July 13, 2016 • 29 mins
Miss Bland was a jockey, a sports photographer, a journalist, a car dealer and a pioneer farmer. She also built Ireland's first powered airplane, entirely by hand, and successfully piloted it.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to steph you missed in History Class from how
works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Holly Frying and I'm Tracy B. Wilson, and I am
delighted to say that today's topic has a couple of
sad points in it, but mostly it's just really fun. Uh.
(00:25):
We don't very often have those, so it's always a
delight when it turns up that the thing we thought
was fun is legitimately fun and not secretly loaded with horrors.
I know some of the categories of sad episodes the
we thought this would be fun, but it's not, but
it's not. But this one really is quite fun. So
when you think about women in aviation, the first person
(00:48):
you probably think about is Amelia Earhart. But today we're
going to talk about a woman who was into flying
a good bit before Earhart made her mark. Uh. And
this woman has become the focus of a great all
of pride in Ireland, though she really is not talked
about all that much outside her home country. I did
not know about her until recently, Tracy, did you know
about her? I think I'd heard the name for sure,
(01:09):
but that was basically it. Yeah, and she's kind of fantastic.
We're going to talk about Lillian Bland, who was anything but. Lillian.
Emily Bland was born September in Kent, although her family
was actually Irish. Her parents were John Humphrey Bland and
Emily Charlotte Bland, and she was the last of their
(01:32):
three children. She had a sister and a brother. Eva
Charlotte Alice Bland was ten years older than Lilian, and
Robert Wyndham Humphrey Bland was six years older. Her father,
John was an artist who had studied at the Bart
in Paris after receiving his undergraduate degree at Trinity College, Dublin,
(01:53):
and his work was exhibited at the Royal Academy in London,
and some of it actually still hangs in the Ulster
Museum in Belfast. Lilian's aunt, Sarah Smith, which was her
father's sister, was a widow and she eventually became a
major part of Lilian's life. When Lilian's mother, Emily became
ill in d the family moved to Carmony in East
(02:14):
Antrim to live with Sarah Smith, but the family did
not stay together there. They split up, however, when Emily
moved to be near the Mediterranean in the hopes that
her health would improve, and Lilian's sister Eva moved with
their mother, so they were kind of just jointed at
this point, and unfortunately that move did not help. Emily
died several years later in nineteen o six. As a
(02:37):
young woman, Lilian was pretty unconventional, much to her aunt
Sarah's dismay. She smoked, and she wore breeches, and she
fiddled with engines. She fished and hunted and seemed to
excel it basically everything that she did. As a markswoman,
she was an excellent shot, and her horse riding was
so good that she was one of the first women
in Ireland to apply for a jockey's life. Her skill
(03:02):
as a horsewoman was so great, in fact, that she
was poised to ride in the Grand National, except that
she was refused entry due to that pesky business of
being a woman. You may recall that we mentioned the
Grand National recently in our Mr. Tzy Wheezy episode. It
is the big horse race in Britain, and unfortunately it
was a no go for Lilian, regardless of her amazing
(03:23):
skill as a jockey. In addition to all of the
activities that we just mentioned, which were considered very unladylike
by not just her aunt, but by most of their
neighbors in the county. Lilian was also interested in photography,
and as with everything else that she undertook, she was
really good at it, so she began her professional life
as a journalist and photographer. Her skill with a camera
(03:45):
was lauded as excellent. It's not surprising given her interest
in horses, fishing, and shooting that Lilian was drawn to
sports photography, and she quickly became a respected photojournalist and
contributed a lot of work for London Paper. But she
also transferred her love of capturing movement on film from
sports to nature. In nineteen o eight, she spent time
(04:07):
on Scotland's West Coast with friends, and during her time
there she made a detailed study in photographing birds that
were flying over the coast. Those photographs were made into
an exhibit at London's Royal Photographic Society. It's believed that
they are the first color plate images of live birds
ever captured. So already she's kind of an amazing young woman,
(04:31):
and we haven't even gotten to the thing that made
her famous yet. Uh. When Lilian received a postcard from
her uncle commemorating French pilot Louis Blriot's flight over the
English Channel on July twenty, nineteen o nine. She was
completely enthralled. She actually wrote to Blarrio begging to be
a passenger on his next flight, but he declined, and
(04:54):
that's when she decided she was just going to fly
on her own, and not just fly, but she would
build her own plane. This was a time when many
people were excited by the idea of aviation in Great Britain.
Public meetings and exhibition gatherings were starting to pop up,
drawing crowds of imaginative and curious enthusiasts like Lilian Bland.
In October of nine, she went to Blackpool to attend
(05:16):
the first British Aviation Meeting. She was one of more
than two hundred thousand attendees. Yeah, keep in mind, this
is not long after the Wright brothers made their first
flight and things are really starting to heat up, so
there was sort of this this fever for flight going on.
And while Lilian was there at this meeting, she looked
at all the aircraft on display, and she listened to
(05:38):
various discussions, and she took copious notes. She weighed the
benefits and drawbacks of the various designs that she saw
in her mind, and she wrote to her father about
what she saw. One of the things she said was
quote the few English machines are I imagine no good,
much too small and fitted with motorbike engines. After this meeting,
(05:59):
she returned home with a greater passion than ever for
her project. She was determined to build Ireland's first powered
flying machine. For context in terms of when this happened
on the timeline of women in flight, famed pilot Amelia
Earhart was only twelve years old when Lilian hatched this plan,
and young miss Bland had written the articles about bird
(06:21):
flight in addition to her photography of them prior to
her interest in airplane construction, so she had some knowledge
of the physics of lift and air motion, and armed
with her notes and all of the additional readings she
could find, she basically was a voracious reader of anything
about flight. She made her base of operations in the
workshop of her deceased uncle, which was at the back
(06:42):
of the family house. Lilian was methodical in her approach
before jumping straight into full scale build, She first made
a proof of concept model. This is a small glider
about six ft or two ms across the wingspan. She
flew at like a tight and was pleased with the results,
and based on that first miniature success, she drew up
(07:03):
plans for her full sized plane and to construct her plane,
she chose bamboo, ash, spruce, and elm as her materials.
She documented the entire process as she went. She submitted
right ups of her work to Flight magazine. We're going
to talk about those in a little more detail and
just a bit. One of the cool things she did
is she mimicked the wings of seagulls by steaming ash
(07:25):
to replicate their curved wing tips, so she could kind
of get that same sense of motion that they had.
And the ribs of her aircraft were made of spruce,
the skids were ash, and the out riggers were bamboo,
and the engine bed was made of American elm. Wires
attached the engine bed to the wings, which also reinforced
the wing structure. Unbleached muslin to stretch across. The plane
(07:48):
was soaked in gelatin and formula as a waterproofing solution
before it was applied. The steering mechanism for the plane
was a bicycle handlebar, and when it turned to the left,
the left hand elevator would lift and the right hand
el eater with lower pedals controlled the vertical rudder. Yeah,
so basically, and if she turned to the right, the
opposite would happen. And that's how she She kind of
(08:09):
worked her elevators and ailerons and then she worked on
this project. She built it in sections and each section
was then moved to the coach house on the family
property for final assembly because her workshop was not big
enough to put the whole plane together and with all
the components in place. Though finally assembled, it weighed two
hundred pounds, it's about ninety points and it was two
(08:31):
hundred forty seven inches or six point three meters across
its wingspan. We're going to talk about Lilian's plane and
it's various tests in the tail, but first we're going
to pause for a brief word from a sponsor that
helps keep us on the air. So back to Lilian
(08:56):
and her aircraft that she had been working on. She
named it the Mayfly and this was a play on words,
as in it may fly, it may not fly. Apparently,
Lilian had heard a lot of opinions from people while
she was building this plane about the likelihood that her
project would not work, so she kind of named it
as a tongue in cheek response to the doubters she
(09:17):
had to deal with all the time. At last she
was ready to test her completed plane, which did not
yet have an engine. It was strictly a glider, and
she took it to carn Money Hill and the first
trial was a little bit bum being not because of
the actual flight, but the ease with which the craft
could be picked up by the wind. Lillian had three
men there to help to held the plane with ropes.
(09:39):
When the wind came and they lost their grip Lillian,
Lilian and the other gentlemen were able to get hold
of the ropes and prevent a disaster, but wind would
continue to be problematic for this light craft. But she
did manage to fly, and she made several subsequent flights,
and each time she would adjust the elevators and the
steering so that the wind would become less of an
(10:01):
issue and she wouldn't immediately upset and tip if she
had a little gust. She became really really skilled at
takeoff and landing. Basically she just was constantly perfecting both
the machine and her abilities, and once she was comfortable
with its performance as a glider, Lilian wanted to test
whether or not the Mayfly could handle carrying an engine.
(10:23):
The big concern was weight. She had four members of
the Royal Irish Constabulary plus her aunt's gardener on hand
for an interesting test. She piloted the plane through take
off with the five men hanging on to the aircraft.
The constables dropped off after a brief moment that the
gardener hung on. Lillian's test was successful in her mind,
(10:45):
if the Mayfly could carry five adult men, then the
weight of the engine should pose no problem. Yes, some uh.
Some of the accounts she read suggests that these constables
kind of got a little panicky and they'd really dropped
off quite quickly once they had left the ground. She
wasn't going very high, but they just were like whoaaha, hey,
let's go. Uh. And she actually had to travel to
(11:08):
England to pick up the engine for her plane because
it had been delayed and she grew tired of waiting
for delivery of the order. And this was a twenty
horsepower a vy Row two stroke. It cost her a
hundred pounds getting it back to Ireland was a little
bit tricky. She had to take it and a new
propeller that she bought at the same time by boat train.
(11:28):
And while it seemed to startle other passengers to see
a young woman traveling with this unusual cargo, Bland was
quite pleased that it quote fitted very neatly into a
railway carriage and an outside car. But even though she
had her engine, there was another slight problem. The fuel
tank for the engine was delayed. Ever, the picture of ingenuity,
(11:49):
she solved her problem of the lack of a gas
tank by making use of items she could fairly easily
get her hands on. But this is a pretty short
lived solution. Here is how she described it. I got
it being the engine on the airplane, and tried it
late last night, but as I have not got my
tank yet, I tried to feed it out of a
whiskey bottle, and the only two thing I could find
(12:10):
was my aunt's ear trumpet. It's really funny. It's so charming.
Under the circumstances. The engine behaved better than I expected.
It was like a catfight on a very enlarged scale.
The natives, I hear thought one of the mills had
blown up, but as the noise continued, they put it
down to a thunderstorm. In the meantime, found the mechanic,
(12:32):
while deeply interested in the engine, was liberally pouring the
petrol over the main plane instead of down the ear trumpet,
and the engine subsided with a sigh. As it was
pouring with rain and too dark to see. The proceedings
were terminated and I think I will wait for the tank.
And as the engine is English, it's sense of humor
is not developed sufficiently for these proceedings. I love her
(12:56):
so much based on this. I that she describes how
well the engine behaved and then compares it to a
catfight on an enlarged scale, Like that doesn't sound well
behaved at all, but but I love it just the same. Uh.
And in the midst of this UH, she still had
(13:16):
an issue of location for flying a powered plane, and
a little bit of good luck intervened here and she
had a solution arrived. And while Lilian was out photographing
with some eel fishermen, the men that she was with
informed her that there was in fact a perfect tract
of land nearby. It was flat, it had plenty of acreage,
it would be perfect for a takeoff and landing strip,
(13:38):
and that land was owned by Lord O'Neill, so Lilian
arranged a meeting with him. It turned out Lord O'Neil
was already a fan of Lilian's efforts, so his property
at the Deer Park at Randallstown was gladly offered for
her use. Lilian took her aircraft apart and moved all
the components to this new testing field where they were reassembled.
There was one drawback to this local ation, however, there
(14:01):
was a resonant bull who had a bit of a temper,
and for her part, Lilian saw this is a great
motivation to not waste any time getting airborne. Yeah, she
said something to the effect of like, well, if it
gets angry in charges, I'm just gonna have to hurry. Uh.
And with her engine and finally the proper fuel tank
in place and this suitable land for testing secured, Lilian
(14:23):
went to Deer Park to finally test her machine. Joe Blaine,
who was that same gardener that had been on hand
with the constables to help her test the weight of
the plane, was on hand then again to turn the
propeller and get things started. As the engine sat behind
the pilot so she couldn't very well do it herself
and then run around the wings and jump in the
(14:43):
seat in time. The many Flies first attempt at powered
flight in August nineteen ten was short and bumpy. The
plane kept hopping along the ground. Rainy weather kept Additional
tests were happening until September, and that was fine because
the engine vibrated so much that it was causing damage.
So that time was used to reinforce the structure and
(15:04):
at a t bar yoke and make additional adjustments. Yeah,
there were The engine, if I'm remembering correctly, was held
in place by four bolts because there were wires nearby.
Like sometimes the bolts would shake and the wires would clip,
and at one point, I think one of her one
or maybe two of her propellers got clipped by these
flailing wires and got broken and had to be replaced.
(15:25):
And so she was just trying to like kind of
solidify everything down and reinforce it so this shaking and
shimmying would not cause like catastrophic damage. Several more attempts
were made. Once she had all of these adjustments made,
and once things dried out from all of that rain,
and then finally the Mayfly was able to take off
successfully and lift to an altitude of thirty feet that's
(15:47):
about nine meters and fly for about a quarter of
a mile. The air had been very calm, and at
first she didn't realize she had even left the ground.
After the flight ended, she checked the wheel tracks the
field grass to make sure she had indeed taken off.
She would go on to describe flying as quote the
finest sport in the world. And we're going to get
(16:09):
into Lilian's triumph as an aviator as well as these
surprising twists in turns her life took after that. But
first we're gonna have a quick little break so we
can thank one of our awesome sponsors who keeps us going.
(16:30):
So we mentioned a little while ago that Lilian had
been writing about her process and her test flights and
sending these writings to Flight Magazine, and she really became
a very regular contributor to the periodical, first as in
writing her letters, and then she also wrote like fuller
articles and her descriptions of her work, her aircraft, and
her flight tests are really fantastic to read. We will
(16:52):
link to some of those in the show. Notes, but
one of the ones that I love goes quote. When
the engine starts, the draft from the propeller lifts the
tail and the tip of the skids off the ground,
and the machine balances on two wheels. The third wheel
in front only comes into action over rough ground, as
it is to prevent the machine from going on her
nose and answers admirably as my practice ground is rough
(17:14):
grass with ridge and furrow, which on hunting grounds I
take at a slant. This plan. Was so delighted with
her biplane that she hashed a plan to start an
aircraft company. She placed an advertisement in Flight magazine offering
basic models starting at eighty pounds for gliders. She went
in a fifty pounds for biplanes, and that was without
the engine. She offered both standard and racing models, and
(17:38):
she also wrote, as part of a more comprehensive article
detailing how the Mayfly was built, this lovely checklist of
advice for airplane enthusiasts if they think that they want
to make to build their own plane, she says quote
to sum up the various points one has to settle
before starting the construction of a machine. Firstly, a place
to fly it, in bad ground is a waste of time.
(18:00):
It takes much longer to learn on. Secondly the engine.
If low horsepower, the airplane must be light and have
large area to wait. Thirdly the placing of engine and
pilot and whether main planes will carry all the weight. Fourthly,
to draw out every detail to scale, and if trying
an original design, to make a good sized model and
see if any new point in controls or design is
(18:23):
going to work as it is intended. Fifthly, design the
machine so that it can be easily taken to pieces
for transport. By turning the skids around. My machine will
wheel along any road when the outriggers are taken off.
In conclusion, I should be glad to get orders either
for gliders or full size machines, And provided I can
use my own designs, I will guarantee that the machines
(18:44):
will glide or fly, that the work and quality will
be of the best. But the engine and propeller must
be reasonably efficient, otherwise it is only a waste of time.
This obsession with flying was actually somewhat troubling to Bland's family.
They worried costly about her safety, so much so that
her father offered to buy her a car if she
(19:05):
would just abandon aviation altogether. This also similarly amuses me
a little bit, because sure, sure flying dangerous cars at
the time, not a lot of safety protocols involved in them. Well,
and this is the point in most stories. You know,
we talked about how Lilian sold your Daunt her flight careers,
(19:27):
refusing that car offer and being insulted by it. No,
she was totally keen on this car plan, and she
agreed to stop flying in exchange for a new model
t In reality, it's a little more complex than that.
Of course, Lillian felt that her plane was really a
grasshopper rather than a true airplane, and if she upgraded
the engine to anything more powerful, the structure just wouldn't
(19:49):
take the strain of it. It's also a really expensive hobby,
and she saw limitations and what she could accomplish when
companies with a great many more resources we're starting to
manufacture gliders and lanes. And she had, in fact done
what she set out to do. Wasn't quite so flip
of her to just to turn it all over for
a new car. She really was upgrading into a much
(20:10):
more powerful machine. And she traveled to Dublin to make
this purchase, and then the car had to be driven
back to her home by a delivery driver, but she
convinced him to let her do the driving, which at
this point she did not know how to do. And
it turned out she loved it, and more than loving driving,
as was the case with virtually every other thing we've
(20:31):
talked about, she was really good at it, so much
so that she ended up becoming a car dealer herself.
She was a master driver, and in April nineteen eleven
she became the Belfast sales agent for Ford Motors. I
love how her story is almost like a um, you know,
a penny novel, Like no heroin could have so many successes,
(20:54):
one right after the other, but she really did. Uh.
And while flying troubled her family because of it's danger,
selling cars also troubled them because it, like many of
her other hobbies, was decidedly u Lady Lake. So with
some effort on their part, Uh, they arranged for a
marriage proposal. This is how the marriage was reported in
(21:16):
Flight magazine. Every reader of Flight will be interested to
learn that miss Lillian Bland was recently married and is
leaving presently for Vancouver Island, where by way of a change.
She anticipates enlarging her education by the control of a
motor boat, her plucky pioneer work with her gliders and
her airplane in Ireland. Particularly the frank, instructive and often
(21:38):
amusing letters that's so enlivened to earlier correspondence pages one
for Miss Bland, many unknown friends, and she will take
with her into her new sphere of life, many thousands
of good wishes from our readers. Also there is a
romance in the matter which, as we have only just
been let into the secret ourselves by a charming letter,
(21:58):
we feel we have a right to care with others. Flight,
it appears, has been the matchmaker for away in far
distant Vancouver. The fortunate gentleman who is now Miss Bland's husband,
read of her perseverance and pluck and came to the
conclusion that they must surely be indicative of just those
qualities so essential to the pioneers, pioneer settler in a
place like Vancouver. So he came over to see, and
(22:21):
at length Miss Bland decided that her airplane, engine and
other effects relating there too, had better be laid aside.
So she had already given up flying. But this then
what follows that announcement is sort of a list of
things that she has for sale. Um, And I like
how they make it sound like the magazine was the
(22:41):
matchmaker when her family was very involved, because this was
only about a half a year as a car saleswoman,
and Lilian married her cousin, Charles Loftiest Bland, so it
wasn't as though it was a stranger who just found
her in this magazine, although it probably did inform his
opinion of what she was like. And that married took
place on October three of nineteen eleven. Charles, as we mentioned,
(23:03):
lived on Canada's Vancouver Island, and Lilian emigrated there to
be with him in April of nineteen twelve. That's also
a little less I mean and away by today's standards,
more creepy, but a little less creepy. The idea that
some guy was like, I've read your letters and I
want you to be my wife. Like yeah, the family
(23:26):
arranged for him to come over and meet her, and
they got along quite well. Right. So the thing that
lingers in in creepiness in today's terms is that nowadays
we're not really into marrying our cousins. Anyway, Lilian is
enterprising at her new home as she had been in Ireland.
Helped Charles set up and run a one d and
sixty acre farm as anticipated by her husband based on
(23:50):
her pluck and perseverance and aviation, she was quite good
at running a farm. Two years after Lilian and Charles
got married, they had a daughter named Patricia Lillian in
team the same year that they finished construction on their
homestead house, and then they kind of went along for
a while as a family. However, there was a tragedy
(24:11):
that befell them. Lilian and Charles lost their daughter to
tetanus when the girl was only sixteen, and that loss
really took a toll on their marriage and it broke
down over the course of the next six years. And
then in nineteen thirty five, Lillian and Charles separated and
she moved back to the British Aisles, this time to
Penshurst and Kent to live with Captain Robert Bland, her brother,
(24:33):
and nty five, Lillian Bland retired to Cornwall after making
a sum of money quote gambling, as she put it,
in the stock market. Her retirement years were filled with
pastimes including gardening, painting, and a little bit more gambling,
which she did enjoy to the very end of her life. Yeah.
One of the the laid the last things that she
(24:53):
said in an interview, which is quite near to when
she died, was that she's gambling was like her one happiness. Uh.
And then on May eleven one, Lilyan died. She was
ninety two at the time and she is buried near
Land's End in Cornwall in Sennin And she's kind of
a local hero. She's certainly a heroine of Ireland for sure,
(25:17):
But I just I love what a go getter she
is and how she would just set her mind to
doing something and then be spectacular at it. Yeah, people
if she were in a movie or a book would
complain that she was Mary Sue. They totally would. But
I think she just was a bright woman who was
(25:37):
dedicated to the thing she was interested in and became
skilled at them, you know. I mean we we talked
about how she took all these incredible notes while she
was studying flight before she ever even like put a
design to paper, and then she was so methodical. I
think she just was really smart and dedicated and you
(25:58):
can get good at lots of things. If you do that,
uh well, and and nobody, not nobody, very rarely do
people apply that disparaging name two male characters who have
the same kinds of accomplishments, right, Yeah, so that's Lillian Bland,
who was definitely not Bland in any way and seems
(26:20):
like she would have been a spectacular person to know.
I have a little bit of fun listener mail. And
it's kind of late for me to be reading it,
but tell me anyway, because I already know what it
is and I super want to hear it again. It's cool.
It's from way back in April. Uh, and it is
a piece of mail that we got in the physical mail,
not an email. And it is really cute and we'll
(26:41):
tell you why, she says, Dear Holly and Tracy, I
am writing shortly after after listening to your pizza podcast. Uh,
if the card didn't give it away, we'll talk about
the card in just a moment. It happens to be
pizza week here in Portland, and I am three days
and seven slices deep. I waited to listen to this
history podcast until today, this most holy of days, just
(27:03):
pizza day. Um. I sat down filled with pie uh
and high on the day of on the day's offerings
to make you this stamp. So on one side of
this stamp her card, she has made a stamp and
one side is a pizza slice like it's the basic
shape of the piece of pizza slice. And then on
the other side she made a bunch of little shapes
(27:25):
that make up the toppings. And she says, you know
you can use uh. I can't make this word out,
but basically it can be used like with dabbers or
with stamp pads, etcetera. She says, let me tell you
about pizza week, though as some of these slices are insane.
By the end of the week, I will have god
willing eaten over seventeen slices of pizza. Although thirty one
(27:48):
different pies are offered, I can't eat them all. After
doing the math at two bucks of slice, it's cheaper
to eat pizza all week, and I am going for it.
Uh and base glee. As the weekended. She finished this.
After the week had ended, she said, ps, the week
is over. I twenty four slices of pizza my boyfriend,
(28:09):
and then she tells us about some of the flavors
that she which sound amazing. I won't read all the
ingredients though, but this is the cutest little card. I
love it so much. Well, of course, take a picture
and put it on our our social so people can
see it. It's just, you know, I love creative everything
so and creative plus pizza. It's like magic. She deserves
(28:29):
some sort of award for that. The award is our love,
uh Ian. He would like to write to us you
can do so. Thank you again so much, Leah. I
just I love it, love it, love it. We are
at history podcast at how stuff works dot com. You
can also connect with us at Facebook dot com slash
misst in history, on Twitter at misst in history, at
(28:50):
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you Guess it? Missed in history. If you would like
to visit our parents site and do a little bit
of research about what we talked about today, you can
go to how stuff works dot com. Type in the
word aviation into the search bar, and one of the
articles you will get is ten aviation innovations. We'd be
(29:12):
stuck on the ground without uh if you would like
to visit us, you can do that at missed in
history dot com, where we have an archive of every
episode of the show that has ever existed, going all
the way back to when it was very short and
had many other hosts. And you can also find show
notes for every episode that Tracy and I have worked on,
as well as the occasional other goody and that is
(29:32):
at how stuff works dot com and missed history dot com.
So come and visit for more on this and thousands
of other topics. Because it has to works dot co
Welcome to steph you missed in History Class from how
works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm
Holly Frying and I'm Tracy B. Wilson, and I am
delighted to say that today's topic has a couple of
sad points in it, but mostly it's just really fun. Uh.
(00:25):
We don't very often have those, so it's always a
delight when it turns up that the thing we thought
was fun is legitimately fun and not secretly loaded with horrors.
I know some of the categories of sad episodes the
we thought this would be fun, but it's not, but
it's not. But this one really is quite fun. So
when you think about women in aviation, the first person
(00:48):
you probably think about is Amelia Earhart. But today we're
going to talk about a woman who was into flying
a good bit before Earhart made her mark. Uh. And
this woman has become the focus of a great all
of pride in Ireland, though she really is not talked
about all that much outside her home country. I did
not know about her until recently, Tracy, did you know
about her? I think I'd heard the name for sure,
(01:09):
but that was basically it. Yeah, and she's kind of fantastic.
We're going to talk about Lillian Bland, who was anything but. Lillian.
Emily Bland was born September in Kent, although her family
was actually Irish. Her parents were John Humphrey Bland and
Emily Charlotte Bland, and she was the last of their
(01:32):
three children. She had a sister and a brother. Eva
Charlotte Alice Bland was ten years older than Lilian, and
Robert Wyndham Humphrey Bland was six years older. Her father,
John was an artist who had studied at the Bart
in Paris after receiving his undergraduate degree at Trinity College, Dublin,
(01:53):
and his work was exhibited at the Royal Academy in London,
and some of it actually still hangs in the Ulster
Museum in Belfast. Lilian's aunt, Sarah Smith, which was her
father's sister, was a widow and she eventually became a
major part of Lilian's life. When Lilian's mother, Emily became
ill in d the family moved to Carmony in East
(02:14):
Antrim to live with Sarah Smith, but the family did
not stay together there. They split up, however, when Emily
moved to be near the Mediterranean in the hopes that
her health would improve, and Lilian's sister Eva moved with
their mother, so they were kind of just jointed at
this point, and unfortunately that move did not help. Emily
died several years later in nineteen o six. As a
(02:37):
young woman, Lilian was pretty unconventional, much to her aunt
Sarah's dismay. She smoked, and she wore breeches, and she
fiddled with engines. She fished and hunted and seemed to
excel it basically everything that she did. As a markswoman,
she was an excellent shot, and her horse riding was
so good that she was one of the first women
in Ireland to apply for a jockey's life. Her skill
(03:02):
as a horsewoman was so great, in fact, that she
was poised to ride in the Grand National, except that
she was refused entry due to that pesky business of
being a woman. You may recall that we mentioned the
Grand National recently in our Mr. Tzy Wheezy episode. It
is the big horse race in Britain, and unfortunately it
was a no go for Lilian, regardless of her amazing
(03:23):
skill as a jockey. In addition to all of the
activities that we just mentioned, which were considered very unladylike
by not just her aunt, but by most of their
neighbors in the county. Lilian was also interested in photography,
and as with everything else that she undertook, she was
really good at it, so she began her professional life
as a journalist and photographer. Her skill with a camera
(03:45):
was lauded as excellent. It's not surprising given her interest
in horses, fishing, and shooting that Lilian was drawn to
sports photography, and she quickly became a respected photojournalist and
contributed a lot of work for London Paper. But she
also transferred her love of capturing movement on film from
sports to nature. In nineteen o eight, she spent time
(04:07):
on Scotland's West Coast with friends, and during her time
there she made a detailed study in photographing birds that
were flying over the coast. Those photographs were made into
an exhibit at London's Royal Photographic Society. It's believed that
they are the first color plate images of live birds
ever captured. So already she's kind of an amazing young woman,
(04:31):
and we haven't even gotten to the thing that made
her famous yet. Uh. When Lilian received a postcard from
her uncle commemorating French pilot Louis Blriot's flight over the
English Channel on July twenty, nineteen o nine. She was
completely enthralled. She actually wrote to Blarrio begging to be
a passenger on his next flight, but he declined, and
(04:54):
that's when she decided she was just going to fly
on her own, and not just fly, but she would
build her own plane. This was a time when many
people were excited by the idea of aviation in Great Britain.
Public meetings and exhibition gatherings were starting to pop up,
drawing crowds of imaginative and curious enthusiasts like Lilian Bland.
In October of nine, she went to Blackpool to attend
(05:16):
the first British Aviation Meeting. She was one of more
than two hundred thousand attendees. Yeah, keep in mind, this
is not long after the Wright brothers made their first
flight and things are really starting to heat up, so
there was sort of this this fever for flight going on.
And while Lilian was there at this meeting, she looked
at all the aircraft on display, and she listened to
(05:38):
various discussions, and she took copious notes. She weighed the
benefits and drawbacks of the various designs that she saw
in her mind, and she wrote to her father about
what she saw. One of the things she said was
quote the few English machines are I imagine no good,
much too small and fitted with motorbike engines. After this meeting,
(05:59):
she returned home with a greater passion than ever for
her project. She was determined to build Ireland's first powered
flying machine. For context in terms of when this happened
on the timeline of women in flight, famed pilot Amelia
Earhart was only twelve years old when Lilian hatched this plan,
and young miss Bland had written the articles about bird
(06:21):
flight in addition to her photography of them prior to
her interest in airplane construction, so she had some knowledge
of the physics of lift and air motion, and armed
with her notes and all of the additional readings she
could find, she basically was a voracious reader of anything
about flight. She made her base of operations in the
workshop of her deceased uncle, which was at the back
(06:42):
of the family house. Lilian was methodical in her approach
before jumping straight into full scale build, She first made
a proof of concept model. This is a small glider
about six ft or two ms across the wingspan. She
flew at like a tight and was pleased with the results,
and based on that first miniature success, she drew up
(07:03):
plans for her full sized plane and to construct her plane,
she chose bamboo, ash, spruce, and elm as her materials.
She documented the entire process as she went. She submitted
right ups of her work to Flight magazine. We're going
to talk about those in a little more detail and
just a bit. One of the cool things she did
is she mimicked the wings of seagulls by steaming ash
(07:25):
to replicate their curved wing tips, so she could kind
of get that same sense of motion that they had.
And the ribs of her aircraft were made of spruce,
the skids were ash, and the out riggers were bamboo,
and the engine bed was made of American elm. Wires
attached the engine bed to the wings, which also reinforced
the wing structure. Unbleached muslin to stretch across. The plane
(07:48):
was soaked in gelatin and formula as a waterproofing solution
before it was applied. The steering mechanism for the plane
was a bicycle handlebar, and when it turned to the left,
the left hand elevator would lift and the right hand
el eater with lower pedals controlled the vertical rudder. Yeah,
so basically, and if she turned to the right, the
opposite would happen. And that's how she She kind of
(08:09):
worked her elevators and ailerons and then she worked on
this project. She built it in sections and each section
was then moved to the coach house on the family
property for final assembly because her workshop was not big
enough to put the whole plane together and with all
the components in place. Though finally assembled, it weighed two
hundred pounds, it's about ninety points and it was two
(08:31):
hundred forty seven inches or six point three meters across
its wingspan. We're going to talk about Lilian's plane and
it's various tests in the tail, but first we're going
to pause for a brief word from a sponsor that
helps keep us on the air. So back to Lilian
(08:56):
and her aircraft that she had been working on. She
named it the Mayfly and this was a play on words,
as in it may fly, it may not fly. Apparently,
Lilian had heard a lot of opinions from people while
she was building this plane about the likelihood that her
project would not work, so she kind of named it
as a tongue in cheek response to the doubters she
(09:17):
had to deal with all the time. At last she
was ready to test her completed plane, which did not
yet have an engine. It was strictly a glider, and
she took it to carn Money Hill and the first
trial was a little bit bum being not because of
the actual flight, but the ease with which the craft
could be picked up by the wind. Lillian had three
men there to help to held the plane with ropes.
(09:39):
When the wind came and they lost their grip Lillian,
Lilian and the other gentlemen were able to get hold
of the ropes and prevent a disaster, but wind would
continue to be problematic for this light craft. But she
did manage to fly, and she made several subsequent flights,
and each time she would adjust the elevators and the
steering so that the wind would become less of an
(10:01):
issue and she wouldn't immediately upset and tip if she
had a little gust. She became really really skilled at
takeoff and landing. Basically she just was constantly perfecting both
the machine and her abilities, and once she was comfortable
with its performance as a glider, Lilian wanted to test
whether or not the Mayfly could handle carrying an engine.
(10:23):
The big concern was weight. She had four members of
the Royal Irish Constabulary plus her aunt's gardener on hand
for an interesting test. She piloted the plane through take
off with the five men hanging on to the aircraft.
The constables dropped off after a brief moment that the
gardener hung on. Lillian's test was successful in her mind,
(10:45):
if the Mayfly could carry five adult men, then the
weight of the engine should pose no problem. Yes, some uh.
Some of the accounts she read suggests that these constables
kind of got a little panicky and they'd really dropped
off quite quickly once they had left the ground. She
wasn't going very high, but they just were like whoaaha, hey,
let's go. Uh. And she actually had to travel to
(11:08):
England to pick up the engine for her plane because
it had been delayed and she grew tired of waiting
for delivery of the order. And this was a twenty
horsepower a vy Row two stroke. It cost her a
hundred pounds getting it back to Ireland was a little
bit tricky. She had to take it and a new
propeller that she bought at the same time by boat train.
(11:28):
And while it seemed to startle other passengers to see
a young woman traveling with this unusual cargo, Bland was
quite pleased that it quote fitted very neatly into a
railway carriage and an outside car. But even though she
had her engine, there was another slight problem. The fuel
tank for the engine was delayed. Ever, the picture of ingenuity,
(11:49):
she solved her problem of the lack of a gas
tank by making use of items she could fairly easily
get her hands on. But this is a pretty short
lived solution. Here is how she described it. I got
it being the engine on the airplane, and tried it
late last night, but as I have not got my
tank yet, I tried to feed it out of a
whiskey bottle, and the only two thing I could find
(12:10):
was my aunt's ear trumpet. It's really funny. It's so charming.
Under the circumstances. The engine behaved better than I expected.
It was like a catfight on a very enlarged scale.
The natives, I hear thought one of the mills had
blown up, but as the noise continued, they put it
down to a thunderstorm. In the meantime, found the mechanic,
(12:32):
while deeply interested in the engine, was liberally pouring the
petrol over the main plane instead of down the ear trumpet,
and the engine subsided with a sigh. As it was
pouring with rain and too dark to see. The proceedings
were terminated and I think I will wait for the tank.
And as the engine is English, it's sense of humor
is not developed sufficiently for these proceedings. I love her
(12:56):
so much based on this. I that she describes how
well the engine behaved and then compares it to a
catfight on an enlarged scale, Like that doesn't sound well
behaved at all, but but I love it just the same. Uh.
And in the midst of this UH, she still had
(13:16):
an issue of location for flying a powered plane, and
a little bit of good luck intervened here and she
had a solution arrived. And while Lilian was out photographing
with some eel fishermen, the men that she was with
informed her that there was in fact a perfect tract
of land nearby. It was flat, it had plenty of acreage,
it would be perfect for a takeoff and landing strip,
(13:38):
and that land was owned by Lord O'Neill, so Lilian
arranged a meeting with him. It turned out Lord O'Neil
was already a fan of Lilian's efforts, so his property
at the Deer Park at Randallstown was gladly offered for
her use. Lilian took her aircraft apart and moved all
the components to this new testing field where they were reassembled.
There was one drawback to this local ation, however, there
(14:01):
was a resonant bull who had a bit of a temper,
and for her part, Lilian saw this is a great
motivation to not waste any time getting airborne. Yeah, she
said something to the effect of like, well, if it
gets angry in charges, I'm just gonna have to hurry. Uh.
And with her engine and finally the proper fuel tank
in place and this suitable land for testing secured, Lilian
(14:23):
went to Deer Park to finally test her machine. Joe Blaine,
who was that same gardener that had been on hand
with the constables to help her test the weight of
the plane, was on hand then again to turn the
propeller and get things started. As the engine sat behind
the pilot so she couldn't very well do it herself
and then run around the wings and jump in the
(14:43):
seat in time. The many Flies first attempt at powered
flight in August nineteen ten was short and bumpy. The
plane kept hopping along the ground. Rainy weather kept Additional
tests were happening until September, and that was fine because
the engine vibrated so much that it was causing damage.
So that time was used to reinforce the structure and
(15:04):
at a t bar yoke and make additional adjustments. Yeah,
there were The engine, if I'm remembering correctly, was held
in place by four bolts because there were wires nearby.
Like sometimes the bolts would shake and the wires would clip,
and at one point, I think one of her one
or maybe two of her propellers got clipped by these
flailing wires and got broken and had to be replaced.
(15:25):
And so she was just trying to like kind of
solidify everything down and reinforce it so this shaking and
shimmying would not cause like catastrophic damage. Several more attempts
were made. Once she had all of these adjustments made,
and once things dried out from all of that rain,
and then finally the Mayfly was able to take off
successfully and lift to an altitude of thirty feet that's
(15:47):
about nine meters and fly for about a quarter of
a mile. The air had been very calm, and at
first she didn't realize she had even left the ground.
After the flight ended, she checked the wheel tracks the
field grass to make sure she had indeed taken off.
She would go on to describe flying as quote the
finest sport in the world. And we're going to get
(16:09):
into Lilian's triumph as an aviator as well as these
surprising twists in turns her life took after that. But
first we're gonna have a quick little break so we
can thank one of our awesome sponsors who keeps us going.
(16:30):
So we mentioned a little while ago that Lilian had
been writing about her process and her test flights and
sending these writings to Flight Magazine, and she really became
a very regular contributor to the periodical, first as in
writing her letters, and then she also wrote like fuller
articles and her descriptions of her work, her aircraft, and
her flight tests are really fantastic to read. We will
(16:52):
link to some of those in the show. Notes, but
one of the ones that I love goes quote. When
the engine starts, the draft from the propeller lifts the
tail and the tip of the skids off the ground,
and the machine balances on two wheels. The third wheel
in front only comes into action over rough ground, as
it is to prevent the machine from going on her
nose and answers admirably as my practice ground is rough
(17:14):
grass with ridge and furrow, which on hunting grounds I
take at a slant. This plan. Was so delighted with
her biplane that she hashed a plan to start an
aircraft company. She placed an advertisement in Flight magazine offering
basic models starting at eighty pounds for gliders. She went
in a fifty pounds for biplanes, and that was without
the engine. She offered both standard and racing models, and
(17:38):
she also wrote, as part of a more comprehensive article
detailing how the Mayfly was built, this lovely checklist of
advice for airplane enthusiasts if they think that they want
to make to build their own plane, she says quote
to sum up the various points one has to settle
before starting the construction of a machine. Firstly, a place
to fly it, in bad ground is a waste of time.
(18:00):
It takes much longer to learn on. Secondly the engine.
If low horsepower, the airplane must be light and have
large area to wait. Thirdly the placing of engine and
pilot and whether main planes will carry all the weight. Fourthly,
to draw out every detail to scale, and if trying
an original design, to make a good sized model and
see if any new point in controls or design is
(18:23):
going to work as it is intended. Fifthly, design the
machine so that it can be easily taken to pieces
for transport. By turning the skids around. My machine will
wheel along any road when the outriggers are taken off.
In conclusion, I should be glad to get orders either
for gliders or full size machines, And provided I can
use my own designs, I will guarantee that the machines
(18:44):
will glide or fly, that the work and quality will
be of the best. But the engine and propeller must
be reasonably efficient, otherwise it is only a waste of time.
This obsession with flying was actually somewhat troubling to Bland's family.
They worried costly about her safety, so much so that
her father offered to buy her a car if she
(19:05):
would just abandon aviation altogether. This also similarly amuses me
a little bit, because sure, sure flying dangerous cars at
the time, not a lot of safety protocols involved in them. Well,
and this is the point in most stories. You know,
we talked about how Lilian sold your Daunt her flight careers,
(19:27):
refusing that car offer and being insulted by it. No,
she was totally keen on this car plan, and she
agreed to stop flying in exchange for a new model
t In reality, it's a little more complex than that.
Of course, Lillian felt that her plane was really a
grasshopper rather than a true airplane, and if she upgraded
the engine to anything more powerful, the structure just wouldn't
(19:49):
take the strain of it. It's also a really expensive hobby,
and she saw limitations and what she could accomplish when
companies with a great many more resources we're starting to
manufacture gliders and lanes. And she had, in fact done
what she set out to do. Wasn't quite so flip
of her to just to turn it all over for
a new car. She really was upgrading into a much
(20:10):
more powerful machine. And she traveled to Dublin to make
this purchase, and then the car had to be driven
back to her home by a delivery driver, but she
convinced him to let her do the driving, which at
this point she did not know how to do. And
it turned out she loved it, and more than loving driving,
as was the case with virtually every other thing we've
(20:31):
talked about, she was really good at it, so much
so that she ended up becoming a car dealer herself.
She was a master driver, and in April nineteen eleven
she became the Belfast sales agent for Ford Motors. I
love how her story is almost like a um, you know,
a penny novel, Like no heroin could have so many successes,
(20:54):
one right after the other, but she really did. Uh.
And while flying troubled her family because of it's danger,
selling cars also troubled them because it, like many of
her other hobbies, was decidedly u Lady Lake. So with
some effort on their part, Uh, they arranged for a
marriage proposal. This is how the marriage was reported in
(21:16):
Flight magazine. Every reader of Flight will be interested to
learn that miss Lillian Bland was recently married and is
leaving presently for Vancouver Island, where by way of a change.
She anticipates enlarging her education by the control of a
motor boat, her plucky pioneer work with her gliders and
her airplane in Ireland. Particularly the frank, instructive and often
(21:38):
amusing letters that's so enlivened to earlier correspondence pages one
for Miss Bland, many unknown friends, and she will take
with her into her new sphere of life, many thousands
of good wishes from our readers. Also there is a
romance in the matter which, as we have only just
been let into the secret ourselves by a charming letter,
(21:58):
we feel we have a right to care with others. Flight,
it appears, has been the matchmaker for away in far
distant Vancouver. The fortunate gentleman who is now Miss Bland's husband,
read of her perseverance and pluck and came to the
conclusion that they must surely be indicative of just those
qualities so essential to the pioneers, pioneer settler in a
place like Vancouver. So he came over to see, and
(22:21):
at length Miss Bland decided that her airplane, engine and
other effects relating there too, had better be laid aside.
So she had already given up flying. But this then
what follows that announcement is sort of a list of
things that she has for sale. Um, And I like
how they make it sound like the magazine was the
(22:41):
matchmaker when her family was very involved, because this was
only about a half a year as a car saleswoman,
and Lilian married her cousin, Charles Loftiest Bland, so it
wasn't as though it was a stranger who just found
her in this magazine, although it probably did inform his
opinion of what she was like. And that married took
place on October three of nineteen eleven. Charles, as we mentioned,
(23:03):
lived on Canada's Vancouver Island, and Lilian emigrated there to
be with him in April of nineteen twelve. That's also
a little less I mean and away by today's standards,
more creepy, but a little less creepy. The idea that
some guy was like, I've read your letters and I
want you to be my wife. Like yeah, the family
(23:26):
arranged for him to come over and meet her, and
they got along quite well. Right. So the thing that
lingers in in creepiness in today's terms is that nowadays
we're not really into marrying our cousins. Anyway, Lilian is
enterprising at her new home as she had been in Ireland.
Helped Charles set up and run a one d and
sixty acre farm as anticipated by her husband based on
(23:50):
her pluck and perseverance and aviation, she was quite good
at running a farm. Two years after Lilian and Charles
got married, they had a daughter named Patricia Lillian in
team the same year that they finished construction on their
homestead house, and then they kind of went along for
a while as a family. However, there was a tragedy
(24:11):
that befell them. Lilian and Charles lost their daughter to
tetanus when the girl was only sixteen, and that loss
really took a toll on their marriage and it broke
down over the course of the next six years. And
then in nineteen thirty five, Lillian and Charles separated and
she moved back to the British Aisles, this time to
Penshurst and Kent to live with Captain Robert Bland, her brother,
(24:33):
and nty five, Lillian Bland retired to Cornwall after making
a sum of money quote gambling, as she put it,
in the stock market. Her retirement years were filled with
pastimes including gardening, painting, and a little bit more gambling,
which she did enjoy to the very end of her life. Yeah.
One of the the laid the last things that she
(24:53):
said in an interview, which is quite near to when
she died, was that she's gambling was like her one happiness. Uh.
And then on May eleven one, Lilyan died. She was
ninety two at the time and she is buried near
Land's End in Cornwall in Sennin And she's kind of
a local hero. She's certainly a heroine of Ireland for sure,
(25:17):
But I just I love what a go getter she
is and how she would just set her mind to
doing something and then be spectacular at it. Yeah, people
if she were in a movie or a book would
complain that she was Mary Sue. They totally would. But
I think she just was a bright woman who was
(25:37):
dedicated to the thing she was interested in and became
skilled at them, you know. I mean we we talked
about how she took all these incredible notes while she
was studying flight before she ever even like put a
design to paper, and then she was so methodical. I
think she just was really smart and dedicated and you
(25:58):
can get good at lots of things. If you do that,
uh well, and and nobody, not nobody, very rarely do
people apply that disparaging name two male characters who have
the same kinds of accomplishments, right, Yeah, so that's Lillian Bland,
who was definitely not Bland in any way and seems
(26:20):
like she would have been a spectacular person to know.
I have a little bit of fun listener mail. And
it's kind of late for me to be reading it,
but tell me anyway, because I already know what it
is and I super want to hear it again. It's cool.
It's from way back in April. Uh, and it is
a piece of mail that we got in the physical mail,
not an email. And it is really cute and we'll
(26:41):
tell you why, she says, Dear Holly and Tracy, I
am writing shortly after after listening to your pizza podcast. Uh,
if the card didn't give it away, we'll talk about
the card in just a moment. It happens to be
pizza week here in Portland, and I am three days
and seven slices deep. I waited to listen to this
history podcast until today, this most holy of days, just
(27:03):
pizza day. Um. I sat down filled with pie uh
and high on the day of on the day's offerings
to make you this stamp. So on one side of
this stamp her card, she has made a stamp and
one side is a pizza slice like it's the basic
shape of the piece of pizza slice. And then on
the other side she made a bunch of little shapes
(27:25):
that make up the toppings. And she says, you know
you can use uh. I can't make this word out,
but basically it can be used like with dabbers or
with stamp pads, etcetera. She says, let me tell you
about pizza week, though as some of these slices are insane.
By the end of the week, I will have god
willing eaten over seventeen slices of pizza. Although thirty one
(27:48):
different pies are offered, I can't eat them all. After
doing the math at two bucks of slice, it's cheaper
to eat pizza all week, and I am going for it.
Uh and base glee. As the weekended. She finished this.
After the week had ended, she said, ps, the week
is over. I twenty four slices of pizza my boyfriend,
(28:09):
and then she tells us about some of the flavors
that she which sound amazing. I won't read all the
ingredients though, but this is the cutest little card. I
love it so much. Well, of course, take a picture
and put it on our our social so people can
see it. It's just, you know, I love creative everything
so and creative plus pizza. It's like magic. She deserves
(28:29):
some sort of award for that. The award is our love,
uh Ian. He would like to write to us you
can do so. Thank you again so much, Leah. I
just I love it, love it, love it. We are
at history podcast at how stuff works dot com. You
can also connect with us at Facebook dot com slash
misst in history, on Twitter at misst in history, at
(28:50):
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history dot tumbler dot com, and on Instagram at could
you Guess it? Missed in history. If you would like
to visit our parents site and do a little bit
of research about what we talked about today, you can
go to how stuff works dot com. Type in the
word aviation into the search bar, and one of the
articles you will get is ten aviation innovations. We'd be
(29:12):
stuck on the ground without uh if you would like
to visit us, you can do that at missed in
history dot com, where we have an archive of every
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the way back to when it was very short and
had many other hosts. And you can also find show
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as well as the occasional other goody and that is
(29:32):
at how stuff works dot com and missed history dot com.
So come and visit for more on this and thousands
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Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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