Hand-colored lithograph print depicting Robert Cocking plunging to earth in his failed parachute, saying, "Now unless some friendly dunghill receives me, I am lost forever." The print depicts the events of July 24, 1837, when Charles Green and his Nassau balloon carried Robert Cocking aloft to test his new parachute design. Cocking attended a demonstration by Andrè Jacque Garnerin in 1802, and had never forgotten how the parachute oscillated wildly back and forth on its way to the ground. After considering the problem for over three decades, the 61-year old Cocking decided that a parachute in the shape of an inverted umbrella would be more stable. His finished product featured three metal hoops to maintain the shape of the fabric and weighed some 223 pounds.
Having persuaded the proprietors of the Vauxhall Garden that the initial test of his device would be just the thing to draw a large crowd into their pleasure ground, Cocking also obtained permission to be carried to altitude dangling beneath the famed Nassau balloon, still the property of the Garden. After protesting this dangerous enterprise, Green finally agreed to make the flight, but insisted that Cocking cut himself loose from the balloon. When the time came, the aeronaut and his friend Edward Spencer, the founder of a British balloon manufacturing dynasty, shouted down to Cocking, dangling below, that they were at 5,000 feet and could rise no higher.
Free of the weight of Cocking and his parachute, the Royal Nassau shot up to an altitude of over 15,000 feet. The two aeronauts, who had foreseen this possibility, breathed oxygen through tubes until they could descend. The unfortunate Cocking fell straight to earth trailing fabric streamers, struck the ground, and died the following day. Green made a number of ascents to raise money for Cocking's widow. Why the balloon is identified as "Middlesex" is unclear,