legends. Hermes, Icarus and Wayland the Smith soared to the skies while below, earth-bound by reality, women were left to languish, taking to the air only as discredited and troublesome witches. When eventually women did take to the skies, it was with a burst of spectacular and daring exhibitionism.
In 1783, the first balloon went up and the following year the first woman made her ascent. By 1810, Napoleon’s Chief of Air Service was the noted balloonist Madame Blanchard. Described as combining ‘a rugged character and physique with the charity and delicate exterior demanded of femininity of that period’, she was dedicated to ballooning, often staying up all night and descending only at dawn. Appointed by Louis XVIII, she planned for him one of the spectacular aerial firework displays for which she was famous. The Parisian crowd watched enraptured as she ignited a surprise rocket which sprayed a bright light across the sky, unexpectedly, however, sending the balloon with its solitary passenger on a rapidly descending course across the rooftops. The Parisian crowd roared its delight as the balloon disappeared from view. Madame Blanchard’s battered body was picked up later by passing workmen. While igniting what was to be her final firework, a rush of hydrogen had escaped from the envelope and the soaring flames had set the balloon alight.
Women, if not actually born managers, must quickly learn the skills of management in order to run their homes, and many found they had great aptitude for organizing public aeronautical displays. The public itself was more than happy to enjoy the intriguing sight of a woman elegantly clothed in empire dress and bonnet leaning langorously over a soaring gondola, one hand graciously scattering rose petals upon the awed, upturned faces, the other waving the national flag.
In England an astute mother of seven built up a whole career for herself as a balloonist. The posters, devised by herself, naturally gave her top billing:
Mrs. Graham, the only Female Aeronaut, accompanied by a party of young ladies … in the balloon The Victoria and Albert, will make an ascent at Vauxhall on Thursday July 11, 1850.
Intrepid and resourceful, Mrs Graham understood well the psychology of theatre. To whip up the anticipatory excitement, she had the preparations for the flight take place in public. Barrels of acid and old iron were set to bubble near the balloon to form the gas that was piped into it For a heightened effect she used illuminating gas which she bought from the local gas works. Then the balloon, bedecked with ribbons, streamers, plumes and silks and often filled with delightful young girls chaparoned by the matronly Mrs Graham herself, would waft slowly heavenwards. A keen businesswoman, her capacity for self-advertisement was matched only by her ability to stay alive in this dangerous business. She continued performing for forty years, spanning both the rise and the decline of ballooning in Britain.
After going up in a balloon basket the next thing was to jump out of one, and the organizers at Alexandra Palace, the Londoners’ playground, soon realized that the sight of an apparently vulnerable female figure with nipped-in waist and small, buttoned boots was more likely to produce a delicious sense of danger than was a burly, male aeronaut. To that end, and certainly to her own delight, Dolly Shepherd, daughter of a detective in the London Metropolitan Police, was chosen to become part of a parachute team.
In 1903, the 17-year-old Dolly was a smart Edwardian miss, with a good steady job as a waitress at the Ally Pally – steady, that is, until offered the chance of joining Bill Cody’s parachute team. Undeterred by the circumstances of the offer – the death of another girl parachutist in Dublin – she seized the chance and was soon being billed all over the country. In her breeches, knee-length boots and brass-buttoned jerkin, Dolly was soon the darling of the Edwardian crowd, who turned up to see her hitched to a trapeze bar and carried thousands of feet into the air by a balloon from which she then freed herself to float gracefully back to earth. Paid £2 10s for each ascent – a lot of money when a portion of fish and chips cost a penny halfpenny – her reputation was hard earned for she frequently took her life in her hands. Apart from a few unrehearsed landings on rooftops, she once drifted helplessly two miles above the earth and was only released from her ethereal prison by the unexpected deflation of the balloon. She came closest to death when, making a spectacular dual ascent, her partner’s parachute broke. Eight thousand feet up, she had to swing across to her partner, and strap the other girl to her own parachute so that they could make the dangerous descent together. She escaped with her life but badly injured her back on impact.
Dolly was the last of an era for the skies were now being invaded by a noisier sort of aerial creature – the flying machine. In 1903, the same year that young Dolly made her first ascent in a balloon, the Wright brothers made their first wavering flight at Kitty Hawke. From then on, the skies of Europe and America were filled with machines taking off like feverish gnats and before long, women were up there among them, not only flying but also building their own aircraft.
By 1909, the first fatal air accident had happened, Blériot had flown the Channel and Lilian Bland, granddaughter of the Dean of Belfast, had built and flown her own machine, known as the Bland Mayfly. Constructed of steamed ash, piano wire, bicycle pedals and treated calico, the Bland Mayfly sold for £250 – or £350 with an engine. Lilian’s first ad hoc fuel tank consisted of a whisky bottle and an ear trumpet. ‘It was not a good engine,’ she noted, ‘a beast to start and it got too hot … as the engine is English, its sense of humour is not developed sufficiently.’ An issue of Flight Magazine shows her flying her magnificent machine across a foggy, frosty field.
It would be unusual these days to read of a woman building her own aircraft but the style, in those early days of flight, was strictly trial and error and anyone who had the inclination and the money could have a go. Surprisingly, for one who had worked so hard and achieved so much, it all came to an end in what seemed, for her, an uncharacteristic way. ‘As a consequence of the marriage of Miss Bland,’ read the notice in Flight in 1911, ‘we learn that she is disposing of her aeroplane engine, propellers, plant and machines.’
Although Lilian Bland threw it all up for love, there were countless other young women following her who took to the air with equal joy and alacrity. In 1909, Madame la Baronne de Laroche of France was the first woman ever to gain a pilot’s licence. Three years later, on the day following the shattering loss of the Titanic, a young American journalist, Harriet Quimby, flew solo across the English Channel, taking less than an hour to do so.
In the States, during the recession, many young people – mostly men – found they could earn a living wing-walking and performing other aerial stunts. For a tired and dispirited populace, these dangerous exploits provided some sort of relief, the contemplation of others in danger somehow lessening the boredom and misery of their own dull or inactive lives. For women fliers, the practice served another, useful purpose. Generally thought not to be such good fliers as their male counterparts, anything which offered them a chance to display their skills could not be ignored. For one woman, at least, the strategy paid off. Phoebe Omlie, a talented and daring wing-walker, became the first person in the States to get a transport licence. For the spirited woman who liked excitement and adventure, flying provided an opportunity for both and once she had access to a plane, she could attain a freedom in the skies not available to her on the ground at all.
By the mid-1920s, however, state bureaucracy had begun to assert itself – almost always a bad omen for women. In 1924, the International Commission for Civil Aviation resolved that ‘women shall be excluded from any employment in the operative crew of aircraft engaged in public transport’. Another resolution stated categorically that candidates for such posts ‘must have use of all four limbs, be free from hernia and must be of the male sex’. Although these restrictions were later removed, the attitudes which prompted them were not. Some twenty years later, Jacqueline Cochrane, the first woman to break the sound barrier, was ‘allowed’ to deliver a bomber to England, as part of the war effort, provided that the take-off and landing were done by a male pilot.
Well aware of the problems faced by women in the field of aviation, Stella Wolfe, a journalist specializing in flying in the 1920s, made some points about the suitability of women which might now make us smile but which obviously needed stating then. Women, she said, were eminently suited to flying because they were lighter in weight and could endure cold better than men. Nor did they drink or smoke as much as men. Further, she believed that women, when able properly