Above: Rachel Dorange and her horse Le Huppé about to depart on their ride from Paris to Bucharest and return, April 11, 1928 (detail).
Source: "Exploration d'une Légende : Rachel Dorange, l'Amazone Intrépide," École des Roys, November 24, 2024. Tinted version of Agence Rol photo in the Bibliothèque nationale de France (accessible online via Gallica).
1. Introduction
In the late 1920s Rachel Dorange made a name for herself by her long-distance journeys on horseback, notably Paris to Berlin and return (1927), Paris to Bucharest and return (1928) and Paris to Barcelona (1929).
In 1941 she earned a place in cab history by becoming the driver of a horse-drawn fiacre in occupied Paris. She drove her cab for nearly 25 years and was the last femme cocher in the city.
Rachel was not only the last Paris femme cocher – for most of her cab driving career she was the only one. Other women joined her from time to time but she outlasted them all. Rachel even tried to recruit female cochers by setting up a training school for them.
As the years went by it became harder to separate the truth from the fanciful exaggerations in her published reminiscences, but her genuine achievements remained unblemished.
Then again, perhaps her fanciful exaggerations were also achievements. She certainly kept her name in the spotlight well into the 1960s, not only in France but around the world. A search of her name on OldNews.com retrieves more than 900 newspaper articles spanning the years from 1927 to 1965.
She was a celebrity, a curiosity, a beloved character and even a tourist attraction. In the 1950s many visitors to Paris made a point of hiring her and her cab for sight-seeing tours.
She retired from cab driving in 1966 and died in 1982. By the time she died she was largely forgotten, only to be rediscovered more recently as a distinguished pioneer in the world of equestrianism.
And, we might add, rediscovered here as the last representative of a remarkable episode in cab history – that of Les Femmes Cocher.