BRIDGE DRAMA.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 15, 19 January 1939, Page 27

BRIDGE DRAMA.

WOMAN RESCUED. HALF-HOUR ON GANTRY. YOUTH MERELY LOOKBJD ON. (From Our Own Correspondent.) SYDXEY, January 13. Since the footpaths on the harbour bridge were fenced, there have been very few falls, but one which occurred last Saturday provided a rare example of unpreparedness on the part of a spectator. As a youth named Harold Waddell was walking along the footpath on the west «side of the bridge, he saw a woman climbing over the safety fence on the east side near the north pylon. She climbed right over the fence, which curves inwards at the top, and began to let herself down it, but the youth did nothing. He said later that he did not know what to make of it. The woman, Mrs. Robin Foster, S3, of Orange, fell 15 feet to a painter's gantry and lay there, partly projecting over the water several hundred feet below her. Waddell walked across to her side of the bridge and, according t6 his own statement, watched her for nearly half an hour without making any attempt cither to aid her o; to go for assistance. He said he did not know what to do. The woman began to move nearer the edge of the gantry and had one leg over the gantry railing when a man came along. Behind the man there was a Boy Scout and the man sent the scout for the police. By this time the woman had worked herself almost over the edge and it would have needed onlv ft touch to send her over. Just in time -two police in a motor cycle outfit came along. Thev scrambled over the fence and climbed down a perpendicular ladder to the gantry. Meanwhile the ambnlancs had been called. When it arrived a stretcher was lowered, to which tie police strapped Mrs. Foeter. She was then drawn up to eafety and token to Sydney Hospital with internal and spinal injuries suffered in her fall. It was stated that ehe had been in ill-health, and a week ago had been assaulted by a bag snatcher and treated for head injuries.