THEATRICAL SUICIDE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 28 July 1938, Page 7

THEATRICAL SUICIDE

MAN JUMPS FROM 17TH FLOOR IN NEW YORK SPECTATORS JAM CITY TRAFFIC APPEALS AND RESCUE ATTEMPTS FAIL By Telegraph—Press Association. Copyright. NEW YORK, July 27. John Ward, aged 26, a member of a prominent social family in Chicago, paced morosely along a narrow ledge 17 floors high outside a well-known Fifth Avenue hotel from noon until evening today, and Anally jumped off and was killed. At intervals through the afternoon he threatened that he would jump while his sister, a psychiatrist, police officers, and a priest from the nearby St Patrick’s Cathedral pleaded with him to return to safety. Tens of thousands of horrified watchers in the street below produced one of the worst traffic jams in the city’s history. Ward had remained on the ledge nearly 11 hours before he finally jumped. His body crashed through the iron and glass marquee of the hotel and .lay battered and bleeding in the street. It is estimated that at least 100,001 spectators saw Ward some time during the day. LIFE NET RIGGED Police and firemen, hauling up a lifenet, had reached the fourteenth floor when Ward jumped. They had planned to anchor the net at the sixteenth floor, lower ropes from the eighteenth floor and then suddenly haul up the net, thus trapping Ward against the building. But he leaned over the edge, saw it coming and jumped. It was repeatedly suggested that a lariat be dropped over him from above but the overhanging cornice of the eighteenth floor made this impossible. Ward, who met his sister in a room of the hotel, apparently quarrelled with her and sprang out on to the window ledge. There, all he answered to the pleas of his sister, who alternately fainted and implored him tc return, was, “I want to be left alone. I’ll think out this thing for myself.” Hours passed, while Ward smoked innumerable cigarettes and drank glasses of water which were placed out on the ledge for him. He frequently approached the edge, causing screams from the spectators of “Don’t jump.” The ; police thought of several schemes to get him inside, but discarded them, fearing that Ward might leap. A CROWD COMPLEX - The psychiatrist, who was summoned from the Bellevue Hospital, declared that Ward was suffering from a crowd complex. Having got an audience he wished to hold it as long as possible. The priest, who asked Ward’s religion, received the indifferent reply,. “I do not know, a Presbyterian, I guess.” The priest said, “You ought to be a good fellow, and come in.” The Radio City television studios across the street from the hotel turned a televisor on to Ward and threw a picture on to a screen in the studio. Ultimately the Deputy Chief of Police, Inspector Ryan, arrived, extremely angry. “Something will have to be done,” he said, “all Manhattan is tied up. Somebody has to do something.” Two hours after darkness the police thought that the resolution to jump seemed to be wavering, possibly due tc sedatives administered in the water on the advice of the psychiatrist. Ward asked to talk on the telephone with his mother, who is ill in Southampton saying, “After a talk with her I may come in.” It was subsequently stated that Ward had been released last November from a mental hospital. The quarrel with his sister is believed to have been mainly due to the fear that he be recommitted. The police said that Ward had twice previously attempted to commit suicide, once when he slashed his throat and the second occasion when he leaped off a bridge into a river where he was rescued.