One of the heroes of the Interwar Empire. She broke many of the taboos and sexual stereotypes of the era through her dangerous passion for flying. The daughter of a fish merchant, she went to Sheffield to study economics. She then moved to London and got a job as a typist. It was in London that she joined the London Aeroplane club, found her new vocation and life and studied to become the first ever female certified ground engineer. She became a pilot the following year of 1929. She is mostly remembered for her long distance, endurance flights. The first of these was her solo flight from England to Australia in 1930 as part of a Daily Mail challenge. In 1931 she flew to Japan, via Moscow, and back, and in 1932 flew to Cape Town and back solo. She married a Scottish Aviator in 1932, and together they crossed the Atlantic and flew to India. She set a new record for a solo flight from London to Cape Town in 1936. Her marriage ended in divorce in 1938. The second world war was to put her talents to use as an Air Transport Auxialiary pilot. Unfortunately, she was lost after baling out of a plane over the Thames estuary in 1941. She is remembered as a daring woman whose exploitswere designed to bring the dominions and colonies closer together through the latest developments in transportation technology.