Lady Heath Aviatrix Postcard from N.Y. (1929).

In 1928, Lady Heath became the first person to fly solo from Cape Town to London. Lady Heath began life as Sophie Catherine Theresa Mary Peirce-Evans in Limerick. Sophie attended St Margaret's Hall on Mespil Road, Dublin, later enrolling in the Royal College of Science in Ireland (which later became subsumed into U.C.D.). In an era when the world had gone aviation mad, Lady Heath was more than able to hold her own. "Britain's Lady Lindy" as she was known in the United States, made front page news as the first pilot, male or female, to fly a small open-cockpit aircraft from Cape Town to London (Croydon Aerodrome). She had thought it would take her three weeks; as it turned out, it took her three months, from January to May 1928. There is a scale model of her aircraft in the museum. Destitute and with failing health, she died aged 42 in London after a fall in a tramcar in 1939.