Lilian Emily Bland (1878 - 1971)

Born 28 Sep 1878 in Maidstone, Kent, England, United Kingdom

Ancestors

Wife of Charles Loftus Bland — married 3 Oct 1911 (to about 1929) in Ireland

Died 11 May 1971 at age 92 in Penzance, Cornwall, England, United Kingdom

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Biography

Lilian Bland is Notable.

Wikidata: Item Q16006915, en:Wikipedia - Britain's first female aviator

Lilian was born in 1878 in Maidstone, Kent, England. She was the daughter of John Bland and Emily Madden.^[1]

In her eventful life she was an aeronautical engineer, an aviator, a journalist, a photographer, a landscape gardener, a car dealer, a farmer's wife, a stock market speculator, an artist and an author.

She is most noted for building, and then flying her own aircraft, the Mayfly, in 1910 (just 7 years after the Wright Brothers' first powered flight). However even before then she was known as a sports writer and press photographer.

Around or before 1901, when she was 22, she moved in with her aunt Sarah Smyth at Tobercorran House in Carnmoney Glebe, just north of Belfast, in County Antrim, Ireland.^[2] Sarah was the widow of General William James Smythe who had passed away in 1887. Lilian's father was also living with them.^[3]

Initially her interest was photography, and she would spend days on remote Scottish islands photographing seabirds. Then one day her uncle Robert Henry Bland sent her a photograph of the Bleriot XI monoplane from Paris, and she became obsessed with creating her own aircraft. Her late uncle's home, complete with workshop and open areas, proved to be an ideal location. After building a flyable model biplane with a wingspan of 6 feet, she progressed (with some help from others) to building a full size glider. She named it the Mayfly on the basis that, as she said, "it may fly, and it may not." After strenuous load testing, she ordered a light 20 horsepower two-stroke engine from A. V. Roe & Co. for £100, and after some delays brought it to Carnmoney in July 1910. The first successful flight was made at Randalstown in late August in 1910, a short hop off the ground. While perching on a canvas open-air seat, she manipulated controls to maintain the flight in balance after running forward about 30 feet and stayed in the air for a quarter of a mile.

She continued experimenting for a few more months but became frustrated at the limitations that prevented the aircraft remaining in flight for any useful distance or length of time. Eventually she gave the Mayfly air-frame to a boy's gliding club and sold the engine.

In 1911^[4] she married her cousin, Charles Loftus Bland and emigrated to British Columbia, Canada with him. They had a daughter together, Patricia, who sadly passed away of tetanus aged only 16.

The couple later divorced and Lilian returned to England. Charles remarried one of Lilian's Madden cousins.

Lilian took up landscape gardening and sought to supplement her income by speculating on the stock market. She retired to Penzance, Cornwall and wrote her (unpublished) memoirs.

She passed away in Penzance in 1971 and is buried at St Sennen Parish Cemetery, Sennen, Cornwall.

Find A Grave: Memorial #106801633

After her death her Carnmoney home was given a ceremonial blue plaque to commemorate her life, and Glengormley Park in Newtownabbey was renamed in her honour.

Sources

1. ↑ "England Births and Christenings, 1538-1975"
2. ↑ 1901 census
3. ↑ Her mother is supposed to have died in December 1906 but is not present on the 1901 census, so either she died earlier than 1901 or her parents were living separately.
4. ↑ After [https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:QYC4-PB3Z census day], as she is still at Tobercorran

• Familysearch.org
• https://www.thepeerage.com/p27760.htm#i277597
• https://www.lilianbland.ie/

See Also: Harry Ferguson - Ireland's first aviator (1909).