Dr. Dudley Benjafield's 3 litre chassis 997

 

"Dr Dudley Benjafield in 3 litre Bentley, chassis 997, outside his consulting rooms at Five Wimpole Street, W1"

 

 

Joseph Dudley Benjafield, MD, was born on 6 August 1887, in Edmonton, London. He attended the University of London and received his MD from University College Hospital in 1912. Specialising in bacteriology, he served in Egypt during The Great War, and later used his expertise combating the great 'flu epidemic of 1918-1919.

 

He had a passion for motorsports, starting with boating, and kept his thirty foot motor boat, Lumiere, at Folkestone. During a storm the launch was destroyed between two moored fishing boats, and Benjafield, having regularly attended Brooklands racing track, became interested in motor sport, buying a 3 litre Bentley, chassis 997. Bertie Kensington Moir and he became instant friends when Benjafield took 997 in to the Service Depot, where Moir presided, and, after a drive in a Works car at Brooklands the next day, he bought it, started competing in races at Brooklands, and so joined the other wealthy amateur drivers who supplemented the professional employees of Bentley Motors, and became a “Bentley Boy.”

 

He competed in the 24 Hours of Le Mans seven times, and won the event in 1927 with co-driver and fellow “Bentley Boy” S.C.H. Davis. In the great “White House Crash” their car was badly damaged, but they made repairs on-the-spot and in the pits, and won the race.

 

Dudley Benjafield's informal dinner parties at his Wimpole St home in the mid 1920s, drew together a nucleus of enthusiasts and drivers who formed the British Racing Drivers’ Club in 1927. He continued racing until 1936, and died in 1957.