Hon. Elsie Mackay’s Estate Given by Parents to Nation

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 397, 4 July 1928, Page 9

Hon. Elsie Mackay’s Estate Given by Parents to Nation

the House of Commons that £500,000 the residue of the estate of the Hon.

In Memory of Lost Flyer

(United P.A.—By Telegraph — Copyright) (Australian Press Association.)

Reed. 9.5 a m. LONDON, Monday. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Winston Churchill, announced in

Elsie Mackay, the lost flyer, had been presented to the nation by Viscount t and Lady Inchcape in memory of their daughter. The Tlon. Elsie Mackay, daughter ! of Viscount Inchcape, had done dar- j ing things since childhood. Five year* ago she won her pilot’s licence and i nourished the determination to be tli« first woman to fly the Atlantic. Dark, attractive, graceful, habitu- ! ally well-gowned and bejewelled. Mis* Mackay was the envy of most women. Her silver Rolsl Royce flashed by at ; breakneck speed. Her horses invari- j ably galloped. She even participated in an “outside loop,” most dangerous of all stunts in tli© air, with Captain E. C. D. Hern© as her pilot. Her safety-strap broke during the loop, but she clung with amazing wit and courage to bracing wires, while her body swung outside the plane like a stone twirled on the end of a piece of string. Few saw Captain Hinchcliffe and Miss Mackay take off from Cranwell Airdrome, England, on the fatal transatlantic. flight early this year, for the war veteran had told only two friends he was going and Miss Mackay had promised her family she would not. None is known to have seen them once they got beyond the Irish coast. A crowd of 5,000 stood all night at the Mitchell Field, Long Island, New j York, waiting for them. But they never came.