Gertrude Bacon FRAS (19 April 1874 – 22 December 1949) was a British aeronautical pioneer, astronomer, botanist, and author. She achieved a considerable number of "firsts" for women in aeronautics and was a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society.
Early Life
Gertrude Bacon was born in Cambridge, England, one of three children of Gertrude (née Myers) and John Mackenzie Bacon, an astronomer, aeronaut, and scientist. In 1876, the family moved to Cold Ash near Newbury, Berkshire. She was educated at home by her father and briefly attended The Maynard School in Exeter. She became her father's scientific collaborator in both astronomy and aeronautics.
Astronomy
Bacon was an original member of the British Astronomical Association (BAA), attending its inaugural meeting in 1890. She accompanied her father on BAA solar eclipse expeditions to Vadsø, Norway (9 August 1896); Buxar, India (22 January 1898); and Wadesboro, North Carolina (28 May 1900). She took photographs at all three events, including motion pictures at Buxar. In 1921, she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, proposed by Astronomer Royal Frank Watson Dyson.
Aeronautics
Bacon achieved numerous "firsts" in aviation:
- 1898 – First woman in England to make a proper balloon ascent, accompanied by her father.
- 15 November 1899 – A harrowing ten-hour balloon flight with her father and Stanley Spencer to observe the Leonid meteor shower, during which they nearly drifted out over the Atlantic and she broke her arm.
- August 1904 – One of the first women to fly in an airship, piloted by Stanley Spencer.
- 29 August 1909 – One of the first Englishwomen to fly in an airplane, taken up by Roger Sommer in a Farman biplane at the First International Aviation Gathering at Rheims, France.
- 1910 – Flew with Douglas Graham Gilmour in a "Big Bat" monoplane.
- Mid-1912 – First passenger in a seaplane, accompanying pilot Herbert Stanley Adams on flights over Windermere.
She joined the Aeronautical Society in 1905 and was the first woman to address the society, reading a paper on "Photography from a Balloon" in 1902.
Botany
Bacon joined the Wild Flower Society in 1901. On 23 July 1923, she and botanist and illustrator Lady Joanna Charlotte Davy made the first discovery of Carex microglochin (bristle sedge) in Great Britain.
Writing and Publications
Bacon popularised aeronautics through her writing. Her publications include:
- Balloons, airships and flying machines (1905)
- The record of an aeronaut, being the life of John M. Bacon (1907)
- How Men Fly (1911)
- All about flying (1915)
- Memories of land and sky (1928)
- "The Gorgon's Head" – a short story published in The Strand Magazine (December 1899)
Personal Life
During the First World War, Bacon served as a Red Cross volunteer, initially working with post at Devonshire House in London and later taking charge of the postal operation. She was involved with the handover of prisoners of war in the Netherlands in December 1915 and was awarded the British War Medal.
In 1929, she married fellow botanist and chemist Thomas Jackson Foggitt (1858–1934), becoming his second wife. They lived in Thirsk, Yorkshire. After his death, she moved to Swansea to live with her brother Frederick, and later to Sway, Hampshire, where she died on 22 December 1949.
