assorted essays

Crossing over between the worlds of cycling and aviation Hélène Dutrieu was born on this day, 136 years ago, in 1877.

Dutrieu was born in the Belgian city of Tournai, not far from the famous cycling city of Roubaix, next to the border with France. Her father was an officer in the Belgian army but, aside from that, we know very little about her early life except for the fact that she left school at 14 to seek work. 

At some point after leaving school she became a rather good cyclist, turning professional with the team La Chaine Simpson (who's famous poster was painted by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec). In 1895 Dutrieu set a world record for women for the one hour duration race and, in 1897 and 1898, winning the world track championship sprint races. She became known as the 'Flèche Humaine' - the Human Arrow. She continued to win races including the Grand Prix of Europe and the 12-day race in London. Her achievements warranted the award of the Cross of St. André by King Leopold II of Belgium. Even with all of her success Dutrieu found it hard to earn enough money from cycling to make a decent living so she started to perform cycling stunts, famously cycling fast enough to perform a vertical loop on a specially made track in Marseille in 1903. Not content with that she started performing stunts on a motorbike, then in a car and eventually going on to race cars for the French team of Clément-Bayard de Levallois from 1904 to 1907.

In 1908 her story takes an interesting twist and launched her into the sky. Clément-Bayard, not content with making cars, decided to make an aeroplane. Designed by famed aviator Alberto Santos-Dumont, the aeroplane was called the No 19 Demoiselles ("the Damselfly"). At a time when women were seen as the weaker sex the company thought that having a woman fly the aircraft would show that it was an easy task. Dutrieu and another woman pilot–Mademoiselle Aboukaia–started to learn to fly. It wasn't easy. On her first flight Dutrieu crashed and damaged the airplane. She applied to the Henry Farman Aviation School and learned to fly under Roger Sommer (both of whom were former cyclists). 

In early 1910 she became the first woman to carry a passenger aloft in an airplane when she allowed her mechanic to fly with her. Later that year, on November 25 1910, she became the first Belgian woman to be granted a flying license–Aéro-Club de Belgique License #27. She was the fourth woman to gain a flying license. The Flèche Humaine had become La Femme Épervier (the Lady Hawk).

Let it not be said that Dutrieu was an innocent little flyer though. It was once discovered that she flew without wearing a corset. The revelation was published in the newspapers and the scandal was widespread. 

She went on to set numerous aviation records; she was the first woman pilot to stay airborne for longer than an hour, the first winner of the Coupe Femina. She flew in England and the USA. She beat 14 male pilots, in 1911, to win the Copa del Re in Florence, Italy. In 1913 she became the first woman aviator awarded membership of the French Legion d'Honneur. 

When the First World War broke out Dutrieu became an ambulance driver. She later became the director general of a military hospital in Paris. After the war she became a journalist, married a Frenchman, moved to France and took French nationality. Although her flying exploits stopped after the war she eventually became vice president of the women's section of the Aero Club de France. In 1953 she was awarded the French Medaille de l'Aeronautique and, in 1956, she created the Coupe Hélène Dutrieu-Mortier with a 200,000 franc prize for the Belgian of French woman who flew the furthest non-stop flight each year.