The Sensational Scandal of the Flying Fat-Lady

n

n

n

n                     Drunken Scotsmen were not thenonly ones to take an interest in aeronautical matters in 1784 – egotisticalnItalians were also up for the challenge too. 

n

n

nVincenzo Lunardi – ThenDaredevil Aeronaut – was secretary to Prince Caramanico, the NeapolitannAmbassador to London, and took to the air in a hydrogen balloon on September 15^thnof that year at the Artillery Grounds, London before a vast crowd of 200,000nthat included, amongst other luminaries, the Prince of Wales. 

n

n

nThe crowd begannto grow impatient, so Lunardi, a dog, a cat and a pigeon, ascended with anpartially inflated balloon over the fields and began to drift northwards in thenbreeze towards Hertfordshire. Stopping briefly to release the dog and thenairsick cat at Welham Green, at a place still called Balloon Corner, Lunardincontinued on to Standon Green End, covering a total of twenty-four miles in twonand a half hours and instantly turning him into a celebrity. The ballooningncraze inspired the fashions of the day, and Lunardi skirts and bonnets becamenall the rage. 

n

n

nThe next flight was not until June 29^th 1785, whennLunardi, his friend the wealthy Old Etonian Thomas Biggin, a Colonel Hastingsnand Mrs Letitia Sage met at St George’s Fields, on the south bank of thenThames, where ‘very safe’ seats were sold at 2/6d and ‘very best’ seats atn3/6d. 

n

n

nThe original plan had been for all four to ascend in the balloon butnLunardi had not reckoned on the Junoesque Mrs Sage. Letitia Ann Sage (neenRobinson) was an actress and dresser at Drury Lane theatre, who was married tona Cheapside haberdasher, and who weighed in at an impressive 200 lbs. 

n

n

nShenhadn’t thought to mention this to Lunardi, and the gallant Lunardi hadn’tnthought to ask about her weight, but he and Colonel Hastings gave up theirnintentions to fly that day, and Mrs Sage and Mr Biggin climbed into the gondolantogether. 

n

n

nThrown by this new arrangement, Lunardi failed to lace up the doornproperly and as the balloon slowly rose into the air the crowd’s last sight wasnof Mrs Sage on all-fours attempting to re-lace the door. 

n

n

nNow, in a bid tonreduce wind resistance, Mrs Sage had thoughtfully dressed in a low-cut silkndress that day, and so at the sight of her, all décolletage and on her handsnand knees, the crowd put two and two together and assumed that she hadn‘fainted’ and Mr Biggin was administrating his own improvisational aerialn‘first aid’. 

n

n

nUnaware of the innuendoes that circulated below them, Mr Bigginnand Mrs Sage tucked in to a picnic of cold chicken and Italian wines until thenballoon descended into field at Harrow, cutting a rut through the hay crop. Thenfarmer, outraged by the ruination of his harvest, approached Biggin withnviolence in mind, but he and Mrs Sage were saved by a gang of Harrownschoolboys, who had seen the flight of the balloon and followed its progress.nThey had a whip-round to pay off the angry farmer and carried Mrs Sage on theirnshoulders to a nearby pub. She was the first female aviatrix in England (andnmaybe, one of the first members of the Mile High Club – Mr Biggin being the other). 

n

n

nThe balloon wasndisplayed at the Pantheon (admittance 5/-), with Mrs Sage in attendance tonanswer questions, and as interest waned, she published a letter about thenflight, on sale for 1/-. In October 1785, Lunardi took his balloons to Scotland,nwhere he met Tytler, and made a total of five flights, the last of which almostnended in disaster when he crashed into the North Sea off Berwick and had to benrescued by a fishing boat. Again, he made money by exhibiting the inflatednballoon (admittance 1/-), in the choir of St Mungo’s, Glasgow. 

n

n

nWhat was to havenbeen his twelfth flight was scheduled for September 20^th 1786, atnNewcastle on Tyne, but things ended in disaster when Lunardi was pouring thensulphuric acid into the apparatus that produced the hydrogen gas. The strongneffervescence caused some of the acid to spill out of two points at the bottomnof the apparatus, and several of the men holding the ropes that tethered thenballoon panicked and ran. The partly filled balloon rose sharply into the air,ntaking with it a Mr Ralph Heron, the twenty-two son of the Under-Sheriff ofnNorthumberland, whose hand was twisted in a rope attached to the crown of theninflatable. When the balloon was ‘elevated about the height of St Paul’sncupola’ it suddenly inverted and the crown separated from it; Heron fell to thenearth, landing on some soft ground, where he spoke to his parents and thenattending doctors before dying from internal injuries an hour and a half later. 

n

n

nLunardi issued a broadside, lamenting the death but pointing out that thentragedy could have been avoided if all the gentlemen had held onto their ropes,nbut the damage had been done. The Daredevil Aeronaut was driven from thenshores of Britain in a hail of criticism, but continued his ballooning exploitsnin Portugal, Spain and Italy, where he made an ascent of Mount Vesuvius innSeptember 1789. He died in 1806.

n

nOnce again, the final word goesnto Robert Burns, who mentions a Lunardi hat in his poem To A Louse : – OnnSeeing One On A Lady’s Bonnet At Church (1786)

n