Lady Icarus

Lilian Bland - pioneer of Irish Aviation

2011-09-23T13:10:00.000+01:00

By Finola Meredith (Irish Times)
THE PIONEERING Irish aviator Lilian Bland has been all but forgotten, eclipsed by the daring exploits of later female pilots, such as Amelia Earhart. But a century ago today (Aug 31) Bland became the first woman to design, build and fly her own aircraft as she took to the skies over Co Antrim in her home-made biplane, Mayfly . To mark the centenary, a plaque will be unveiled at the deer park at Lord O’Neill’s estate in Randalstown, scene of Bland’s triumph, and a wreath will be laid at her grave at Sennan, in Cornwall, where she died in 1971, at the age of 92.
Even before she took the surprising decision to make and fly her own plane, Bland had developed quite a reputation for her devil-may-care exploits and insouciant approach to the social mores of the times. Granddaughter of a Belfast curate, she scandalised her relations by smoking, drinking and riding a horse astride. Guy Warner of Ulster Aviation Society describes how Bland would lie under hedges at Tobercorran House in Carnmoney, where she lived with her widowed father, taking potshots at poachers.
Bland’s desire to fly was sparked when she received a postcard from her uncle celebrating Louis Blériot’s 1909 flight across the English Channel. Determined to make her own aircraft, she spent the winter of 1909-10 constructing a glider. In the early spring of 1910, accompanied by four police constables she had persuaded to help her, Bland took her creation to the top of Carnmoney Hill. When the wind lifted the plane – and with it the four men, grimly hanging on – she knew she could risk adding an engine. Ever resourceful, Bland used her deaf aunt’s ear trumpet and a whiskey bottle to feed in the petrol. Now all she needed was a suitably large field for Mayfly to make its maiden flight.
Lord O’Neill offered a stretch of parkland, which came complete with a resident bull; the irrepressible Bland said its presence simply gave her an even greater inducement to take off. On a late summer’s day, and seemingly as much by Bland’s willpower as by aeronautical design, Mayfly did fly, briefly but spectacularly.
Alarmed by his daughter’s antics, Bland’s father promised to buy her a car if she would stop. The bribe worked: delighted by her new Model T, bought in Dublin, Bland set up the North’s first Ford dealership. She never returned to flying, settling in Canada and then Cornwall, where by her own account she devoted the rest of her life to gambling, painting and gardening.

2011-08-20T10:50:00.001+01:00

Some activity on the web concerning the flights of Lady Heath and the German aviator Elly Beinhorn from a South African perspective (www.avcom.co.za).
Here are a few interesting scraps: John Illsley's book "In Southern Skies" gives some information about these two airwomen. Other books in the SAAF Museum's Reference Library also have biographical details.
The National Archives in Pretoria holds the request lady Heath submitted in February 1928 to the Belgian Congo government for permission to overfly their territory whilst flying from Ndola to Abercorn.

2011-07-05T12:36:00.001+01:00

Been trying to upload the piece on "Lady Icarus" from the Culture File on Lyric as a podcast with no success. So here is the link to it on RTE.
Big thanks to Regan Hutchins for a great job. In the past month, have given talks to both the Royal Aeronautical Society in Dublin and the Ulster Avation Society in Belfast, so Lady Heath's fame is on the rise again!

http://www.rte.ie/lyricfm/culturefile/

2011-06-20T10:51:00.004+01:00

Think I have finally sorted out the mystery of this painting, after another query. The painting, called "The First Irish Airwoman" (NOT "An Irish Pilot" - they didn't use that word back then) is of Lavery's daughter Eileen who was married to the Master of Sempill, both of them pilots (see "Sir John Lavery" by Kenneth McConkey page 162). Another painting "'The First Flight to Dublin" also dates from this period (1926); the Irish Free State had bought a few planes from the British and these were flown to Dublin by the Sempills .
The Lavery portrait of Lady Mary shows her in her ambulance driver's uniform standing beside a car. It was painted by Lavery when he was on war artist duties in France and remains in the house of a distant relative in Co Limerick.

From the Hugh Lane Art Gallery Website.

John Lavery
An Irish Pilot

This wonderful painting by one of Ireland’s best loved portrait painters John Lavery features the fascinating Lady Heath, born Sophie Pierce Evans in Limerick. For a five-year period from the mid-1920s, pilot Lady Mary Heath was one of the best-known women in the world. It was an era when everyone had gone aviation mad, she was the first woman to parachute and the first woman to gain a commercial pilot’s licence. In 1928 Lady Heath made front-page news worldwide as the first pilot ever, male or female, to fly a small, open cockpit plane solo from Cape Town to London. Back home in Ireland in the 1930s, she was reputed to have landed her plane on every flat field in the country.
This fine portrait is in good condition, but its valuable, ornate frame is suffering from extensive flaking of the gilding. This requires urgent attention from a gilding conservator before it can be displayed. Intriguingly, the portrait appears to have been painted over a different composition and we hope to investigate this fascinating possibility by x-raying the painting.
Conservation costs €3000

LADY HEATH - British Pathe

2011-06-18T18:10:00.000+01:00

LADY HEATH - British Pathe

2011-06-17T16:39:00.000+01:00

Another new pic found on internet - and copyright of course!

2011-05-26T13:22:00.009+01:00

Have noticed copies of "Lady Icarus" going for silly prices on second-hand book sites. The original hardback book is still available from Ashfield Press on their website for €10 plus P&P (€11 UK, €7 Ireland, €16.60 rest of world for 2kg package).
Or directly from me using PayPal for €22 including P&P to the UK, €20 to Ireland and €28 rest of world. If it doesn't work, drop me a line at lindie (at) lindienaughton (dot) com.

2011-04-03T18:48:00.002+01:00

Just found this online.

Avro 594 Avian
Designed by Roy Chadwick the Avian was a direct competitor of the De Havilland Tiger Moth.
This particular aircraft was owned by Lady Mary Heath one of the most prominent early women aviators. She flew this Avian at the French Light Aircraft Trials at Orly in
September 1928 and took fourth place.

2011-03-10T21:42:00.005Z

Am currently working on a screenplay for a movie based on the life of Lady Mary Heath.
Now here's the dilemma; where are we going to get an actress of sufficient charisma - and height - for the lead role? Vanessa Redgrave in her younger days would have been my ideal.
So - ideas please !
Mail me directly at lindie(dot)naughton(at) gmail(dot) com.
PS: Any ideas for other parts? How about Imelda Staunton as Aunt Cis!
Maybe Jeremy Irons as Sir James Heath...
Her love interest - the mysterious "John"? Rupert Penry Jones is a good mixture of charm and sleeze...

2011-03-10T16:34:00.001Z

"Lady Mary Heath, noted British flyer, is near death as result of a plane crash in which she was flying went through a factory roof near the Great Lakes Aircraft Corp. Field at Cleveland. Photo shows the remains of the plane being removed."

2010-07-10T17:25:00.002+01:00

Found a previously unknown pic at
http://www.v-like-vintage.net/en/photo_details/91774_photo_The+Irish+Lady+Mary+Heath/?sort=newest&tagword=airplane.
Copyright of course!

2010-03-23T20:27:00.005Z

Elinor Smith (Sullivan), aviation pioneer and record-setting aviatrix died Friday, March 19, 2010 in Palo Alto, California, at the age of 98.

One of the youngest and most daring pilots of the 1920s, Smith's numerous records for endurance, altitude, and speed, along with her work as a test pilot, left an indelible mark on the history of aviation. But it was her infectious love of flight and her bold refusal to be constrained by either youth or gender that made her an icon.
Smith is perhaps best remembered as the only person to have ever flown under all four of New York's East River suspension bridges - a feat she achieved at the age of 17, just one year after becoming the youngest licensed pilot in the United States. Her daring stunt made her an instant celebrity, but the achievement she personally valued most was being voted "Best Woman Pilot in America" by her peers in October 1930.
A contemporary of Amelia Earhart, Lady Mary Heath, and Evelyn "Bobbi" Trout, Smith championed the rights of women in aviation's golden age. The records she set mirror the milestones of aviation and the speed at which it advanced. In January 1929, she set the women's solo endurance record at 13-1/2 hours; just three months later, she reset it with a 26-1/2-hour flight that nearly cost her her life. In 1930, she set the women's altitude record at 27,419 feet; in 1931, she reset it at 32,576 feet. In 1934 she became the first woman featured on the back of a Wheatie's box. In 1982, she published her autobiography Aviatrix.
Smith's flying career paused after her marriage to New York State Assemblyman Patrick H. Sullivan II in 1933 and their decision to raise four children. Following her husband's death in 1956, Smith returned to aviation and continued to enjoy new piloting challenges. In March 2000, she became the oldest pilot to succeed in a simulated shuttle landing, piloting NASA's Space Shuttle vertical motion simulator. In April 2001, at the age of 89, Smith piloted her last flight - an experimental C33 Raytheon AGATE, Beech Bonanza at Langley Air Force Base, Virginia.
* See video below. Was fortunate to meet Elinor in January 2009, when she was happy to pass on her stories of Lady Mary Heath, a woman she admired greatly for her aviation skills.

Lady Icarus Revised

2009-05-23T07:18:00.001+01:00

This promo includes original interview material with Elinor Smith, Chris Burton and Pearse Cahill - all in their 90s.

2009-04-14T15:39:00.005+01:00

Have finally sorted out the mystery of this painting, after another query. The painting, called "The First Irish Airwoman" is of Lavery's daughter Eileen who was married to the Master of Sempill, both of them pilots (see "Sir John Lavery" by Kenneth McConkey page 162). Another painting "'The First Flight to Dublin" also dates from this period (1926); the Irish Free State had bought a few planes from the British and these were flown to Dublin by the Sempills .

From the Hugh Lane Art Gallery Website.
(The portrait we know of shows Lady Mary in her ambulance driver's uniform standing beside a car. That one was painted by Lavery when he was on war artist duties in France and remains in the house of a distant relative in Co Limerick.)

John Lavery
An Irish Pilot
This wonderful painting by one of Ireland’s best loved portrait painters John Lavery features the fascinating Lady Heath, born Sophie Pierce Evans in Limerick. For a five-year period from the mid-1920s, pilot Lady Mary Heath was one of the best-known women in the world. It was an era when everyone had gone aviation mad, she was the first woman to parachute and the first woman to gain a commercial pilot’s licence. In 1928 Lady Heath made front-page news worldwide as the first pilot ever, male or female, to fly a small, open cockpit plane solo from Cape Town to London. Back home in Ireland in the 1930s, she was reputed to have landed her plane on every flat field in the country.
This fine portrait is in good condition, but its valuable, ornate frame is suffering from extensive flaking of the gilding. This requires urgent attention from a gilding conservator before it can be displayed. Intriguingly, the portrait appears to have been painted over a different composition and we hope to investigate this fascinating possibility by x-raying the painting.
Conservation costs €3000

2009-01-28T22:08:00.003Z

Top picture: (Rear L-R) Mrs. S. C. Elliot-Lynn, Britain's first woman pilot, and her passenger Lady Bailey leaving plane after flight breaking world's altitude record for light airplanes, at Hamble Aerodrome.

Location:	United Kingdom
Date taken:	June 1927

2009-01-28T21:48:00.006Z

THREE NEW GETTY PICTURES

(Left) Long-distance aviator Lady Heath, the first woman to be engaged as a pilot on a passenger air-service, standing in front of a Dutch airline KLM Fokker passenger plane, with 1st pilot J Scholte. (Photo by Edward G Malindine/Getty Images)

(Above) 27th July 1928: Lady Heath (1897 - 1939), the first woman passenger line pilot, in the cockpit of the Fokker Air Liner owned by Royal Dutch Air Lines, after a flight from Amsterdam to Croydon. (Photo by MacGregor/Topical Press Agency/Getty Images)

(left) 27th July 1928: Aviator Lady Sophie Mary Heath on arrival at Croydon aerodrome after her first flight (from Amsterdam) as an airline pilot for Royal Dutch Lines, making her the first woman in the world to fly a passenger aeroplane. Mynheer J Scholto is beside her. (Photo by Walter Bellamy/London Express/Getty Images)

2008-01-26T16:31:00.001Z

A COUSIN'S MEMORIES OF SOPHIE
..."when an unsuitable cousin arrived in Aberdeen....This cousin was the famous baby that was carried in the carpet bag, the gipsy's child, already mentioned. She had grown up to be an athlete of distinction, held the British women's championship in fencing - or was it javelin throwing? - and just after the war she came to Aberdeen with a university appointment of a minor sort. Agitated letters reached my mother from Aunt Lucie and others in Ireland: "For Mercy's sake, Lily, don't let Sophie get hold of the girls." I was in my first year at Aberdeen University and very interested to see this Irish cousin, who came to tea in a stylish fur coat. She had a husband, but he happened to be in Africa....She soon made a name for herself as a pilot of considerable daring and skill, at a time when very few women flew at all. .... In a club in London in the late 1920s, I heard her discussed, her charm and vitality and her gifts, and trickling through the conversation a suggestion of warning...."
From "So Much Love, So Little Money" by Lyn Irvine (London 1957), whose mother Lilian Lloyd grew up in Mount Etna; Lilian's father was Edward Lloyd. Her grandmother was Anne Locke.
In 1934, Lyn Irvine married the Cambridge mathematician Max Newman; he was part of the Bletchly Hall group that broke the Enigma code in the Second World War.

2007-09-25T08:59:00.000+01:00

Daragh Dukes and his friends in the Dublin band Headgear have written a lovely, gentle song called "Icarus Girl" inspired by Lady Mary and her life. Hear it at:
http://www.myspace.com/headgearmusic

Indeed, Daragh has written an entire album of songs based on his fascination with flight. Worth a listen.

lady Icarus

2007-09-09T18:47:00.001+01:00

Promo for "Lady Icarus" documentary project. Pass on the word - the more interest we generate, the better the chance of the movie getting made.

Pathe news . Pioneer aviator. Lady Heath

2007-09-09T18:45:00.001+01:00

Lady Mary after her awful accident. You can see the damage done to her face.

2007-09-09T17:57:00.000+01:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRqPIZSCl6Y
Now for 'Lady Icarus - the Movie", which will tell the story of Irish aviator Lady Mary Heath, who flew from Cape Town to London solo in 1928. To get backing at the
Sheffield Documentary Festival it needs LOTS of hits, so pass on the word (please!) and add your comments. We really need to get this film made soon, since the number of people of her generation who still remember Lady Mary is getting fewer by the minute.

2007-05-01T23:10:00.000+01:00

Beautiful in its design concept and wonderful in its reality, named after Lady Heath, the pioneering aviator who flew into aviation history from Ireland's first civil aerodrome in Kildoran, Finglas. Seventy-two residences of suberb quality and style in Finglas Village, close to all facilities. Magnificent raised garden centrepiece in its enclosed courtyard.

Architect : Project Architects
Engineers : John B. Barry & Partners
Quantity Surveyors : Mark Foran & Associates

Fame at last for Lady Mary - a housing estate in her name!

2007-04-25T17:28:00.000+01:00

LADY MARY AT JUNIOR OLYMPIC GAMES OF 1929

June 2, 1929 - Los Angeles Times -- Celebrities & V.I.P.'s congregate to add excitement to the 1929 Junior Olympics. Left to right: Sig Nylander; Lady Heath; Leslie A. Henry; Boyd Comstorck; Charley Paddock; Herman Brix; Bud Houser; Frank Wykoff, and Douglas Fairbanks.

This is new information to me; found at www.frankwykoff.com

2007-04-25T17:13:00.000+01:00

DETAILS OF LADY MARY'S LAST RACE BEFORE HER ACCIDENT
National Air Races
Cleveland, Ohio, 24 Aug-2 Sept
Scheduled Closed-Course Events Open to Women
Event No. 1
Ladies CW Class Race
(1) Open to all type planes powered with motor or motors
having a total of less than 510 cubic inch displacement.
(2) 10 laps of 5-mile course.
(3) Prizes, Si000.00: 1st $500.00; 2nd $300.00; 3rd $200.00.
(1)
Pilot

Plane

Motor

Speed (mph)



1 Phoebe Omlie*
2 Keith-Miller
3 Lady Mary Heath
4 Blanche Noyes

Monocoupe
Fleet
Great Lakes
Great Lakes

Warner
Kinner K-5
American Cirrus
American Cirrus

112.37
98.73
96.17
85.12

Phoebe Omlie was disqualified for cutting a pylon, and the
prize went to Jessie Maude Keith-Miller.

2007-02-28T17:20:00.001Z

THE STORY OF G-EBUG
Avro 594 Avian III - Construction number (c/n) R.3/AV/412

29.10.27 Registered G-EBUG, Certificate of Registration No.1510 to Lady Heath,
Manchester, 85hp A.D.C. Cirrus II engine
10.27 First flight at Hamble, pilot Bert Hinkler
17.11.27 Certificate of Airworthiness No.1245 to Lady Mary Heath (formerly Mrs
Eliott-Lynn)
18.11.27 Shipped to South Africa, arrived in Cape Town 6.12.27
5.1.28 Cape Town-Port Elizabeth, to East London on 9th
28.1.28 24 mile race, Baragwanath, 1st
25.2.28 Pretoria-Bulawayo, delayed at Bulawayo by sun-stroke
28.2.28 Bulawayo-Livingstone, continued to Broken Hill next day
4.3.28 Broken Hill-N´dola, to Abercorn next day
7.3.28 Abercorn-Tabora, to Mwanza next day
14.3.28 Mwanza-Nairobi
22.3.28 Nairobi-Jinja via Kisumu
28.3.28 Junja-Mongalla
30.3.28 Mongalla-Kosti via Malakal, to Khartoum next day
2.4.28 Khartoum-Atbara, to Wadi Halfa next day, escorted by 47 Sqn Fairey IIIF, Sgt Baker
4.4.28 Wadi Halfa-Cairo
15.4.28 Cairo-Sollum
16.4.28 Damaged rear fuselage while taxiing for take-off at Sollum, left on 23rd for Benghazi
24.4.28 Bengazi-Serti via Aghaila, to Tripoli next day, delayed in Tripoli by fever
5.5.28 Tripoli-Tunis via Sfax, to Naples via Catania next day
7.5.28 Naples-Rome
14.5.28 Rome-Marseilles, to Dijon next day, to Paris on the 16th
17.5.28 Arrived at Croydon via Lympne after 5,132 miles in 72 flying hours
6.28 Overhauled by makers, fitted with new engine, s//n 423/2
c24.6.28 Flown by Amelia Earhart (AE) at Croydon, bought by her on condition
that Lady Heath might buy it back when she arrived in USA.

2007-01-27T12:24:00.000Z

FROM TIME MAGAZINE 23 APRIL 1928

On Feb. 28, it was so hot in Bulawayo (South Eastern Africa) that the monkeys were sitting almost motionless on the lower branches of the trees. The air was as thick as chicken gumbo. Suddenly, the animals and the natives were disturbed by a noise like nothing they had ever heard before. An airplane shot down from the sky and came to an abrupt stop in the tangled grasses of a clearing near the village. A woman stepped out unsteadily and fainted. Two natives picked her up and carried her into Bulawayo, where they gave her some sour milk. She developed a fever, and said her name was Lady Heath. That did not mean much to the natives, who wondered what business a lady could have between the tip of South Africa and the equator in an airplane painted turquoise blue. Nearly a month later, the fever left her and she left Bulawayo, flying North.

Behind the flight of Lady Sophie Heath there was jealousy and good British gold—the gold that comes from coal and iron mines which husbands own. Her new husband, Sir James Heath, is 76. She is pretty and 30 and got for her wedding present from him a turquoise blue plane to match her favorite stone.

The day before their marriage, last October, she had taken the plane up above London to establish an altitude record of 19,000 feet. A few weeks later, she had kissed Sir James goodbye, embarked for Cape Town, South Africa, whence she quickly began to fly across all Africa toward London. If she succeeded, a new female flight record would be hers, but a rival, an "other woman" loomed.

The other woman was Lady Mary Bailey. She, too, was an aviatrix and the not quite so young wife (38) of a richer but not quite so old baronet, Sir Abe Bailey, 63. The gold of Sir Abe came from diamond mines and from other oldtime South African transactions which gained for him the dubious title of "one of Cecil Rhodes' young men." Lady Mary had given him five children and he had supplied a town house in London, a country place in Suffolk, a 200,000-acre ranch in Rhodesia, and plenty of airplanes.

No sooner did Lady Mary hear that Lady Sophie had recovered from the fever, and was really about to resume the Cape Town-London flight, than she called for her latest and staunchest Moth, and hopped over the British channel. But she had no wish to flaunt a rivalry. Therefore, since her diamond-mining husband, Sir Abe, happened to be in South Africa, she announced that she was taking the most leisurely trip to visit him and that quite incidentally she would be the first woman to fly the London-Cape Town wastes.

But when she got to Khartum, on the banks of the upper Nile, it was no longer possible to conceal her passion to win the great race Woman v. Woman. For there British officials stopped her. They positively refused to let her fly over the enemy-infested wastes of the Sudan without an escort. She protested she must fly alone. Was not Lady Sophie flying that very day alone? Not so, said they; Lady Sophie, flying north over the Sudan, had also been forced to take an escort from the other side—a young lieutenant, snatched from the bride with whom he was honeymooning in African solitude. Very well, said Lady Mary, but time was never so precious; must she wait until the Lieutenant arrived with Lady Sophie? She must. The lieutenant came, the two ladies exchanged brief words of recognition, and back went the lieutenant over the Sudan, this time flying south with Lady Mary.

Lady Sophie flew solo to Cairo. The race was hers. She had done the hard bit —vast veldt and jungle now lay in wait only for her rival. But, name of a dog, at the Cairo airdrome, where she stopped for supplies, officers padlocked her plane. It was not safe, they said, for a lady to cross the Mediterranean alone.

The race then was Lady Mary's. Zooming went she over the dark green heart of Africa, over the crystal blue of the longest freshwater lake in the world (Tanganyika) . And then, name of a dog, while she spiraled down to land at Tabora (10,000 blackamoors gaping) her motor missed. Suddenly the motor died cold. The Moth crashed to earth, a twisted wreck. She was only slightly injured. Fever loomed.

At last reports, Lady Mary was telegraphing her Sir Abe (2,250 miles south) telling him just where to get another kite. And Lady Sophie was still arguing heatedly with British officials in Cairo, 2,600 miles from her Sir James.

The race, whoever wins, will add two names to the annals of Air and of Empire. But both are already known to fame. Last year they sat side by side above London, the nose of their plane tilted up till it set a new altitude-record for Moths. Lithe Lady Sophie is admittedly the hardier—first woman to loop the loop in England. In a cruel speed-race she zoomed to the finish line a few yards ahead of Lady Mary, who had been leading. But it was the International League of Aviators which threw the apple of discord into the air; it pronounced Lady Mary, Sir Abe's wife, to be the "champion lady aviator of 1927."

2006-12-16T12:06:00.000Z

Looking for a book that has it all - murder, romance, intrigue and adventure? Then why not invest in "Lady Icarus" as the perfect gift for family and friends. Or even for yourself - those long dark January days can really drag without a good book or two to pass the time.
Available for just Eu25 (it's a quality hardback) from the publishers Ashfield Press at www.ashfieldpress.com. They deserve your support - you have no idea how difficult it is to get books on shelves if you are a small operation.
PS: If any of you are looking for copies of "How to Mow the Lawn - a Beginner's Guide to Gardening" apply to me directly!

2006-11-06T10:09:00.000Z

Lady Icarus

2006-09-28T12:57:00.000+01:00

In the 1920s, Lady Mary Heath, originally Sophie Peirce from Knockaderry, Co Limerick, was one of the best known women in Britain and the USA.
She had made her mark first as an athlete, prominent in the fight to bring track and field to the Olympics, and then become one of the best known pilots of the day, willing and capable of taking on the men at her own game.
In 1928, she made the first solo flight in a small plane from Cape Town to London, with her achievement gaining her world-wide renown. All the Irish newspapers covered her every move and she even made it on to the front pages of the New York Times.
Yet by the time of her untimely death in 1939, Lady Mary’s name had faded into obscurity.
Condensing her packed and varied life into one article is an almost impossible task, but suffice it to say that Lady Mary effortlessly makes into the small list of truly world renowned Irish women. Yet how many people today have ever heard of her?
There are a number of possible reasons for this. For a start, she flourished at a time when the fledgling Irish Free State was making its first faltering steps. Those from a Protestant background, such as Lady Mary, tended to identify with Britain and the Empire, although her own beloved aunt Cis spent her entire life between Newcastle West and Ballybunion. If she could be bothered, she could trace her family roots in Ireland back at least 400 years and would have been amazed that anyone thought of her as anything but Irish.
Yet those from such a background, often described as “Anglo-Irish”, were excised from the history of the Free State. Ernest Shackleton has only recently been welcomed back into the list of great Irish men, as has Tom Crean, the Kerry Catholic, who was part of Shackleton’s ill-fated expedition to the Antarctic, and took the King’s shilling when he joined the British navy.
Only in the past decade or so have the men and women who joined the British armed forces during the two World Wars been recognised for their bravery.
There was also the fact that Lady Mary was a woman. During World War 1, women learned to drive, earned their own money and starting socialising without men. As soon as the war ended, they were expected to go back to being housewives and mothers. Those who were reluctant to do so, like Lady Mary, were regarded with some suspicion by the male establishment.
When Lady Mary asked for a grant to complete her science degree after the war, it was turned down on the grounds that she was a married woman with a husband to keep her and so had no need for further skills.
By then, she had become involved in athletics and as a founding member of the Women’s Amateur Athletic Association, lobbied the International Olympic Committee to include women’s track and field in the Olympic programme.
Again the women got little support from the men, who felt women’s athletics was “unladylike”. By then, Lady Mary had married her first husband William Davies Eliott Lynn and was known as “Lady Hell-Of-Din”, a play on her married name, for her assertive personality. She spent little time with her husband, who was in Africa, and was determined to earn her own living, again at odds with the social norms of the time. On top of it all, she was Irish and London high society at best tolerated their hick cousins from across the water.
Lady Mary by now had discovered the joys of flying. Here was a way a woman like herself could get noticed and earn a decent living. Britain had gone air mad, with air shows attracting thousands at venues all over the country. Once Lady Mary had her private licence, she spent every weekend competing in air races, often winning them. She also made attempts at altitude records, and was the first woman to take a parachute jump from a plane, landing in the middle of a football pitch while a match was in progress.
But although women were a great attraction as these air shows, they still could not take up passengers or otherwise earn a living from their skill. Lady Mary announced that she wished to apply for a commercial licence and was told not to bother – even if she had one, the authorities would not let her fly for money.
So began perhaps the most significant battle of her life. She enlisted the help of powerful people such as the MP Lady Astor and argued strenuously that women should be allowed to fly for their living; that the daredevil days of flying were over. She agreed to be physically tested at any time; even during “that time of the month” of which the authorities were so wary.
Her lobbying paid off and in 1926, she became the first women in Britain and Ireland to hold a commercial licence. Following in her slipstream were two other Irish women – Sicele O’Brien from Limerick and Lady Mary Bailey from Co Monaghan.
By 1928, her first husband had died – found drowned in the river Thames - and she was free to marry Sir James Heath, who was over forty years older than her. He agreed to buy his unblushing bride a new plane; London society sniffed and dubbed her a golddigger.
With new husband and plane in tow, Lady Mary headed to South Africa and her life’s great adventure. In three months from January to May 1928, she became the first person to fly a small plane from Cape Town to London. Her brief period of notoriety was about to reach its apex.

2006-09-26T23:04:00.000+01:00

Lady Mary's American adventures

(Special thanks to Gary for this snippet; for more, see his fascinating website. The link is below.)

"Lady Mary Heath visited the Davis-Monthan Airfield on May 30th 1929. She was flying an Avian, registry 603E. She did not indicate an origin or destination (see notation in right column), but she was westbound (page link). The Newark Star-Eagle of April 27, 1929 (“Lady Heath Starts Country Air Tour”) reports her dawn departure from the Pine Brook Airport for a tour of the U.S. piloting, “a new Whittlesworth Avian powered with a Cirrus four-in-line air cooled engine.” Her first stop was planned for Dayton, OH, with “several short hops” to the west coast. Image, left, from New York Sun, August 29, 1929.

"Her airplane was being delivered to R.W. Simpson, Clover Field, Los Angeles, as west coast dealer. It carried the latest features, including the Handley-Paige slotted wing to prevent spins. She was flying under contract to sell American Cirrus engines, and to find out how the engine would behave through use of any grade of fuel or oil. Her contract would be over when she returned east.

"Along the way on her trip, on May 2, 1929, The Star-Eagle reported (“Lady Heath In Crash”) a minor accident upon making a forced landing at Effingham, IL. The plane was damaged and repairs were made at Terre Haute, IN. She then continued her flight westward..."

Read more at www.dmairfield.com/people/heath_lm/index.htm.

2006-06-20T14:03:00.000+01:00

A replica of the plane the intrepid Lady Mary Heath flew from Cape Town to London in 1928. No such thing as cabin service!

From the reviews:

"Lady Icarus: the Life of Irish Aviator Lady Mary Heath Lindie Naughton (Ashfield, €25). An outstanding, gracefully written, superbly designed book about a heavens-exploring, hell-raising Limerick gal, born Sophie Peirce Evans, who was a world record holding athlete before she defied gravity and conventions by her daring aviational adventures.

Lindie Naughton's painstaking research and fluent style has produced an enthralling book which will help you soar on wings above the post-turkey stodginess and help fill in some glaring gaps in our social and sporting history to boot."

Decland McCormack, Irish Independent, Sports Books of the Year 2004

2006-05-24T13:15:00.000+01:00

LADY MARY AND WOMEN

Just about everyone has taken a flight somewhere, most likely finding themselves squashed into a pygmy-sized seat and breathing in putrid air after a long wait at an overcrowded airport. The romance of air travel has long since died.

Amazing then to think that just over a century ago, taking a heavier than air vehicle off land even for a minute or so was regarded as virtually impossible. When the Wright brothers became the first to fly at Kittyhawk Beach in 1903, they were risking their lives in a flimsy machine composed of cloth, timber and chicken wire.

Just seven years later, flying came to Ireland when a young Belfast journalist called Lilian Bland made her own glider of bamboo, ash and elm. After testing it out, she ordered an engine from England.

When this arrived without a fuel tank, she improvised by using an empty whisky bottle and her aunt's ear trumpet and,in August 1910, became the first person to fly on this island.

So right from the start, Irish women were at the forefront of the fledgling Irish aviation industry. In the mid-1920s, Irish women pilots were still blazing trails in the skies, none more so than Lady Mary Heath, who had been brought up as plain Sophie Mary Peirce in the Co Limerick town of Newcastle West but soon became one of the best known Irish women on the planet.

Sophie, as she is still known in her native county, was born in 1896 and died just 43 years later in 1939, but into those years, she packed more than many living twice as long.

While still a student at the Royal College of Science, she married a British army officer called Eliot Lynn, in Ireland because of the 1916 Rising, and in early 1917, took herself off to the war, driving motor bikes and ambulances, both in England and closer to the Front in France.

Even then, her forceful personality and imposing physical presence (she was close to 6ft tall) made her hard to miss and Sir John Lavery painted her portrait in the uniform of an air force driver. Back home, she paused just long enough to finish her degree before heading out to East Africa, where her husband had acquired a coffee farm.

By this time, she had also taken up athletics, and before sailing for Africa, had competed in various events all over Ireland, setting an unofficial world's best for the high jump in Ballygar, Co Galway.

She created quite a stir - a memorable photograph of her leaping over the bar at Lansdowne Road in a pinafore dress was printed in the Freeman's Journal.

By 1922, she was back in London, where she became a founding member of the Women's Amateur Athletic Association. Because of the 1921 Women's World Games, held in glamorous Monte Carlo, track and field athletics was the latest craze and Sophie competed regularly in the field events, winning the first ever British javelin title and travelling with British teams to Sweden and France several times.

In 1925, she flew for the first time when travelling to Prague for an International Olympic Committee conference to discuss the inclusion of women in the track and field programme at the 1928 Olympics. She was immediately hooked.

A few weeks later, Sophie Eliott Lynn became the first person to take a flight at the newly inaugurated London Aero Club at Stag Lane. Her every move was reported on by the press, which like the country had gone aviation mad; even the Irish Independent devoted a full page to aviation almost every day.

There was plenty to report on. Air shows attracted thousands of awed spectators to venues all over the country, where pilots performed dangerous acrobatics with their machines and daring wing walkers had the crowds gasping. There were also air races, which Sophie would often win, with her ability to swoop around pylons particularly admired. Afterwards, anyone could take a "spin" in one of the small planes at minimal cost and there were no shortage of takers.

Around this time, she became the first women to jump from an aeroplane by parachute and set a number of altitude records - easy enough for women to organise.

But although women pilots were becoming more visible, they were not allowed to make a living from flying. The official view was that women's physical make-up, most notably their monthly periods, made them unsuited for such a stressful activity.

Sophie naturally believed otherwise and she took her fight all the way to the top, enlisting the support of Lady Astor, the first woman MP, and the Director of Aviation Sir Sefton Brancker, who, to his credit, had always supported the cause of women pilots.

With the help of fellow flying enthusiast Stella Wolfe Murray, an influential journalist and writer of the time, she got her way and, in 1926, became the first woman to hold an A or commercial licence in Britain. She was soon followed by two other Irish women pilots, Sicele O'Brien and Lady Mary Bailey.

By now her first husband was dead and in 1927 she married Sir James Heath and, as Lady Mary Heath, set off her life's greatest adventure - a solo flight in an Avro Avian from Cape Town to London. This took her three months, with many stoppages along the way. She lost a week to sunstroke, and as she progressed further north, was grounded several times by worried authorities not prepared to allow a single woman fly over some of the most dangerous territory on earth.

She finally made it and on a chilly May afternoon in 1928, flew into Croydon Airport in south London. Her achievement was front page news all over the world and her fame hardly diminished when, a few weeks later, Amelia Earhart, dubbed "Lady Lindy" because of her close resemblance to Atlantic pioneer Charles Lindberg, landed in Wales, as the first woman passenger across the Atlantic.

Lady Mary was one of the first to welcome her and, impetuously, sold Earhart the famed Avro Avian which she had so recently flown over Africa. Earhart, by no means as skilled a pilot, took it back with her to the USA and crashed it.

By then, Lady Mary had embarked on a hectic schedule of personal appearances all over Britain, and took the opportunity to fly unpaid with KLM, with the aim of getting a job on their newly established long haul flight to Indonesia.

That made her the first woman anywhere to fly a commercial aeroplane, but she was way ahead of her time - only in the 1960s, did women start getting jobs as commercial pilots.

With her ambitions of getting a job with KLM thwarted, "Britain's Lady Lindy" as she was billed, took up an invitation to visit the USA and join the lucrative Chautauqua lecture circuit.

While in the USA, she became the first woman in the world to acquire a aircraft mechanic's licence, but a terrible crash just before the National Air Races in Cleveland in 1929 effectively put an end to her career.

With a tin plate inserted in her skull, Lady Mary returned to Ireland in 1931 with her third husband, Jack Williams, and started work with Iona National Air Taxis at Kildonan in Finglas, Dublin.

A few months later, she founded the National Junior Aviation Club, which was to have a formative influence on commercial aviation in this country. Unfortunately by then, this larger than life figure was dead, killed by a combination of her American accident, a fondness for alcohol and a final, fatal fall down the steps of a tramcar in London.

She remains one of a handful of truly great Irish women - a fearless adventurer, a promoter of equal sporting opportunities for men and women, a skilled pilot and mechanic. Her life is well worth celebrating.

(Ends)

2006-04-16T12:24:00.000+01:00

Lady Mary Heath from Newcastle West In Co Limerick was one of the best known aviators of the 1920s, a time when the entire world had gone “flying mad”, thanks to the exploits of Lindbergh and Earhart. Although her life was short, it was packed with adventure and incident, with her greatest achievement a three-month flight from Cape Town to London undertaken between January and March 1928. Not only that but she had survived the worst possible beginning in life when her crazed father murdered her mother. Lindie Naughton’s Lady Icarus (Ashfield Press, Dublin 2004) is the first full-length biography of a remarkable Irish woman. Available for Eu25 from good bookshops everywhere!

2006-04-16T12:20:00.000+01:00

Extracts from "Lady Icarus" - a tale of murder, adventure and high romance.

From Chapter 11 ‘The Flight from the Cape’
She was exhilarated to be in the air after all the ‘vicissitudes’ she had experienced and reckoned the first day out of Pretoria ranked second only to her first solo flight as the best adventure of her life. Once on her own, she was entranced by a wonderful vista of craggy hills, collections of tiny houses and fleecy clouds. It was warm and bright and she was wearing just her flying helmet, with her head and neck unprotected from the blazing equatorial sun. Six hours into her flight, she had passed the meandering Limpopo and was soon flying over the great quartz hills of Matobo in Zimbabwe, then called Southern Rhodesia, where Sir Cecil Rhodes, the British explorer who had done so much to open up Africa, lay buried.
Thinking idly of how unpleasant it would be to crash land, she suddenly became aware of a pain in her head, neck and shoulders. She had suffered from sunstroke twice before and knew the signs. Even more ominously, in her most recent experience, she had passed out, not an experience she wished to repeat especially when flying several hundred metres above hard, unforgiving ground. Desperately, she twisted and turned in her tiny seat, trying unsuccessfully to retrieve the special topee, or pith helmet, packed in the back locker of her machine. When the pain in her head and neck got worse and she started to see black blobs dancing in front of her eyes, she pulled off part of her underclothing and wrapped it around her head and shoulders.
With the black blobs turning into waving black feathers, she saw Fort Usher straight ahead. The last thing she remembered was aiming the plane north-east to some clear ground. When she recovered consciousness, she found herself under some thorn bushes, with three native girls looking after her. They had removed her fur coat and placed it under her, then steeped two of her handkerchiefs in milk and put them on her head. Leaning up woozily on one elbow, she saw her plane a little way off, with one wing drooping but otherwise intact. Her hair was clotted with milk and there was a gourd of milk beside her. With the help of the girls, who seemed to understand Swahili, although this was not their language, she staggered to the plane to discover the time. She had been unconscious for about four hours.
So little damaged was the machine that had she been at all well, she could have flown it away. But she could hardly see straight and the effort of making it to the plane made her sick again:
So I sat on the ground and told the girls to collect stones and earth for my sandbags to secure the machine for the night…They thought it a tremendous joke and in spite of feeling as ill as I did, I could not help seeing the amusing side of it too. A great silver bird comes out of the sky and lands beside their huts and a strange white woman is found in it unconscious, and flops to the ground even after she has come to!
Lady Mary had landed  or as she put it, the plane landed itself, since she remembered nothing of it  just ten miles from her target of Bulawayo and her expertise as a pilot had undoubtedly saved her life. After helping her to their hut about a quarter of a mile away, one of her new friends, Makula, who spoke a little English, told Lady Mary that in her delirium she had written a note to be delivered to white people and had asked for milk. Of this she had absolutely no recollection and when she saw the note a few days later, she realised why no help had come: ‘It was a confused scrawl of what looked like Egyptian hieroglyphics and I was unable to read it myself!’
Lying on her fur coat with a ‘tiny silver fitted dressing case which the Johannesburg Light Aeroplane had given me’ as a pillow, Lady Mary realised she was in a harem hut and that the owner of the kraal had five wives. They looked after her in an entirely matter-of-fact way, feeding her gourds of milk and a whole boiled chicken, complete with innards: ‘At dusk, they lit the fire close to my head and, with their youngest children, undressed entirely and covered themselves with blankets.’ The hut was swarming with mosquitoes and flies and, although still in a state of coma, Lady Mary stirred occasionally because she had been badly bitten.
The next morning, after Makula had woken and washed her, a white woman, Mrs Pat Fletcher, was motoring past the encampment with her husband in search of grass for their cattle. To her astonishment, she found an emotional Lady Mary. She immediately bundled her into the car and drove back to their farm, where the patient was put to bed. In the evening, Captain Douglas Mail of the Rhodesian Aviation Syndicate agreed to rescue Lady Mary’s machine. Reporting back, he told her that there was not too much damage, although the machine was bone dry of oil and ‘owing to a bend in the undercarriage fitting, the port forward flying wire was loose’.
Her disappearance had made front-page headlines in the South African press. ‘The absence of any news in any of the newspapers published on Saturday night and Sunday morning of the arrival in Bulawayo of Lady Heath, who set out in her Avro Avian from Pretoria on Saturday morning, caused intense excitement throughout the union,’ said the Rand Daily Mail. The newspaper had received hundreds of calls from concerned members of the public. Prominent members of the South African air force had been planning to start a search.
They speculated that she might have been blown off course. Air force members had escorted her as far as Warmbaths, along a route that followed the railway line. From this point, she had left the railway and would have been relying entirely on compass bearings. There was a strong wind blowing from the northwest, which meant that she could have drifted several degrees to the east and been forced to land in an unknown part of the veldt. As it happens, she was not far off her course when forced to land.
When it left Pretoria a day earlier, the Avro Avian was carrying enough petrol for over ten hours’ flying, the consumption of the engine being 20.4 litres per hour and the average cruising speed 128 kph. Lady Mary had passed Warmbaths at 8.45 am and so should have appeared in Bulawayo at 2pm or soon after. News that she was safe came though at 7.30pm the following day from the newspaper’s Bulawayo correspondent. After she had spent the night in a native hut, a party of motorists had discovered an exhausted Lady Heath earlier that day, he reported, adding that oil trouble appeared to have been the cause of the forced landing.
The Avian was now in Bulawayo and, when she awoke from a long sleep, Lady Mary was flown there by Captain Mail in his own DH Moth and taken to Sister Rigby’s Maternity Home because all the nursing homes were full. Placed in a room with a tiny white cot at its foot, she slept for a further eighteen hours. A few days later, her temperature was back to normal. She could continue with her adventure.

******
On 6 May, Lady Mary finally left Africa behind, flying again with the Bentleys across the Mediterranean from Cape Bon, near Tunis, to Sicily, a distance of 153 kilometres. Thanks to her fear of water, she slept little the night before the ocean crossing and devised her own version of a lifebelt: ‘I had obtained a couple of motor-cycle tyres, and having blown them up, had wrapped them round my waist as a life-belt if I came down in the sea.’ This was a tale she was to relate many times, with the number of tyres increasingly from two to six.
To increase her chances of reaching land in case of trouble, she ascended as high as she could: ‘the higher I went the safer I felt’. As she reached 2,100 metres, the tyres burst with a loud pop in the thin air and she was left with shreds of rubber hanging around her neck: ‘My heart was thumping and bumping. The blue sea looked frightfully wet and deep. Shreds of red rubber may have looked decorative, bizarre. But they lacked buoyancy.’
Flying even higher at three kilometres above the earth and with excellent visibility, she was able to see both Europe and Africa. Indeed, Europe was now within gliding range and knowing that while she could still crash, there was little possibility of her drowning, she could relax and enjoy the extraordinary views. Ahead, Mount Etna pierced the clouds, making a perfect landmark on the way to the aerodrome at Catania on the east coast of Sicily. She landed in mid-morning, with the Bentleys following half an hour later. After a hasty lunch and running repairs by the Italian mechanics, who even repainted portions of the machine, she was soon airborne again alone and enduring a bumpy ride as she headed over the Straits of Messina to Naples.
Thanks to the hospitality and help she had received in North Africa, Lady Mary was by now a confirmed fan of Italy and the Italians. She was particularly impressed when, from high above, she could pick up emergency landing grounds, all with their names cut out in white chalk and clearly visible from the air. It was growing dark as she approached Naples, clouded by the volcanic outpourings of Vesuvius drifting gently downwind. So thick was the smoke that she was forced to descend almost to ground level, using the roads below as a guide. Although it was Sunday, she was welcomed by a duty officer at the aerodrome and, after eight and a half hours flying, was grateful for an invitation to stay overnight with Commandant Cancianotti and his wife: ‘They were very kind and understanding and let me go to bed early, a thing which I found very difficult to do at most places where I landed.’
Take-off from the small aerodrome the next morning was delayed for two hours until the officer who took payments appeared. After her overloaded machine just cleared the trees beside the runway, which she found ‘ rather exciting’, she followed the wind to Rome, and was then guided by the Via Appia into Rome’s ‘vast’ new aerodrome, where it took a full ten minutes to taxi to the sheds. She stayed for a week in Rome, partly to convalesce from her rheumatic fever, partly because of the Italians’ ‘wonderful hospitality’, and partly because General Balbo, head of the Italian air force, offered her a free overhaul of her engine so that she could be certain of a ‘a strong finish’ to her adventure. While in Rome, she was invited to meet Mussolini and, like many more of the time, was enchanted by the dictator, describing him as ‘that great man who is more of a national monument than an individual’. He had a good knowledge of aviation and ‘seemed interested to hear my experiences, and glad of what I was conscientiously able to say about Italian hospitality and efficiency’.
The night before she left Rome, the Marquis de Pinedo, one of Italy’s best-known aviators, hosted a dinner in Lady Mary’s honour, an occasion she particularly relished as she had read translations of his books while flying over Africa’s north coast. The harmonious mixture of old and new in the Eternal City made it ‘surely the most beautiful city in the world’ and she found it difficult to tear herself away. But London was now just a few days distant and early on 14 May, she left Rome for Marseilles, and following the coast, arrived there in the late afternoon. ‘The Riviera coast looked more beautiful than I had ever seen it before,’ she commented in her book, adding that she had only known it ‘on the ground’ before, when she came to Monte Carlo to gamble ‘ as one does’, or for the Women’s Olympic Games, first held there six years earlier.
In Marseilles, she met her friend and co-author of Women and Flying, Stella Wolfe Murray. ‘When Lady Heath arrived after eight hours’ non-stop flight from Rome, she looked as if she had stepped out of a bandbox, having changed her flying helmet for a little black cloche straw hat,’ reported an admiring Wolfe in the book they later wrote together. For luggage, she had just a soft leather duffel bag, in which she carried her eight frocks, and the dressing-case presented to her by the Johannesburg Flying Club. After tea and sandwiches, she donned a cretonne overall and set to work on her engine, while an admiring group of mechanics looked on open-mouthed. When Murray brought her back to her hotel, Lady Mary took the opportunity ‘to devour’ the latest aviation magazines.
Low clouds and driving rain hampered her progress as she flew northwards along the Rhône valley to Lyons the next day. After months in warmer climates, she had lost the habit of picking her way through fog and clouds and, forced to stay no more than
150 metres above the river, decided that she might as well press on in case the weather got even worse. So she settled for a height of less than twenty metres, found a railway line to follow, and ‘groped’ her way as far as Dijon, feeling more shattered after her four-hour flight than on even her longest flight over Africa. Delighted to plunder a library of English books at the aerodrome’s library, she retired to bed early, still slightly affected by rheumatic fever.
The next morning, though damp, was beautiful and clear and she flew as high as 600 metres on her way to Paris. As she got close to the city, she was battered by thunder and lightning, with hail cutting her face and beating her plane almost down to ground level. Following a safe landing at Le Bourget, she was an honoured guest at a party hosted by Clifford Harmon, president of the International League of Aviators. Next morning, Harmon drove her from Claridges Hotel on the Champs Elysées to Le Bourget, from where she set off on the last lap of her long journey.
Flying over the English Channel in stormy conditions, she was blown northwards as far as the coastal town of Deal, in Kent. This left her so annoyed and cold that she landed for a cup of tea at the Lympne aerodrome near Folkestone before continuing on for Croydon. By now, her arrival was eagerly anticipated and two circling aeroplanes greeted her in mid-air. Despite a warning that her make-shift tail could fall off, she could not resist exuberantly looping the loop over the aerodrome. She finally landed, to be surrounded by a crowd of cheering mechanics. It was 17 May 1928 and her long adventure was over.
(end)