she saw were terrifying, for she was still only eighteen and until then had been sheltered by a middle-class upbringing. Especially traumatic was her first and unexpected meeting with two men whose bodies had been hideously eaten away by leprosy. It was this meeting, however, that was to give a focus to her religious zeal and a sense of mission to her life.
Back in England, she continued her nursing career, see-sawing between rationality and periods of disabling self-doubt culminating in a mental disorder which eventually engulfed her. When she recovered, she felt ready to begin her life’s work, and started off across Russia to set up a hospital for lepers in the outer reaches of Siberia.
Kate Marsden, above all else, had a sense of humour which got her through many terrible experiences. Her description of her journey across Siberia, undertaken in 1891 before the Trans-Siberian railway had been built, would be unbearable even to imagine were it not for the black humour with which she managed to invest it She and her woman companion travelled by sledge at night, through forests peppered with the gleam of wolves’ eyes. The manic speed at which the sledge was driven was usually due to the intoxicated state of the driver and, on one occasion at least, the company was unceremoniously tipped out into the snow. ‘… we hardly knew whether to laugh or cry,’ wrote Kate, ‘and chose the former alternative and merrily awaited events.’
The journey soon began to resemble a descent into hell. The dark nights of ice and snow gave way to days of suffocating heat. On horseback now, they traversed a region which trembled beneath them, shaken with subterranean fire: ‘Blinding clouds of smoke every now and then swept into our eyes and the hot, stifling air almost choked us. We had to go through the fire: there was no escaping it, unless we chose to turn back. After looking on, aghast, for some time, and trying to prevent our terrified horses from bolting, we moved slowly forward, picking our way as best we could in and out of the flames …’
Her journey took her another 1000 miles and led to hell itself where lepers crawled out from the forests, dragging themselves painfully towards this foreign woman who had come to help them. Dressed as she was in trousers to the knee, bag slung over her shoulder, riding whip in hand and the whole thing topped off by her London deerstalker, no one could possibly have mistaken her origins. To the leper colony, she must have seemed like some god-sent apparition. She unpacked her medical supplies, distributed gifts among the stricken people and naively offered up a prayer for the health of her Imperial Majesty the Empress of Russia, noting – no doubt with approval – that the poor lepers joined in heartily. Like the Light Brigade, hers was not to reason why.
It is hard to believe that in her twenties Kate Marsden had suffered so badly from a lung disease that she had been pensioned off from her job in a hospital. She had proved that she would stop at nothing. Bureaucracy, war, the icy wastes of Siberia – all were mere stumbling blocks to be demolished in her personal campaign to bring help to the lepers whose banishment to Siberia was effectively a way of removing such an unwelcome sight from the public eye.
The Victorian women missionaries formed a travelling brigade that was as unique as it was misguided, but whatever the consequences of their ill-advised activities, we cannot but admire the manner in which these delightful ladies dispensed tea, sugar and the Word of Life.
On a spring day in 1928, a small light aircraft taxied along the runway at Cairo Airport and drew to a halt. Out of the cockpit door swung a slim leg clad in a silk stocking followed by the rest of the pilot dressed in white gloves, necklace, an elegant coat fur-trimmed at neck and wrist, and a natty little cloche hat. 28-year-old Sophie Pierce, who came to be better known later as Lady Heath, news-conscious as well as fashion-conscious, posed for the cameramen before climbing down from the wing of her Avro Avian III aircraft having completed part of her historic flight from South Africa to London – the first woman to fly solo from the Cape to Cairo.
The silk stockings had been put on in rather a hurry, for the last lap of the journey had taken less time than she had expected, largely because it had been relatively trouble-free – unlike the unpropitious start. Setting out from South Africa on 17 February, she had fallen victim to a dangerous attack of sunstroke and, landing in a feverish daze in what she later found was a region of Bulawayo, she immediately blacked out.
Africans are nothing if not flexible and are rarely surprised by the strangeness of European behaviour. The local girls who rescued her cared for her and in a few days she was off again. Flying over Nairobi there were more problems, this time with the engine, and although she was forced to jettison her tennis racquet and a few novels to lighten the load she hung on to six dresses, her Bible and a shotgun.
Before flying over Sudan, she set about making arrangements to find a man to escort her northwards. The number of people flying the African sky was on the increase, as was the number falling out of it. An accident, were the pilot lucky enough to escape death, could be costly. Ransoms were often exacted by locals, and European governments, landed with the task of searching for their own nationals, often found themselves picking up a hefty bill. It was for reasons of safety and economy, therefore, allied to the belief that the sky was really no place for a woman, that women were refused permission to fly over the country. Not at all put out by this restriction, Sophie wrote later: ‘… the Sudanese had forbidden women to fly alone owing to recent outbreaks among the natives who killed a District Commissioner last December … an entirely sensible regulation.’
Shortly before setting out from South Africa on her flight northwards, she had waved goodbye to a young man and his bride who were spending their honeymoon flying up through Africa. During the late 1920s and early 1930s, England was gripped by flying fever and pilots were setting out like swallows for destinations which grew more and more distant with each year. Lieutenant Bentley had gained fame the previous year by being the first person to fly solo from England to Cape Town and no doubt this was a spur to Sophie’s flight.
Catching up with the honeymooners in Uganda, she now sought Bentley’s aid. Chivalry took second place when he was persuaded – or perhaps he even volunteered – to escort the Lady Heath as far as Khartoum. Once they were in the air, however, and all the regulations had been strictly observed, the two planes lost sight of each other and Sophie happily flew on alone. From Khartoum to Cairo the journey was relaxed and carefree. Since maps were a bit dodgy in those days, she navigated by following the course of the Nile.
The gallant Bentley, meanwhile, now back in Khartoum, found his services again required, this time to escort a woman pilot who was flying in the opposite direction. No doubt a trifle exhausted by the excitements of his honeymoon as well as having to escort Sophie up through Sudan, he nevertheless took on the task of escorting the indefatigable Lady Mary Bailey who was on her way south to Juba on her historic flight – the first solo round trip between England and South Africa to be made by a woman.
It is interesting to observe the similarities and differences between these two pioneering fliers. They were both Anglo-Irish and had married titled men with enough money to keep their wives in planes and fuel. Lady Mary Bailey – herself the daughter of an Irish peer – married a South African millionaire, and Lady Heath’s husband contributed to her fleet of four planes. Apart from their love of flying and their fearlessness, however, the similarities end there.
Lady Mary, the elder by ten years, was the mother of five children – a scatty individual, easy-going in the extreme. Described by those who knew her as a disorganized will o’ the wisp, her flight to South Africa was made simply to pay a visit to her husband there – or so she said. Obviously an astute woman, whatever the impression she gave, she may simply have offered this explanation in order to fend off curious journalists, for she was certainly no stranger to ambition. The first woman to gain a certificate for flying blind, she also broke a
