Mrs Cheridah Anne de Beauvoir Stocks

Royal Aero Club Certificate No. 153 (7 Nov 1911)

  1911, aged 24

RAeC Certificate No 153 - 7 Nov 1911

b. Somerset; youngest daughter of Major Ernst, D.L., J.P. of Westombe, Evercreech.

In September 1913, she and Sydney Pickles ( ) crashed at Hendon; they were both taken from the wreckage unconscious and sent off to the nearby Central London Sick Asylum. Sydney had a crushed foot, fractured thigh and abdominal wounds; Cheridah was in a 'semi-conscious state' for weeks, [I know the feeling], but eventually recovered. Her struggle to recover and walk again was "closely followed by the newspapers".

It looks like she was amongst the dozens of women who signed a 'Plea for a Constitutional Decision' in 1917 against immediately giving women the vote - suggesting that a decision should be postponed until after the war. "A considerable number of women do not desire the vote", they reckoned. It might have been another Mrs Stocks, of course...

After WWII, Cheridah studied for a BSc at Oxford and travelled the world.

Her husband, Commander David de Beavoir Stocks D.S.O. Legion of Honour, died 31st January 1918 in a submarine.

d. 1st May 1971 in Northampton aged 84 after a long illness; the Times said that she was "a most beautiful woman and her vivacious character and her exploits won her much popularity".

2nd British woman to get an RAeC Certificate: