MADEMOISELLE ALBERTINA - THE BALLOON GIRL
The History Group of Cowbridge U3A was entertained in March 2018 by guest speaker Rosemary Chaloner’s illustrated tale of Mademoiselle Albertina, the ‘Balloon Girl’, and her flight from the grounds of the Fine Arts, Industrial and Maritime Exhibition in Cathays Park in 1896. Most of the audience had never even heard of the exhibition, which ran for 6 months and was a huge undertaking, so the story of the intrepid balloonist was completely new.
Louisa Maud Evans was born in Bristol in 1881 into a working class family. At just 16 months old, with her father serving overseas in the Royal Navy, Louisa was given to a neighbouring couple, the Crinks, in an informal adoption – it seems that her mother had formed a relationship with another man.
Louisa left school in 1895, literate but unskilled, and went to work in a nearby clothing factory. The story might have ended here, but for Mr and Mrs Crinks’ requesting that Louisa be given a position as domestic servant to the Hancock siblings, William, Charles and Sophie, who owned a travelling fair and menagerie in the West Country. It was when touring through Glamorgan some years earlier that the trio’s father had died (he is buried in Llanblethian) and they had assumed control of the enterprise.
So it was that the young Louisa joined the fair in Taunton, just as the Hancocks were preparing to add aeronautics to the show, in the form of the debonair Frenchman, Auguste Gaudron, a renowned balloonist.
The parachuting balloonist had become the public’s must-see event that every travelling show had to have. A trapeze bar to hold on to was attached to rigging lines beneath the balloon and there was a webbing sling for the pilot to sit in. The parachute was not in a pack; it would just hang from the balloon. Once a suitable height (6-7,000 feet) was reached, aeronauts would release themselves from the balloon and (in theory) float down safely under the parachute. Young lady balloonists were an added attraction; they adopted exotic pseudonyms and wore flamboyant (if not downright revealing) costumes. Miss Alma Beaumont was Gaudron’s female aviation partner.
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Louisa was obviously smitten with the aerial performances at the fair and offered to take care of the balloon and parachute at the end of each flight; Gaudron readily agreed.
When the Frenchman’s contract with the Hancocks came to an end, he then began another, this time with the exhibition in Cardiff, where he was engaged to perform for a week. Miss Beaumont was no longer his co-balloonist; she was shortly to marry and there may also have been disagreements over money.
The executive committee of the exhibition hoped that the aeronautical performances would boost flagging attendances and it proved the success they wanted; numbers were up by nearly 60,000 over the week. Gaudron was asked to continue his displays for a further week, which he agreed to do. The committee’s request for a female balloonist was, however, more problematic because of the split with Alma Beaumont.
Fate then intervened; Louisa had run away from the fair when it was in Redruth, made her way to Cardiff and was re-united with Gaudron. Such was her enthusiasm for adventure, perhaps also with a desire for fame and celebrity, that she offered to be his new female balloonist. The Frenchman agreed, perhaps with misgivings, but ‘money talks’.
So it was on 21st July 1896 that young Louisa, now billed as Mademoiselle Albertina, dressed in a sailor costume and knickerbockers, and wearing a cork life jacket, took her first balloon flight. It is said she ascended to 12,000 feet before deploying the parachute somewhere over Splott. That was the last sighting of the intrepid Louisa, as she drifted out of view.
Four days later, Louisa’s body was found by another young girl, Mary Waggett, washed up near Nash village in the Gwent Levels; Mademoiselle Albertina had obviously landed in the Bristol Channel.
An inquest held at the Waterloo Inn in Nash recorded death by accidental drowning, whilst descending from a balloon. There was censure for Auguste Gaudron for allowing a young and inexperienced person to make such a perilous ascent.
Louisa Evans is buried in Cathays cemetery, with a headstone paid for by public subscription on her grave. 20-25,000 people attended her funeral. Whatever her motives for wanting to be a balloonist, one cannot deny that 14 year old Louisa displayed remarkable courage in attempting such a dangerous enterprise with so little training.
As for the Fine Arts, Industrial and Maritime Exhibition, this was less successful after the tragic event and by the closure date had made a financial loss.
Steve Monaghan