Stanley Spencer, with his brothers, ran a balloon factory at Highbury in North London. In 1902 they built a small 20,000 cu.ft capacity airship constructed along the lines of the Santos-Dumont craft.

 

The first successful navigable flight in Great Britain of a manned, powered aircraft took place on 22 September 1902, when Stanley Spencer piloting his airship No.1 flew from Crystal Palace via St Pauls to Eastcote Middlesex, a distance of 28 miles, in 94 minutes.

 

Spencer built a series of airships, but more powerful, similar to the No.1, up to the outbreak of the war. Finance was in part by the use of advertising slogans on the envelopes: Boveril being one of the companies that utilised this advertising medium.

Stanley Spencer died from malaria in 1904.