The published history of aviation is virtually empty of women. Its well-known protagonists and most of its historians are male. There are celebrated exceptions in the form of pilots such as Amy Johnson, but they are often portrayed as succeeding in spite of their gender. In fact, women participated in every step of the story of British powered flight. They often did much of the work of making aircraft – 120,000 were putting aeroplanes together in the First World War. They set up businesses, made lecture tours, put on exhibitions. They wrote about flying and studied aerial reconnaissance. I’m working on a project to write them back into aviation history, which includes making a series of short films exploring their lives and reflecting on the process of research and recovery.
The first film, on glider pioneer Ella Pilcher, is here. I’ve written about making the film here.
Some of the images I’ve collected are below.
Ella Pilcher watching her brother Percy take flight in their first glider, the Bat, summer 1895 
Hilda Hewlett in her aeroplane factory, Battersea, c.1914 
The doping workshop at Claude Grahame-White’s Hendon factory, c.1918 
Constance Babington-Smith at the Royal Aeronautical Society’s garden party on the Great West Aerodrome at Harmondsworth, Middlesex, May 8th 1938 (Mary Evans Picture Library) 
Detail from Kitty Hawker, comic by Ray Bailey for Girl magazine, 1951
