cabs in spring 1908.” Whereas the pho­to­genic and a few­what eccen­tric Pohlen might have begin­ed out first, “Mme. Decour­celles’ declare to fame was that she was the primary to get “diplo­mas” as each a horse ‘cochère’ and a motor ‘chauf­feuse.’ ” This, anoth­er com­menter provides, was “an incred­i­ble obtain­ment on the time,” no mat­ter which phrase — or phrases — the Académie Française approves to explain it.

by way of Messy­Nessy

Relat­ed con­tent:

Beau­ti­ful, Col­or Pho­tographs of Paris Tak­en 100 Years In the past—on the Start­ning of World Battle I & the Finish of La Belle Époque

Paris Had a Mov­ing Aspect­stroll in 1900, and a Thomas Edi­son Movie Cap­tured It in Motion

The Time­much less Beau­ty of the Cit­roën DS, the Automotive Mythol­o­gized by Roland Barthes (1957)

Take a Vir­tu­al Dri­ve by means of Lon­don, Tokyo, Los Ange­les & 45 Oth­er World Cities

Robert De Niro’s Taxi Cab License Used to Pre­pare for Taxi Dri­ver (1976)

Primarily based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His initiatives embrace the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the ebook The State­much less Metropolis: a Stroll by means of Twenty first-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­ebook.