Quimby, Harriet (1875–1912)

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Quimby, Harriet (1875–1912)

Reporter and pioneer aviator who was the first American woman to earn a pilot's license and the first woman to pilot a plane across the English Channel. Born Harriet Quimby on May 11, 1875, near Coldwater, Michigan; died in a plane accident at the Boston Air Meet on July 1, 1912; daughter of William Quimby (an itinerant salesman) and Ursula (Cook) Quimby, never married; no children.

Family moved to California (1884); worked in family business packaging herbal remedies; at 26, began her career as a reporter for various San Francisco periodicals and newspapers (1901); moved to New York City (1903) where she worked as the drama critic and feature writer at Leslie's Illustrated Weekly; was first American woman to earn her pilot's license (August

1, 1911); was first woman to fly at night (September 4, 1912); was first woman to pilot a plane across the English Channel (April 16, 1912).

Harriet Quimby was one of the most famous and celebrated pilots at the dawn of aviation. A competitive and daring woman, she strove to leave her mark in aviation history and was especially proud of the list of "firsts" she achieved: the first American woman to earn her pilot's license; the first woman to fly at night; the first woman to pilot a plane across the English Channel. She was also about to become the first woman to carry the United States mail by airplane when she died at the young age of 37.

At the turn of the 20th century, women's lives were still circumscribed by traditional Victorian mores. Harriet Quimby, however, embodied the "new woman" who was beginning to emerge during the first two decades: she challenged society's expectations about the roles and capabilities of women; she never married nor had children; she earned her own living working as a pilot and reporter; and she was a conspicuous celebrity during an era when "respectable" women were supposed to keep their names out of the papers and devote themselves to domestic concerns. Quimby acted as a role model for a generation of women who were beginning to challenge accepted norms of female behavior.

Harriet Quimby was born in 1875 near Coldwater, Michigan, to William and Ursula Quimby . Her parents had married in 1859 and their first daughter Kittie was born in 1870. William tried to start several farming and business enterprises all of which eventually failed. Ursula was made of sterner stuff. It was she, ultimately, who controlled the destiny of her growing family. Ursula urged William to move the family to California in 1884; they eventually settled in San Francisco where Ursula's brother operated a small herbal remedy business. While William traveled around the region selling these herbal curatives, Ursula, Kittie, and Harriet helped mix and bottle the concoctions. Ursula had larger ambitions for her daughters. She was determined that they would not experience the back-breaking labor that she remembered from her own youth growing up on a farm. She encouraged both of them to become financially independent and to chart the course of their own destinies.

This was a daunting task for women during the 1890s, however. Middle-class women were expected to marry and devote their lives to raising children and running a household. Women who wanted to work found the type of employment available to them extremely limited. After the turn of the century, more middle-class women were working as reformers, secretaries, saleswomen, and teachers; however, the number of working women remained relatively small. In the work force, women could expect lower-paying jobs than men, and single women were expected to give up their jobs after they married. The lack of remunerative positions available to middle-class women reinforced their dependence on men.

Harriet's mother understood this dependence, and she wanted her children to be able to experience a greater sense of freedom. After Kitty married and moved away, Ursula Quimby focused her ambitions and hopes upon her remaining daughter. She encouraged Harriet to become a reporter. This type of "white collar" work was appropriate, Ursula believed, for the middle-class lifestyle that she wished her daughter to achieve. In 1901, at the age of 26, Harriet began working for the Dramatic Review and, soon after, the Call-Bulletin & Chronicle, both San Francisco periodicals.

It was at this time that Ursula began to reinvent the family's past. Instead of their rural, working-class background, she created a more suitable middle-class history to match Harriet's rise in status. Ursula told others that Harriet had been born in Boston in 1884 (nine years later than her real birthday), had attended schools in Switzerland and France, and that her father had been an official in the U.S. consular service. These efforts by Ursula to misrepresent Harriet's upbringing were not merely the eccentric lies of an overly ambitious mother. Ursula was sensitive to the class distinctions that patterned women's lives during this era. As circumscribed as the lives of middle-class women were, the prospects for working-class or rural women were even more limited. In order for Harriet to have access to the greater opportunities open to affluent and well-connected women, she needed to possess the proper social qualifications to enjoy these freedoms. Harriet Quimby took her mother's lessons to heart, and later, as a financially secure woman and celebrated pilot, Harriet remembered that her own personal freedom was contingent upon her financial independence.

By 1903, Harriet Quimby was an ambitious and successful journalist. In order to advance her burgeoning writing career, she decided to move to New York City, where opportunities to work were more abundant. She eventually found a position at Leslie's Illustrated Weekly. Initially she worked on a freelance basis, but soon she became a full-time staff writer, and, even though she remained unmarried, her job allowed her to become financially independent. She was the drama critic for the periodical, and she frequently wrote feature and opinion pieces which covered a wide range of topics. In these articles, Quimby often expressed her opinions about the changing roles of women in the early years of the 20th century. She believed that they should be allowed to drive cars, which, at the time, was considered by many Americans to be an unsuitable pastime for women; it was commonly believed that they had neither the endurance nor the skill to operate such machines.

Despite Quimby's advocacy for greater participation of women in non-traditional roles and occupations, she considered herself neither a feminist nor a suffragist. When questioned about her beliefs, Quimby admitted that women should have the right to vote; however, she also maintained that the tactics of the radical suffrage movement were inflammatory and impractical. She consistently refused to align herself with political feminists. (When reporters urged her to name her first airplane after a leader of the suffrage movement such as Catt or Pankhurst, she refused, preferring to name it Genevieve after

the patron saint of French pilots.) Even though she was never politically active, Harriet Quimby, like her mother before her, believed that women should control their own destinies and strive to exceed traditional Victorian gender roles. She was proud that she could act as a role model, first as a successful journalist and later as a celebrated aviator, for women who wanted to transcend the bounds of society's expectations.

In 1903, the same year Quimby began her New York journalism career, the Wright brothers successfully tested their new flying invention in North Carolina. Their efforts inaugurated an exciting era in the human quest to conquer the skies. By 1910, the first seven years of aviation history had been marked with astonishing successes and even more dramatic failures in the race to create reliable and safe aircraft. In October of that year, Harriet was invited to Belmont Park on Long Island to witness the second ever flying exhibition. The 36-mile "Statue of Liberty Race" energized Quimby and inspired her to try the nascent sport for herself. "It really looks quite easy," she said. "I believe I could do it myself, and I will."

Quimby began flying lessons on May 10, 1911. If driving a car were considered inappropriate behavior for a woman during this era, there was added pressure for women to eschew the new and unsafe sport of flying. To avoid any awkward publicity, Quimby took her lessons at sunrise and disguised herself in men's clothes. During the three months of her training, however, her ruse was discovered by reporters, and they quickly dubbed her "The Dresden China Aviatrix" because of her physical beauty. (She would also become known as "America's First Lady of the Air.") Once her secret was revealed, Quimby enjoyed the publicity that she garnered. Accompanying the glowing descriptions of her physical charms, however, came criticism of her attempts to learn to fly. Women had neither the physical dexterity nor the strength, skeptics argued, to operate such a large and complicated invention. Nor was it prudent for respectable women to participate in such an unsafe and masculine endeavor.

Quimby encountered these attitudes when she attempted to earn her pilot's license in August 1911. Representatives of the pilots' licensing agency, the Aero Club of America, initially resisted allowing her to take the required exam. Eventually they relented and on August 1, 1911, Harriet Quimby proved the skeptics wrong when she became the first American woman to earn her pilot's license. (She was also the second woman in the world to do so—France's Elise-Raymonde Deroche was the first—and only the 37th person ever to be accredited.) Upon receiving her pilot's license, Quimby made a critical jab at the continuing struggle to achieve female suffrage by quipping, "Flying seemed much easier than voting." While she was realizing her goals, women working for the vote would have to wait another nine years before their dreams were fulfilled.

One of the first problems Quimby encountered was what to wear while flying. During the first decade of the 20th century, American women's fashions included voluminous, floor-length skirts. Women's clothes were impractical in the small cockpits of early airplanes. Other women flyers improvised by "hobbling" or tying their skirts, and some even wore men's clothes. This practice, however, gave critics of female flyers further ammunition when arguing that women should not participate in such a masculine activity. Quimby, with her usual flair, devised a solution to the problem. She had a flying uniform made which reflected her singular personality—a purple satin, one-piece outfit with knickers and calf-length high-laced boots. To protect her hair and face, she wore a full hood and aviators' goggles. Her distinctive uniform increased her visibility at air meets and heightened the aura of excitement and mystery that she instinctively generated.

Deroche, Elise-Raymonde (1886–1919)

France's premier woman pilot. Name variations: Baroness de Laroche; Baroness de la Roche; Raymonde de Laroche. Born in 1886; killed in 1919.

Elise-Raymonde Deroche, better known under her self-assumed title of Baroness de Laroche, was the first woman in the world to be granted a pilot's license. She qualified for the brevet on March 8, 1910, though she had already flown solo the previous year on October 22, 1909. Deroche had learned to fly, at Châlons in a Voisin biplane, from chief instructor Voisin Frères. In England, Hilda B. Hewlett , who was married to bestselling novelist Maurice Hewlett, took the Royal Aero Club test at Brooklands in a Henry Farman biplane in 1911 and was issued a license on August 29th. In 1919, Deroche became the first woman pilot in Europe to die in an airplane accident.

In 1911, aviation was not merely a hobby or a sport; it was also a lucrative job. The novelty of airplanes meant that people were eager to witness the new contraptions in action. After Quimby earned her license, she participated in a number of flying exhibitions. Only a month after her exam, she earned $600 racing Deroche, and two weeks after that she earned another $500 for a demonstration flight. As part of an exhibition flying team, Quimby toured Mexico. For their participation in the inauguration ceremonies of Francisco Madero, the new president of Mexico, the team earned a hefty $100,000. The rest of their tour was cut short, however, when the town they were staying in was attacked by rebels participating in the political uprising led by Emilio Zapata. At a time when middle-class men and women earned only a fraction of her flying fees in a month, Quimby had stumbled upon financial security and wealth. Even her mother could not have anticipated the fees Harriet earned as her fame spread.

As one of the few female pilots in the world, Quimby was at first a novelty, but she quickly became a celebrity. Newspapers reported her exploits, and in the columns that she continued to write for Leslie's Illustrated Weekly, she encouraged other women to take up the sport. She believed that there should be no restrictions on women's participation in aviation. "The airplane should open a fruitful occupation for women," Quimby predicted in 1911. "I see no reason they cannot realize handsome incomes by carrying passengers between adjacent towns, from parcel delivery, taking photographs or conducting schools of flying." However, Quimby also recognized the dilemma facing prospective female flyers. Had she not already been financially stable, earning a decent living as a successful reporter, she never could have afforded the steep costs associated with flying. The lessons cost at least $1,500 and buying an airplane was even more expensive. The continuing economic dependence of most women meant that they could not afford to fly unless their husbands or families approved of their involvement in the sport. Quimby was optimistic, however, that the economic obstacles faced by women who wanted to fly would eventually be eliminated. "I believe that as soon as the price of a machine is within the range of the average person, flying will become a popular pastime for women."

Her competitive spirit was roused after she became the first woman to fly at night on September 4, 1911. Quimby, however, was dreaming of even bigger challenges. On April 16, 1912, in poor weather and low visibility, she took off from Dover, England, intending to fly across the English Channel and land in Calais, France. If she succeeded she would be the first woman to accomplish the crossing. With only a compass pressed between her knees to guide her, Quimby successfully traversed the Channel. Unable to find Calais, she opted instead to land inland, to the astonishment of the French villagers there. For Harriet Quimby, flying was not complicated and neither were her motivations. She summed it up simply: "I did not want to be the first American woman to fly just to make myself conspicuous. I just want to be first, that's all, and I am honestly delighted."

Unfortunately for Quimby, however, her achievement was overshadowed by news of the sinking of the Titanic just two days prior to her flight. Despite the lack of fanfare to accompany her Channel crossing, by July 1912 Harriet Quimby was a bona fide celebrity, and she could command a staggering $100,000 fee for a sevenday appearance at the Boston Air Meet. No other flying performer, male or female, could demand such a fee. On July 1, William Willard, the manager of the event, flipped a coin with his son to see which one of them would have the privilege of flying with the most famous pilot at the meet. As it happened, the father won, and he anticipated riding in the seat behind Quimby during her last demonstration flight of the day. She was flying a new version of a French-made monoplane which was notoriously hard to fly, in part because the balance of the aircraft was difficult to maintain. Towards the end of her flight, the tail of the plane abruptly lifted up, and Willard was catapulted from his seat. Quimby, not immediately aware of this, struggled to regain control of her plane, but without the countervailing weight of her passenger, the balance of the aircraft was upset. Once again, spectators observed the tail shoot up skyward, and this time Quimby was thrown from her pilot's seat. The balance of the plane equalized, and it glided, barely damaged, to a landing. Quimby and her passenger, however, did not survive the fall. Harriet Quimby died upon impact, and William Willard drowned in the waters of Boston Harbor.

Flying seemed much easier than voting.
—Harriet Quimby

Aviation during this era was dangerous, and several deaths every year were caused by plane accidents. However, Harriet Quimby's death was particularly shocking to many Americans. She was not the first woman to die while piloting an airplane (she was the fourth); she was, however, the most celebrated. Americans had a love-hate relationship with Harriet Quimby. Many admired her beauty, her vivacious personality, her charisma, and her daring exploits; at the same time, many were also critical of her flouting of traditional Victorian gender roles. Quimby's tragic death confirmed for these people that women were not physically able to operate airplanes and that attempts to challenge the restrictions placed upon women's behavior were doomed to failure. They blamed the accident upon Quimby's inability to control the aircraft or maintain her composure during a crisis. The New York Sun editorialized: "The sport is not one for which women are physically qualified. As a rule they lack strength and presence of mind and the courage to excel as aviators. It is essentially a man's sport and pastime." Quimby, however, had proven that she was a calm and capable pilot on a number of occasions, and this theory has since been rejected by historians. Other observers blamed the lack of seat belts, which might have averted the accident altogether. Other, more technical, reasons for the crash have since been accepted as the cause of the accident. The model of airplane that Quimby was flying had been involved in several crashes as a result of the plane's poor balance prior to Quimby's death, and this was undoubtedly a primary cause of the accident.

At her funeral, the Reverend James Wasson dismissed those who doubted or diminished Quimby's accomplishments: "But in our sorrow tonight there rests still a joyful note. For we realize that through this death there has come progress, and that therefore, Miss Quimby's life was a victory over those elements, which brought on her very end. Through her we reach nearer to the far off goal of our hope. Her name is added to the long list of those who have freely given their lives so the world might be greater and grander." Despite her ambivalence about political feminism, Harriet Quimby was a role model for a generation of women who wanted to challenge themselves and society's expectations of the type of life they should live. Amelia Earhart cited Quimby as a role model and credited her pioneering efforts. Said Earhart: "Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail, their failure must be but a challenge to others."