Adelaide Franklin Cleaver

b. Adelaide Pollock in Northern Ireland in c.1885, the daughter of the Minister of Finance.

Adelaide (a.k.a. Mrs Hylton Spenser Cleaver) spent 3 months in 1929 flying to India and back, in her DH60G Gispy Moth G-AAEA. She was piloted by Captain Donald Drew, of Imperial Airways, and arrived back at Croydon on June 10th.

Here they are, lunching in the desert:

They had travelled as far as Egypt with Leonard Slatter, who was flying his newly-delivered Bluebird to Cape Town.

She didn't get her RAeC Certificate until June 1930, so I suspect he did most of the flying on that trip. However in Ocotber 1930 she made probably her greatest achievement  - her flight from New York to Hollywood in her Moth, which she took with her on a steamship.

In July 1933, she was responsible for a "well-organised Flying Display which was held at Aldergrove Aerodrome, Co. Antrim. Her avowed intention was to stimulate air-mindedness in Ulster, and from the number of spectators who went to see the Display there is little doubt that she succeeded. We gather that from every point of view it was a great success."

In 1934, Mary de Bunsen wrote that "Mrs Spencer Cleaver makes the usually fatiguing journey to Northern Ireland three or four times a year in her own aeroplane, and, fitted with extra tanks to save refuelling during the day, it has many times enabled her to breakfast in London, shop in Paris from 11 to 1, and return in plenty of time for dinner at her house in London."

She owned:

a 1929 DH.60G Gipsy Moth, G-AAEA, which she sold to Venetia Montagu;

a 1930 DH.60G Gipsy Moth G-AAVY, which she sold to Lady Howard de Walden;

a 1930 DH.80A Puss Moth, G-ABFV, and

a 1933 Percival D.2 Gull Four IID, G-ACIP.

d. 14 August 1939 at Cooden, Sussex 'after a long illness', aged 54.