Edmund Reid

In 1913 Reid wrote a series of articles on his ballooning exploits which had been hinted at in articles and his
obituaries. They were written years after the events by Reid, so it remains to be seen how much of it is accurate
and how much is Reid being a raconteur. His first balloon ascent came about after he made the acquaintance of
the self-styled ‘Professor’ Thomas Lythgoe, an experienced aeronaut. 14 One evening he was chatting to Lythgoe
over a pipe when he was asked ‘Ever been down in a diving bell?’ Reid replied that he had. Lythgoe then wondered
if Reid had ever been up in a balloon. Reid had not, so Lythgoe offered to ‘arrange for a trip from the Crystal
Palace.’ At a subsequent meeting on a Tuesday evening, Lythgoe told Reid to meet him at the Crystal Palace
on Saturday at three o’clock in the afternoon when they would make an ascent with another balloonist named
Thomas Wright. Reid told nobody about his forthcoming adventure and spent the rest of the week wondering if he
would be alive the following week.
Dark clouds began to appear shortly before the balloon was due to take off, so the three intrepid men got into
the balloon car and took off before the rain made their balloon wet and heavy. Reid remembered:
The world seemed to drop down from us. I felt no motion at all. It was not long before a dark cloud
came all around us, then the cloud went down, and we were in the light again with the blue sky over our
heads. But all at once there was a flash of lightning and a clap of thunder, and I began to think. I said
to Mr Lythgoe ‘What’s that?’ He replied ‘Oh, that’s nothing.’ I said ‘You call that nothing.’ He replied
‘Let the lightning flash and the thunder roar, it won’t hurt us as we are not attached to the earth.’ And
it didn’t, or I should not be writing this now.
A balloon ascent from the Crystal Palace. From Travels in the Air by James Glaisher (1871)
Reid had been seated in the car
and when he stood up he saw the
dark storm clouds beneath him and
a clear blue sky above. It was ‘one
of the grandest panoramic views
that I have ever seen.’ The Crystal
Palace looked like ‘a little glass
house standing on a carpet,’ while
the River Thames resembled a
narrow ditch. All pre-flight nerves
disappeared as Reid marvelled at
the splendour of the view and he
felt completely safe and calm.
The balloon was nearly two miles
high and Reid was now thoroughly
enjoying himself. The dizzying
heights were ‘a nice place to live
in, no tax collectors, nothing to
upset the mind.’
They were now floating over Gravesend. Reid mused:
Why it looks to me like a lot of red bricks thrown into a field. Then I began to think – there are
thousands of houses down there, and thousands and thousands of people, some walk about as if the
world belong to them only; some that will sometimes condescend to speak to you under circumstances
to suit themselves only; others that work hard to live, yet I cannot see one, then what am I when I am
down there, nothing, not so much as a grain of sand. I think that if there is anything to take the pride
out of anyone it is being up in a balloon. It teaches that the world can go on very well without us, and
perhaps better, and whenever anyone tells you all about what is up here, that has never been, well to
put it in a mild form, you can look at them and think. I have never heard the angels sing yet, and I have
made many balloon ascents in my time. 15
14 Thomas Lythgoe worked as a meter inspector to the Metropolitan Gas Company, retiring in 1885 to become landlord of the Duke
Inn at St Albans. He later took over the Old Oak Inn in Hertford where he died in 1893 aged 61. He made 405 ascents over 43 years.
(Hertfordshire Mercury, 1 April 1893). Reid’s memory was working reasonably well on this matter some twenty years later. He
wrote that ‘After he [Lythgoe] gave up ballooning he kept ‘The Old Oak Hotel’ at Hertford, where he died a natural death.’
However, Reid asserted that Lythgoe had made over 500 ascents. (Whitstable Times, 11 January 1913).
15 Whitstable Times, 11 January 1913.
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