LEAPS TO DEATH

Hokitika Guardian, 30 January 1933, Page 6

LEAPS TO DEATH

SOME AMAZING INSTANCE'S

SAN FRANCISCO, January 27.

During the last few months a startling mania has developed in various cities of the United States of persons plunging from top storeys of lofty buildings, especially in New York and Chicago. Moist of the cases have been of suicidal intent, although several have been attributed to persons in weakened condition accidentally overbalancing while near open windows, h’.iituraljly, the .American depression has had a great deal to do with these violent deaths, which have been almost daily in occurrence. Brokers and general business men have been largely among the death list, the business slump having engulfed many in high

positions.' Malcolm Douglas Whitman, former national tennis champion and divorced husband of San Francisco's ten milliondollar heiretes, Mrs Jennie Crocker .Henderson, committed suicide in a fivestorey lean from bis penthouse on top of a Now York skyscraper building. Whitman’s body crashed into the courtyard of an adjoining apartment building, and be was dead when tenants reached the spot. The millionaire and former tennis star had been suffering from a nervous breakdown, according to bis business associates. They also said he had been unable to forget the tragic death of his sixteen-yc-ar-old daughter, Mary, a few months previously.