Nationality United Kingdom Known for Pioneer women aviator | Name Cheridah Beauvoir Role Aviator | |
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Died May 1, 1971, Northampton, United Kingdom | ||
Cheridah de Beauvoir Stocks (1887–1971) was only the second British women to gain a Royal Aero Club aviator's licence in 1911.
Early life
Cheridah was born Cheridah Annie Ernst on 6 November 1887 in Evercreech, Somerset, England, the daughter of Henry Ernst, a magistrate, and his wife Annie (née Waring). In the 1901 Census Cheridah was living at the Hotel Metropole on Northumberland Avenue, Strand, London with her sister Bessie and her widowed mother.
She married in London in 1909 to David de Beauvoir Stocks. On 7 November 1911 she became only the second woman to gain a Royal Aero Club aviators certificate passing her test using a Farman biplane at Hendon. Following a crash during an airshow at Hendon in 1913 she was unconscious for six weeks and her recovery was closely followed by the newspapers of the day. Stocks never flew again.
Her husband David a Commander in the Royal Navy died on 31 January 1918 when the submarine HMS K4 was lost in an accident.
Stocks went on to study at Oxford and gained a BSc in Social Anthropology, she died on 1 May 1971 in Northampton aged 83.