TRAGEDY AT FAIR

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 678, 1 June 1929, Page 10 (Supplement)

TRAGEDY AT FAIR

ROPE-WALKER’S COLLAPSE CRASH THROUGH TARPAULIN Hundreds of people saw a tragedy at a fair ground at Southall, Middlesex, recently, when an elderly tightrope walker was taken ill on the rape 50ft above the ground. After hanging unconscious for five minutes he crashed through a tarpaulin held beneath him on to the ground.! He was rushed by ambulance to the Ealing Hospital, where he was found to be dead. The man—Mr. Theodore Gappa, aged 62, of 24 Milton Road, Herne Bay, S.W. —had been in ill-health for some days, but is believed to have insisted on performing his last act as the proceeds of the fair were to be given to assisting the family of an elderly almost blind man and his devoted grandchild, who were killed by a motor-lorry at Southall., The tightrope walker was billed as “Dare-Devil Orion.” A vivid account of the accident was given to a “Daily Mail’.’ reporter by an eye-witness, Mr. E. J. Saunders of Beaconsfield Road, Southall, who said: “The tightrope walker was performing on a high and long rope stretched across the field at Hay’s Bridge, near the Uxbridge Road. “When he was half-way across he ! sat on the rope. At first the great I crowd watching him thought it was ! part of the entertainment, j “It was then realised that he was j ill. for he did not speak and he hung i head-downwards. Some of the show i people brought a tarpaulin and held it : beneath him. I "To the horror of the spectators, he j crashed right through the tarpaulin to j the ground, where he lay motionless.” : It is understood that Mr. Gappa's j daughter met her death in a similar way some years ago.