When Gladys Ingle died in 1981 at the age of 82, hardly anyone noticed. Gladys had moved into the home of her daughter, Bonnie, and had enjoyed the love and care of her family in her waning weeks of life. To be sure, the local newspaper printed its obituary. And it was then that the public found out that, some sixty years before, Gladys had been a professional walker.
Yes, that is not a typo. In the 1920s, Gladys was paid money for people to come and watch her walk. In fact, she was part of a group of professional walkers. It’s obvious to us today that the 1920s was a wacky time filled with things like dance marathons, crazy stunts, barnstorming, and the like, and the public was eager to pay for such things. The booming economy of the Roaring ’20s gave disposable income to the growing the middle class in the United States, and those folks wanted to spend it. So there was actually a market for people like Gladys to make money by, well, being paid for people to watch her walk.
Gladys had been born in Washington state. She had a reputation as a young girl of being somewhat of a tomboy. She was a bit of a cat, known for being able to walk on the tops of picket fences while barefoot. So it’s no wonder she made money for walking when she got older. She also learned to ride a motorcycle when only a teenager at a time when such activities were seen as being incredibly unladylike. To make matters worse in the eyes of polite society, Gladys began racing the motorbikes and events against men–and winning some of those races.
As a young adult, she moved to southern California and continued her racing and expanding her risky pastimes. She tried parachuting and ballooning. And she even managed to get some credits as a stunt double in some Hollywood films of the Silent Film era. But it was when she got her position as a walker that Gladys truly made a name for herself, joining the group of other professional walkers and making good money.
By the way, the name of the group that Gladys was in that was paid to walk was known as the 13 Black Cats. The name of the group should tell you that the group flaunted their distain of things like lucky charms and other such superstitions. Now, such a thing might seem like bravery if Gladys and her fellow walkers performed their perambulations on the ground. But, as you probably have deduced by now, Gladys Ingle wasn’t paid to walk on the ground.
No, Gladys Ingle made her money and reputation walking not on the ground but rather several hundred feet in the sky–and across the wings of airplanes and from one airplane to another more than 300 times in her career.
The Rest of the Story 