Steeplejacks Have Daring

Auckland Star, Volume LXIX, Issue 220, 17 September 1938, Page 12 (Supplement)

Steeplejacks Have Daring

—Copyright

THE steeplejack's trade, like blacksmithing, candlemaking, and a score of similar occupations, has been a vanishing one for years, although it is improbable it will ever die out completely. Time, however, has robbed it of much of its glamour. A long «erie« of narrow ladders extending up the steeple of a church, ami a tiny human figure at work far above the street, are not regarded to-day, when they are seen, in the same romantic light a* of yore. Perhaps we live in an age more accustomed to danger; or, maybe, with reliable equipment and better training, the «teeplejack'« work is not so hazardous m it used to be.

By Steven Henty

There are many instances of the trade of steeple jacking being followed by the same family for generation®. Heredity is said to have been the making, or otherwise, of many a "jack." One descendant of a long line of steeplejacks said that he owed his success to the daring of his Irish father, combined with the prudence of his Scottish mother. Hh father had four - serious accidents—the last being fatal.

An old steeplejack can spin as many yarns as can a sailor. His stories of tragedy heroism, horror and comedy often date back so far that it is obvious they have been handed down for generations, along with the trade.

„ k® .f? rll€r steeplejack wa« not alone .. er , a " d repairer of steeples. Stunting and steeple flying," he often collected a good handful of ca»h from onlookers. Violante, after completing si,rlk ni n • " pire of St. Martin's Church, Charing Cross, slid head first down a rope stretching from the top of the spire to the Royal Mewa, across M Martin s Lane, winning a £20 waeer and receiving a pile of coins from an admiring crowd.

Wa *\ . en k* ll chimneys had no ladder reaching to their summit, and the steeplejack had to send a line to the chimney top by kite. One "jack," dropping his communication line, found himself unhappily marooned. There was a possibility of his not being rescued for days, as the weather was not favourable to kite flying. Removing his boots, the "jack" unravelled his worsted stockings, using the long thread he so obtained to procure a line from his friends below.

While we "ground lubbers" may regard the steeplejack as a man with iron, nerves, this is actually not the case. He is more alive to the perils of his calling than are we. His work is most exact" ing, a wrong thought at a wrong moment might cost him hia life.

Surviving a fall from a considerable height, a steeplejack coined a phrase which became famous: "The horror of empty ait - ."