YOUNG MAN LEAPS TO DEATH

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22465, 28 July 1938, Page 11

YOUNG MAN LEAPS TO DEATH

ELEVEN HOURS ON WINDOW LEDGE SUICIDE IN NEW YORK STREET WATCHING CROWDS CAUSE SERIOUS TRAFFIC JAM (UNITED TRESS ASSOCIATION —COPYRIGHT.) (Received July 27, 10 p.m.) NEW YORK, July 26. After remaining for 11 hours on a ledge outside the seventeenthstorey window, of a Fifth avenue hotel, where he refused all entreaties to come inside to safety, John Ward, aged 26, member of a well-known Chicago family, jumped to his death. The suicide was watched by thousands, who were helpless to prevent it. and caused one of the worst traffic jams in the history of New York. Ward, who met his sister in a room in the hotel, apparently quarrelled with her and sprang out of the window to the ledge. From there he answered all the pleas of his sister, who alternately fainted and implored him to return, with: “I want to be let alone. I’ll think this thing out for myself.” Hours passed with Ward smoking innumerable cigarettes and drinking glasses of water placed out on the ledge for him. He frequently approached the edge, causing screams from the spectators below of “Don’t jump.” The police thought up several schemes to get him inside; but discarded them, fearing that Ward might leap from the ledge. Radio Station’s Offer A psychiatrist 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. A priest asked Ward’s religion and received an indifferent reply, “I do not know. 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 Ward and threw a picture on to the studio screen. Ultimately the Deputy-Chief of Police, Inspector Ryan, arrived, extremely angry. “Something will have to be done. All the Manhattan traffic is tied up,” he said. In the meantime newspapers and wireless had spread the news throughout New York and thousands visited the scene. The police shut off all traffic in the street in front of the hotel, including pedestrians, admitting only journalists and photographers, nearly 200 of whom maintained a vwpl i n the street. Newsreel set up at several vantage points. Spectators thronged the nearby streets until scores of oolice arrived and ordered them to keep moving. Thereafter there was a_ continuous mass of humanity moving slowly along any street from which a glimpse could be had. Ward received two telephone calls and the police passed the telephone out through the window. One was from a radio station offering 100 dollars for a brief broadcast from the ledge. Ward refused the offer. The identity of the other caller was not learned. The police posted a sturdy patrolman at the window opening on to the ledge with orders to seize Ward if he attempted to leap or otherwise to try to coax him inside. The patrolman said: “My God, man, I have a wife and three children. If you try to jump I have got to grab you and you might c ,3 rr X me along. Please come inside. Ward replied: “If I jump you had better not grab me.” Life Net Across Street Two hours after darkness fell the police had thought Ward’s resolution to jump seemed to be wavering, possibly because of sedatives administered in the water the advice of the psychiatrist. Ward asked to talk on the telephone with his mother, who is ill at Southampton, saying; “After a talk with her I may come in.” • The police had stretched a life net across the street, but it was feared that a body would crash through it. Ward eventually jumped after remaining on the ledge for nearly 11 hours. His body crashed through the iron and glass verandah of the hotel. Thousands of spectators, many of whom had been standing in the street or sitting in windows or On roofs for several hours, gasped and screamed with horror. It is estimated that at least 100,000 spectators saw Ward some time during the day. * , , , Police and firemen had been hauling up a life net and had reached the fourteenth floor when Ward jumped. They had planned to anchor it at the sixteenth floor, to lower ropes from the eighteenth floor and then suddenly to haul up the net, thus trapping Ward against the building. Ward, however, leaned over the edge and saw it coming and jumped. It was repeatedly suggested that a lariat should be' dropped over him from above, but the overhanging cornice of the eighteenth floor made this .impossible. The police said Ward had twice previously attempted to commit suicide, once when he slashed his throat, and on the second occasion when he leaped off a bridge into a river, where he was rescued. It was subsequently stated that Ward was released last November from a • mental hospital, and the quarrel with his sister is believed to have been mainly due to the fear that he would be recommitted.