Superb Framed & Glazed Display Personal Effects of an Amazing Woman Flyer

I have great pleasure in being able to offer for sale this wonderful framed display, obtained from a Bonhams estate sale some years ago; she was, still is, my hero and this lot has been in my collection for well over a decade. I am only offering this for sale now, due to another project I am trying to finance.
This wonderful framed display has the personal effects of a most amazing women, Mary Lady Heath, she was instrumental in furthering the cause of both women pilots and women atheletes. Included in the frame are her leather flying hat and flying goggles, two framed original photographs, one showing a huge crowd attending an appearance of the aircraft she flew on her flight from Cape Town and the other showing her in the cockpit of her plane, note the fur coat and gloves!. Plus the backing is a union flag, this was the one she held on the street procession after she set her world altitude record. all items come in the original frame the cap, goggles and flag was originally framed in; I have over time cleaned and rearranged the frames contents to as you see it now.
On the back of the frame is a wonderful biography for Lady Heath, she led an amazing life and if you go online you can see loads of photographs and read huge amounts of information about this wonderful woman. The wonder of the internet.

I have included below a copy of the biography.
Please note this is a large and heavy oak frame and will be expensive to ship internationally, potential buyers abroad should get intouch first for a shipping quote.
The amazing
Mary Lady Heath (a.k.a Lady Icarus)

Born Sophie Catherine Theresa Mary Pierce-Evans on the 10th November 1896 in Knockaderry County Limerick was one of the best known women in the world for a five year period during the 1920's.
She lead an amazing life but had an inauspicious start, when just one year old her father Jacky Peirce-Evans murdered her mother by bludgeoning her to death with a large stick, declared insane he spent the rest of his life in Dublin's lunatic asylum, Sophie was sent to live with her Grandfather and was raised by two maiden aunts, well educated she attended the royal college of science and achieved a top class degree in science specialising in agriculture, here she also became an accomplished sportswoman.
At the age of 20 she married Captain Eliot-Lynn a British soldier 20 years her her senior, just six months later she abandoned her studies and husband to join the women's auxiliary corps as a dispatch rider, she spent two years in England and France later becoming an ambulance driver.
After the war she joined her husband on a coffee farm in East Africa, the marriage however was not a happy one and she returned to Britain where she became a founder member of the Women's Athletics Association and campaigned for womens sports. In 1924 she held a (disputed) world record for the high jump and was the first British javelin champion using the unusual two handed throw.
In 1926 she took her first flying lesson and soon became the first woman to hold a commercial flying license. Not content with this she very quickly set altitude records earning herself the name 'Lady Icarus', she was the first woman to parachute from an aeroplane landing in the middle of a football match, she also flew newspapers to France during the General Strike. Another triumph was the first flight by either a woman or man in a small open cockpit plane from Cape town to London, she believed it would take three weeks, it took three months! She subsequently sold the plane to Amelia earhart who took it back to the USA.
Briefly she flew as first officer at KLM on European routes becoming the first woman to fly a commercial aircraft unfortunately the public were not ready to accept women pilots and after an aggressive press campaign she quit.
This took her to America where she accepted and invitation to lecture and promote flying and ended up selling Cirrus engines to USA aircraft manufacturers all over the United States.
In 1929 she married her second husband Sir James Heath who was 45 years her senior, she became Mary Lady Heath, the same year she attended the National air show in Cleveland and was due to take part in a women's air Derby race, much rivaly existed and a number of the womens planes were tampered with and whilst on a training flight Lady Mary's plane stalled and crashed through the roof of a factory, she was seriously injured and thought might not survive, months of medical treatment followed including brain surgery and plastic surgery and although she recovered her health was never the same.
She divorced her husband on 1930 and in 1931 married for the third time, this time G.A.R. Williams with whom she returned to Ireland and set up her own aircraft company, Dublin Air Ferries Ltd.
By 1939 her health was failing probably due to the plane crash and had also developed a serious drink problem, in May of 1939 she died following a fall on a tram car in London, a post mortem suggests a blood clot and possible stroke as the cause.
In accordance with her wishes her ashes were scattered by plane over Newcastle West in Ireland, the only memorial to this wonderful adventurous and pioneering woman is a plaque on a wall of a bank in Limerick Ireland.

It is with great pleasure to say, she has gone back home to Ireland and will be on display in the near future in Limerick museum.

Code: 19003