Information about the life of Sheila Van Damm
Sheila Van Damm & her lover Joan Werner Laurie
• Sheila Van Damm grew up around shows, helping her dad with the Windmill Theatre famous for its still nude shows and being the only Theatre to not shut down during the blitz
• The show surprisingly for it's time was very feminist and liberating for the women who were apart of it and they received lots of benefits - Sheila Van Damm even paid for one of the ladies, Iris Chapple, to have a breast reduction that Iris wanted
• After the war Sheila's dad wanted to open an air charter company and made her learn to fly, which she didn't want to but felt she had no choice and was determined to do it well
• 'No one who knew Sheila Van Damm was ever in any doubt about her sexuality'
• The air charter business didn't go anywhere but her dad, without telling her, signed Sheila and her sister up to take place in a Daily Express rally. The rally involved driving a thousand miles in 48 hours which she managed with the help of her 'wakey wakey pills'. She was apart of the Rootes team racing a Sunbeam Talbot
• She and her sister came third in the women's competition, a surprise to the whole family
• Sheila was always modest about her driving and would downplay her achievements and excellence at driving, potentially to avoid backlash from men seeing it as a threat
• She even outpaced Stirling Moss in 2-3 litre cars
• Sheila even took part in the Mille Migila
• In 1958 Sheila moved into the house shared by Nancy Spain & Joan Werner Laurie. Originally she was to only stay a few days while she looked for a flat but it became a permanent relationship.
• She was the affair partner of Joan Werner Laurie who was in a relationship with Nancy Spain - but Nancy was fine with this as she also had her own affairs
• She decided to retire from racing in 1955, though she loved rallying her father was ill and she needed to take over working at the Windmill Theatre which wouldn't have worked with her racing career. Suspiciously her father's illness recovered as soon as she had retired.
• Most of Sheila's friends agreed she had an awful taste in women and that Joan was one of them
• Sometimes Sheila would bring Joan to her parents home to meet her mum, and sometimes she would bring both Joan and Nancy
• Both Joan and Nancy had a child, two boys, that they all raised together. Joan and Nancy had very busy careers and with the Windmill Theater becoming old fashioned but still localised Sheila took over the role of mission control, looking after the children and was there for them most often
• They all moved into a bigger house to have space and bedrooms for Sheila and for Nancy & Joan to share one. They threw a New Year's Eve party that even Paul McCartney was in attendance.
• Nancy was going to cover the Grand National Race in 1964 (horse racing) and decided to turn it into a family day out where her and Joan would fly to the race and Sheila would drive with her sister to the race. Sheila got there and looked around for them with her sister but couldn't find them. Later she turned on the radio to hear the horrifying news that they had been killed in a plane crash.
• Sheila informed a policeman who she was and she had to go to identify their bodies, she nearly broke the police man's hand she was holding when she identified them.
• Sheila organised the everything including the funerals
• In 1964 with lots of losses and from running it alone, Sheila made the tough decision to close the theatre
• Sheila went to live with her sister where they brought a small farm and stables, she took comfort from a letter she got from a spiritualist that said Joan and Nancy were with her father in the afterlife.
• For the rest of her life she suffered nervous breakdowns, depression that she treated with electro-convsive therapy and became very reclusive. She passed from cancer an illness she kept from her family till two days before her death and she didn't have a funeral as she didn't want a fuss.
Information from the book: her brilliant career – ten extraordinary women of the fifties
