International Women’s Day 2024 – Deaf Pilot Margaret Gill

Katherine Margaret Gill first deaf pilot in Britain

A celebration of the achievements of Katherine Margaret Gill are long overdue. She stamped her mark on British history in 1935 when she became the first deaf pilot in Britain. Not only the first deaf female to reach for the skies and gain a pilot’s licence, but the first of either sex.
To do this she had to overcome her own disability and, quite possibly, the parental disapproval of her strict Victorian father.
She preferred her second name, thus her story will be told here on Solent Aviatrix as Margaret Gill.
In 1935 the invention of hearing aids was in its infancy. The price of early hearing aids was out of the reach of someone like Margaret, the daughter of a vicar. The very first batteries invented for hearing aids were the size of a house brick and possibly were as heavy as a house brick too. How she managed to overcome her deafness to understand the instructions of her flying instructor, will never be known now. She took her secret to her grave.
However, one clue to her methodology may rest in the skill she learned at a dedicated specialist school and she subsequently taught this skill to children of her same lesser god. She was an expert lip reader. Even so, her flying instructor must have been equally exceptional in teaching her to fly. The mutual trust must have been quite something.
The reason why she first took to the skies may have been because of the extraordinary and unbelievable newspaper stories circulating for years in the 1920s and 1930s, that flying could cure deafness!

Yapton Aero Club pin badge – image courtesy Yapton History Society

 Margaret lived in the Solent area for some of her life, in Southampton and Portsmouth. She learned to fly at Yapton Flying Club, Sussex.
In  January 1939, she hit Portsmouth headlines when Portsmouth Aero Club announced that Margaret had been appointed as the club’s first ‘air hostess.’ This role was not as an airborne hostess but as a ground based host at the club premises, to look after members and guests. Among the other women pilots she met there were Amy Johnson, Jennie Broad and Joy Muntz. All three women became pilots during the Second World War for the Air Transport Auxiliary.
During her education years, Margaret attended the same school as Felicity Bragg, another ATA pilot. Despite all these friendships and connections, Miss Gill remains an enigma.
Margaret’s full story will be told here on Solent Aviatrix in the coming weeks. She was an exceptional woman who had less than ten minutes of fame. Then she slipped into history, her life shrouded in mystery.
An attempt will be made here to clear the mists a little. Her silent world spanned from Southampton to Madras in India, to Chailey Special School in Sussex, to Portsmouth, to Surrey, to obscurity. International Women’s Day 2024 is Margaret Gill’s day.