The first MILE HIGH CLUB
Think sex in the skies is a modern fantasy? Wrong. A new book tells of the daredevil female balloonists whose racy antics transfixed Britain two centuries ago
THROWING kisses as the vast crowd below went wild, the first Englishwoman to fly rose slowly over the Thames in her hot-air balloon on a balmy June afternoon in 1785. Early flight was all about showbusiness and no one was more at home in the limelight than Letitia Sage, a voluptuous West End actress whose plunging neckline brought va-va-voom to the balloon.
Letitia had dressed to impress in a low-cut plum dress and a large hat adorned with plumes of white feathers. Her cleavage was barely veiled in flimsy gauze. And her landmark voyage with a gentleman companion named George Biggin in a giant Union Jack balloon was to create a sensation that had little to do with flight.
When Letitia took to her knees to lace up an opening in the basket while George steadied her by the shoulder, a salacious legend was born – the intrepid pair would for ever be suspected of inventing the mile-high club. She later wrote: ‘We arose in a slow and majestic manner, forming a most beautiful object, amidst the acclamations of thousands, whose hearts at that moment appeared to feel but one sentiment, and that for the safety of two adventurers.
‘We were crossing the Thames above Westminster Bridge; it was then Mr Biggin began to lace the aperture of the gallery which served to let us in, and which had been left open by mistake at our ascension. Some other matter at that moment requiring his attention, he desired I would stoop down and finish it; and thinking it better to go upon my knees to do so, gave rise to the report that I had fainted.’
In fact, fainting was the least of the rumours. Balloons carried with them the whiff of impropriety, with Georgian imaginations working overtime when they saw Letitia bob out of view. Oblivious to the scandal they had created below them, the remarkably relaxed pair sat down in the basket to enjoy a lunch of ham, chicken and ‘Florence wine’, tossing the empty bottle over the side.
After two hours during which the balloon had roughly followed the Thames, it began to deflate and descend. It had travelled about 14 miles from Central London and was now hurtling towards a farmer’s field near Harrow. Biggin called out to some farm labourers to grab on to the dangling anchor rope. Eventually about ten or so were able to bring the balloon down and to a halt. The headmaster of nearby Harrow School came racing across the field with his pupils and pacified a red-faced farmer, furious about the damage to his crops.
Then the public schoolboys carried off Letitia to a nearby pub where she revelled in the attentions of an adoring crowd entirely smitten by the gorgeous – and possibly very naughty – actress who fell from the sky.
The previous year, an Italian ballooning pioneer called Vincent Lunardi had made the first ascent from English soil, becoming an immediate celebrity and sparking what was dubbed ‘balloonomania’. Lunardi hats, with a wide brim and floppy, balloon-like crown, became all the rage. The man himself was surrounded by female fans wherever he went and his movements widely reported, with excitable writers often incapable of resisting italicised double entendres.
An encounter with a ‘Lydia Lovely’, who seems to have been a balloon groupie, was recorded thus: ‘Lydia Lovely… fixed hold of Lunardi, expressed her astonishment at the enormous swell of his balloon, and declared her greatest satisfaction would be to see it rise!’
Ballooning was the subject of
bawdy songs and jokes about things ‘rising’. In October, 1784, a drawing entitled Love In A Balloon appeared in the satirical Rambler’s Magazine, seemingly about Lunardi the ladies’ man. A couple are in a clinch over London, he declaring: ‘Ah Madame it rises majestically.’ She replies: ‘I feel it does Signor.’ Underneath, spectators sit on the roof tiles, one observing: ‘Damn he’s no Italian but a man every inch of him.’
In fact, no sooner had balloons reached Britain than men began taking bets on whether it was possible to have sex in them.
The members of Brooks’s gentlemen’s club in St James’s Street were particularly fond of outrageous wagers. A 1785 entry in the club betting book shows the sky was not the limit: ‘Lord Cholmondeley has given two guineas to L[or]d Derby, to receive 500 G[uinea]s whenever his lordship f **** a woman in a Balloon one thousand yards from the Earth.’ Sex and balloons were inextricably linked in the public imagination, and copulation among the clouds was already a subject for debate when the publicitysavvy Lunardi announced his intention to take a flight accompanied by ‘an English Lady and Gentleman’. The gentleman was George Biggin, a handsome and wealthy young scholar, besotted by ballooning. The lady was Letitia, a glamorous actress described as ‘an incomparable beauty’. Her stage roles were drying up and she needed a new starring part. Lunardi’s show was the biggest in town. However, their planned first flight, in May 1785 from the Artillery Ground in Islington, London, was a flop. Tens of thousands of spectators were disappointed when the balloon could not be fully inflated and refused to budge with all three passengers aboard. Unfortunately, a picture designed to celebrate the ascent contributed to the general public relations disaster. An engraving by Francesco Bartolozzi called V. Lunardi Esq, Mrs Sage, G. Biggin Esq – was published on the day showing the trio taking off. The press found it hilarious, with the Kentish Gazette warning that unless Lunardi had a good explanation, ‘his future pretensions will be consigned to contempt’. A second attempt was organised for June. Four days before the event, a new version of Bartolozzi’s print was published, now called The Three Favourite Aerial Travellers. Again, it proved a pretty picture rather than a true record of events.
Once again, when the big day arrived, the balloon would not rise with all the passengers aboard. Lunardi knew that if the show did not somehow go on, there would be a riot. He stepped down, leaving only Letitia and George – neither of whom had flown before.
However, in the event, they acquitted themselves with aplomb – apart from the unfortunate moment when Letitia knelt down, sparking all manner of smutty speculation.
The very next day, she wrote an account of her adventure, which she published herself. She was feted in the press but her achievement was somewhat clouded by the gossip. Sniggering London preferred its own scurrilous scenario for an actress and young buck all alone in a balloon.
There is no doubt that the daredevil with the decolletage was the first English woman aeronaut – but she certainly wasn’t the last.
In June 1826, Margaret Graham, wife of a balloonist, became the first British woman to undertake a solo flight. She had been due to fly with another woman, Jane, but her companion was late. By the time Jane arrived, the balloon had leaked gas and was insufficiently inflated to carry both of them. Margaret set sail without her. When she took off, from tea gardens in Pentonville, it was touch-and-go whether she would clear nearby buildings.
The basket caught on the coping of a house and Margaret had to push away from it with her foot. She flew down a street with the car at the level of the houses’ secondfloor windows, throwing out everything but the seats to enable the balloon to rise. She eventually came down in a field a few miles away.
Margaret made many subsequent ascents with her husband George but nearly came to grief in 1836, flying when pregnant with her eighth child. She had scored a coup with a ride booked for the Duke of Brunswick. The flight was a success but, when they came to land, in Essex, the Duke left the car prematurely and the balloon shot upwards with Margaret clinging on to the side for dear life.
Letting go, she fell 30ft to the ground. She sustained head and back injuries and lost the child.
The experience did not, however, discourage her from flying. During an 1838 flight marking the coronation of Queen Victoria, her balloon netting struck a rooftop on Marylebone Road, dislodging coping stones that struck and killed a man in the street below.
FRENCH aeronaut André-Jacques Garnerin was among the first to incorporate parachuting into his show. In October 1799, his pupil and future wife Jeanne-Geneviève Labrosse became the first woman to leap into the blue.
By the end of the 19th Century, Britain was packed with parachuting women. One such was ‘Leaping’ Lily Cove, famous for her trademark trick of tearing off her skirt to reveal beribboned bloomers. She would then hop on to a tiny trapeze suspended beneath a balloon, ascend, and parachute back to earth.
In the summer of 1906 she was to provide the finale at the annual gala in Haworth, the Yorkshire village that had been home to the Brontes.
Seven thousand people gathered on a lovely summer evening to see her. Balanced on the swing beneath her balloon, the parachute attached to its side, Lily appeared confident as she began to soar, headed for the heavens to the sounds of an ecstatic crowd and Haworth Brass Band playing with gusto.
The drill was to wait until 700ft, then jump from the trapeze, her weight snapping the cord that attached the parachute to the balloon, and drift to earth in a performance she had perfected. Suddenly, something went catastrophically wrong. She began plunging towards a reservoir, going too fast for the parachute to open in time. To the horror of those on the ground, she came free of the parachute altogether. Cartwheeling helplessly in the air, she plunged into a field.
Her legs and skull were smashed and she died shortly after spectators reached her. It was thought she had panicked when drifting towards the reservoir – she was unable to swim – and had unthinkingly unfastened her parachute.
On the day of her funeral, politicians in the all-male House of Commons demanded a ban on women performing dangerous stunts. The ban never made it into law. In fact, Edwardian women used the sky to fight for changes to the law.
In February 1909, one Muriel Matters carried out a daring act of aerial propaganda in a dirigible balloon. Under the headline Suffragettes In The Sky, the Essex County Chronicle reported: ‘During its progress the balloon reached a height of about 3,500ft, and passed the Houses of Parliament when they were so high that they could just distinguish the buildings. Miss Matters threw out 56 lb of hand-bills, which dropped “as the gentle rain from heaven, upon the place beneath”.’
Muriel knew that no one could ignore a balloon – and certainly not one that was emblazoned with VOTES FOR WOMEN and flying over Parliament.
The golden age of women and ballooning was over by the time Muriel made her flight, but these daring divas had certainly proved one thing – you really could not keep a good woman down.
She would rip off her skirt and parachute back to earth in bloomers