Hubert Latham - Early Life and Exploits

Early Life and Exploits

Latham was born in Paris into a wealthy Protestant family. His French mother's family were the bankers, Mallet Frères et Cie, and his father, Lionel Latham, was the son of an English merchant adventurer and trader of indigo and other commodities, Charles Latham, who had settled in Le Havre in 1829. Hubert Latham’s English grand-uncles were mercantile traders, merchant bankers and lawyers in the City of London and Liverpool and his home was the centuries old Château de Maillebois, near Chartres, which his father purchased from Vicomte de Maleyssie in 1882. One of Latham's maternal grand-aunts was the mother of the German Chancellor, Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg, (appointed in 1909), which made him a second cousin of the aviator.

Latham had two siblings, an older sister, Edmée, and a younger sister, Léonie. The three children were raised within the small but elite circle of Protestant high society. All three children spoke French, English and German fluently. His father, Lionel, died of pneumonia in 1885 and his mother never remarried.

Latham attended Balliol College at the University of Oxford for one academic year 1903/4 after which he fulfilled his reservist military service training obligation in Paris and then accompanied his cousin, the balloonist Jacques Faure, on a night crossing of the English Channel (from London to Paris) in a gas balloon on 11–12 February 1905. He also competed successfully in an Antoinette motor yacht in the power boat racing events at the Monaco Regatta, April 1905, in association with his cousin Jules Gastambide and Léon Levavasseur, the inventor of the Antoinette engine. He then led an exploratory expedition with friends to Abyssinia (Ethiopia) in 1906/07 during which he collected specimens for the Natural History Museum in Paris and performed survey work for the French Colonial Office. In 1908, his travels continued on to the Far East, before returning to France later that year.

His cousin René Labouchere was responsible for the development of "Antoinette" engines, and in spring of 1909 became the first passenger that Hubert Latham carried for 200 meters, 5 meters above ground at Mourmelon le Grand.