Hannah Dadds: the first female Tube driver
Introduction
Hannah Dadds (1941–2011) became the first woman driver on the London Underground (LU) in October 1978. Her sister Edna worked with her as a guard, forming London Transport’s first all-woman crew.
Joining London Transport
Hannah Dadds joined London Transport in 1969 and became a ‘stationwoman’ at Upton Park station. She worked her way up, becoming a ticket collector and guard.
Train guards were also emergency drivers. If anything happened to the train driver or there was an accident, guards like Hannah had to be able to move the train. There was more training if the guard then wanted to qualify as a driver – but at that time women weren’t allowed.
Quote from Hannah
Women have been held back too long. If they can do a job, they should be allowed to
Sex Discrimination Act
In 1975 the Sex Discrimination Act was passed by the UK Government. Before the Act employers could prevent women from undertaking some roles, just because of their gender. After the Act new jobs opened up to women.
From 1975 as a result of the legislation, women could apply to be Tube train drivers. Several women did, and Hannah Dadds was the first to qualify.
Training
Hannah Dadds started to train as a driver in August 1978 and qualified in October 1978.
I was the second one [woman] to go to school for driver. I was the only woman in the class.
At the time some men were not happy about women working as drivers. Women trainees faced verbal abuse and harassment during their training. Sympathetic male training staff found ways to support the women trainees as best they could in this environment.
Public reaction
When Hannah started train driving in 1978, she was big news. London Underground arranged a press conference so that journalists could cover the story.
I did all the press and the television, and anyone else from radio. There was loads of them! And I drove a train out of Acton, drove it from there to Ealing Broadway. And then I had a lot of them [pictures] taken there, and then I had to fetch it back in again. And then we went to the pub.
There were other women who qualified as drivers around that time, including Hannah’s sister Edna. Women drivers still represented a tiny proportion of the workforce and weren’t always well supported. Depots weren’t equipped for women, lacking toilets for women or separate showers.
The first of many?
Hannah spent her time as a driver on the District, Bakerloo and Jubilee lines, and retired from train driving in 1993. She died in 2011, aged 69. In 2019 a commemorative plaque was installed at Upton Park station, where Hannah began her LU career. You can hear more from Hannah in this oral history interview (below).
Since the 1970s there have been hundreds of women train and bus drivers working in London, though proportionally far fewer than men. In 2000 LU started running recruitment adverts in glossy magazines like Cosmopolitan to encourage more women to work as drivers. Even today only a small proportion of Tube train drivers are women.
