Rev John Mackenzie Bacon
Oh I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;...
And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high, untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.
-John Magee "High Flight"
The Bacon family tree
J.M. Bacon entered Cambridge University in 1865 and later went into partnership with his brother Maunsell coaching students through exams.
"The Bacons soon acquired a reputation for steering even the stupidest and idlest of their pupils through the quicksands of the dread examinations" -one of their methods was to condense discourse into rhymes that were adapted to the popular tunes of the day.
He was ordained deacon in 1870 and married Gertrude Myers in 1871. For the next five years they lived at 12 Parkside, Cambridge where a son, Francis, was born (and died aged 18 months).
Bacon contracted a pulmonary disease which caused haemorrhages (his best friend Frederic Myers had died of tuberculosis in 1871) and after a daughter Gertrude was born in 1874, his wife suffered a mental breakdown. They left Cambridge and went to live at Sunnyside, Coldash, Newbury, Berkshire in 1876 where his health improved and Gertrude "was entirely herself again".
Frederic Bacon was born Dec 28 1880 and Gertrude's mental illness returned; "A complete breakdown ensued, and although the acute stage passed quicker than on the previous occasion, yet afterwards, during the whole of the rest of her life, did she ever fully recover her mental balance."
Bacon became the clerical assistant to the Rector of Shaw, performing clerical duties for seven years until he resigned after publishing a controversial pamphlet in which he challenged the attitude of the Church towards scientific knowledge and warned that teachings of the Church must move with the times.
He was unconventional, in that he taught his children himself, with the emphasis on maths, science, astronomy, chemistry, botany and physics. History, geography and grammar were left to look after themselves. "His aim was to teach his children to think for themselves, to implant in their young minds the desire for knowledge as more important than knowledge itself."
On 20 Aug 1888 he took his first balloon flight with Captain Dale of the Crystal Palace Company cheered on by 20,000 people at a temperance demonstration "the most noteworthy feature of which seemed to be the very large number of intoxicated people taking part."
In his amusing account he describes the flight over London landing in Hatfield;
Just westwards of Blackfriars Bridge we shot across the Thames, and sailed above the chimney pots of Ludgate Hill close over St Paul's, whose cross was dwarfed to the humble level of the streets. There was no haze nor trace of smoke that lovely summer evening, and every detail of the great capital lay mapped out below us ... In two respects the appearance of the streets was remarkable. They were not nearly so closely crowded as to passengers they seem to be, and the traffic what there was seemed to scarcely moving. But one could grasp as never before what were the lungs of London and what her arteries. For Oxford Street had lost its title to the name; it was the Oxford highway now. The Northern tramways were the ways towards York and Cambridge, and Picadilly was the Bath Road. And there were those great arteries that carry England's life-blood to and from her heart. We struck them now, three at once, over Euston, St Pancras, and King's Cross, along which latter line one of the company's splendid trains, going north, was trumpeting.
At length we were out over open country...rich pastures everywhere, chequered with the last of a late hay harvest; on all sides country houses with extensive parks. We could trace the plan of their lawns and gardens as we passed over. From one of these the barking of a dog came up with strange distinctness.
After some skilful manoeuvring we landed in a field ...then shouts were heard, and in a moment several rustics burst through the hedge and made for us, some in their shirt sleeves, one with a pitchfork, all intensely excited. Their leader, a man upwards of sixty, was simply beside himself. He had run as fast as the youngest, and was still out of breath to the point of collapse. Still with his hand to his chest he rattled on in broken sobs, "Who ever knowed a thing like this! To think of my living to see this happen on my farm! Lor, what a sight you was to be sure!" But our Captain had an eye for business, and cut in, "Look here; you've a horse and cart somewhere, and I must have it. What will you want?" "Ah! you may well ask. I'm broken-winded now for life, and you'll have to pay for that; then there's my hayrick getting wet, that'll be another five shillings"; and so on.
Bacon had an inventive personality. He instituted the Coldash Cottage Show which started as a competition to give incentive to the cultivation of cottage gardens and allotments and continued for another 20 years, each year with added attractions such as cats, donkeys, cooking demonstrations, a lemonade fountain, domestic handcrafts, bee keeping and a bell ringing competition. He made the tents, set up the printing press, made and tuned his own bells and even made the fireworks for the finale.
The 1892 Coldash Show culminated with a staged "archaeological discovery" -it was rumoured there was an ancient battlefield of the Plantagenet era and digging began in an area of unbroken soil. Implements and bones were unearthed, further digging produced the exclamation "There be summat alive down there" and Friar Tuck emerged from the hole demanding a mug of ale, followed by a harp playing Blondel who rescued Richard the Lionheart. Bacon had set this ruse up a year before, excavating a cavern and then building an observatory over the entrance, with a final long sloping passage to within 1-2 feet of the surface some distance away.
His other interests included microscopy, photography, astronomy, he conducted experiments on magnetism, he and his 12 year old son installed electric lights in the house. After his wife, Gertrude, died in 1894 he took his two children on a cycle tour of Belgium then in 1896 they travelled to Norway to view the total eclipse of the sun. They repeated their observations seventeen months later in India and in 1900 in Wadesborough, USA.
Ballooning was still his passion and he turned this hobby to practical use conducting many scientific experiments on acoustical phenomena. It was a rather dangerous pastime; they descended on telegraph wires, were nearly blown over a cliff into the sea at Hastings and in an 1899 flight to observe the Leonid meteor shower, the balloon was unable to descend. As dawn broke the balloon rose higher, drifting over the Bristol Channel, finally crash landing in Wales after a ten hour flight just 1½ miles short of the Atlantic ocean.
Bacon financed his ballooning with lecture tours and writing articles for the press. In 1901 he published "By Land and Sky" and in 1902 "The Dominion of the Air". He devised balloon versus cycle races with the aim of illustrating how balloons could be used in warfare as a means of escape (the siege of Mafeking had occurred in South Africa). One of these races ended in a tragic death after a man was lifted by an untethered balloon and fell 40 feet from the trail rope.
In 1902 he was the first to cross the Irish Sea in a balloon and demonstrated to the navy how underwater objects were more visible from a height. He patented an portable hot air balloon for military photography.
In 1903 he married Stella Valintine, the niece of his brother's wife, who was thirty years younger than him. Their daughter, Stella Mary was born Nov 1904 but his health was failing and he died on Dec 25 of that year,aged 59. He is buried at Swallowfield, near Reading, the grave marked with a plain granite cross and the text "The Heavens declare the Glory of God".
Source;
Bacon G. The Record of an Aeronaut
London: John Long, 1907.
The Myers Family History -John Mackenzie Bacon
Cathy Clarke, Whangarei, New Zealand.
email; mel.clarke@clear.net.nz
Last updated 12 Feb 2003
