Monsieur Garnerin, the Intrepid Aeronaut

André Jacques Garnerin (1769-1823) made balloon ascents in the 1780s and he made his first parachute jump from a balloon in 1797 in Paris. With his wife and niece he climbed from the balloon into a basket that the parachute was attached to before releasing the balloon. The Garnerins came to England in 1802 during the brief peace and made several balloon ascents in London and around the country before Garnerin made a parachute descent over London on 21 September. The balloon ascended from North Audley Street to a height of 8,000 feet before he descended in his parachute to a field near St Pancras Church.

Locker was a naval clerk, the son of Captain William Locker, a friend of Nelson's who had been the lieutenant-governor of Greenwich Naval Hospital. Before his death in 1800, he had suggested the Painted Hall be used as a National Gallery of Marine Paintings, which his son, by then secretary of the Hospital, initiated in 1823, the pictures eventually becoming the foundation of the National Maritime Museum's collection. A founder of the Athenaeum, Locker was the friend of many poets, politicians and literary men and he was also a talented amateur artist, friendly with many artists and a collector of their works which he lent to the first loan exhibition at the Old Watercolour Society in 1823.