Topic: LaRue Scott
Arthur Rackham Illustrations
[caption id="ArthurRackhamIllustrations_img1" align="aligncenter" width="199"] Arthur Rackham’s[/caption]
The Amy Johnson Room, Sewerby Hall
AMY JOHNSON LANDED at the airfield in Darwin, Australia, on 24th May 1930 after piloting her plane 8,600 miles in 19½ days, becoming the first woman to fly solo from England to Australia. Her goal had been to beat the 1928 record set by Bert Hinkler, but she overshot it by four days. Though Amy felt like a failure, the British weren’t disappointed—the press called her the “queen of the air,” and the Daily Mail presented her with £10,000, “the largest amount ever paid for a feat of daring.” Overnight, Amy Johnson became the nation’s darling. Born in Hull, Yorkshire, to John and Amy Johnson on 1st July 1903, Amy was the oldest of three girls. She enrolled at the University of Sheffield in 1922, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in economics, then moved to London in 1927 and worked in a solicitor’s office as a secretary. The next year Amy took up flying at the London Aeroplane Club, earning her license in July 1929. Five months later she qualified as a ground engineer, the first British woman to do so. With a mere 75 hours of flying time, Amy determined to become the first woman to fly solo from England to Australia, and do it in record time. Lord Wakefield, of Wakefield Castor Oil, agreed to provide financial backing for the trip and shared with her father the £600 cost of the plane. The two-year-old de Havilland Moth arrived just two weeks prior to her departure, and Amy christened it jason, after her family’s fish business. She departed London on 5th May 1930 and’ began a harrowing journey, fraught with several crash landings, monsoons, sweltering heat, sandstorms, and many delays—once she was even reported missing. Amy finally reached Darwin on 24th May, and while touring the country in the weeks following, she met British flyer Jim Mollison. They married the next year.
