The ascent of hydrogen and hot-air balloons was a popular attraction at London's pleasure gardens during the 19th century. This shows spectators in the Elliptical Pavilion at Kensington's Batty's Hippodrome on 2nd June 1851 watching the ascent of John Hampton's balloon 'Erin-Go-Bragh' - an anglicisation of the Irish word meaning 'Ireland for Ever.'

This balloon was made of silk woven in Dublin, to replace the balloon destroyed by fire in a descent in October 1844 after an ascent from Dublin's Portobello Gardens. John Hampton described 'Erin-Go-Bragh' as the largest balloon but one ever made, and the biggest ever made in Ireland. The cost of its construction was defrayed by public subscription form the inhabitants of Dublin. Ninety feet high by one hundred and twenty feet in circumference, it was decorated by two large medallions, one bearing a figure of Britannia and the other a representation of Hibernia and her wolf-dog, and between them the inscription 'Erin-Go-Bragh'.

In October 1838 John Hampton had become the first man to make a successful parachute descent in England when he jumped from his hot air balloon near Cheltenham from a height of about 9000 feet in a parachute made of canvas stretched over a framework of whalebone ribs and bamboo stretchers, attached by a copper tube to a small wicker basket.