PLUCKY CIRCUS GIRL

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIII, Issue 22350, 22 February 1936, Page 28 (Supplement)

PLUCKY CIRCUS GIRL

TRAGEDY NARROWLY AVERTED FAINTING-FIT IN MID-AIR ROPE CAUGHT AUTOMATICALLY The crowd at the Olympia circus, London, recently saw a seventeen-year-old girl faint while swinging on a rope 70 feet above their heads. She was Heritte, of the Five Carlos, the high wire performers. Her three brothers, standing on the three-feet square platform from which they give their dizzy performance, saw their sister's taut, swinging body go suddenly limp. They knew that in a second her grip would loosen, and she would hurtle down to the ring. They clutched at her and pulled her on to the platform beside them. There was barely room for all of them— certainly no room to try to revive the unconscious girl. They looped a rope under her arms and lowered her to the ground, where attendants and others carried her to her dressing room. , There it was ten minutes before she opened her eyes to see her mother and brothers standing around her. When at last she recovered her speech she bad no memory of what had happened. "Quick," she said. " What are you waiting here for? We shall be late. Let me go up." She did not know her act was over. Sir. Bernard Mills went to her room and wanted to fetch a doctor, but Heritte and her brothers refused. They are their own doctors. In the morning Heritte had been feverish. She had a temperature. Her brothers begged her not to go. But Heritte insisted on going through with it. The act had reached its climax, where two of the brothers ride bicvcles on the wire joined together

by a steel bar on their shoulders. On this bar an ordinary wooden chair is balanced. Carl, leader oi: the troupe, sits on the chair with Heritte standing behind him. In the middle of the wire Carl stands up and sits on the back of the chair, and Heritte, climbing to his shoulders, stands erect and waves. A few minutes before her turn came her forehead was cold and clammy. Her pulse was running at over 100, but she went on. " She was waving this afternoon," Carl said to a press representative, " when she suddenly said, 'l'm dizzy, I shall fall.' I said, 'Pull yourself together. Hold on.' " I gave the word to go forward, for I knew she could oot last many seconds. Her body had all gone limp. As we reached the platform I shouted, 'Get your rope, mind US " She fell on to it, her hands touched it automatically; she slithered down it, and we just managed to pull her on to the platform. It was, I think, the worst minute of my life." Yet, after this narrow escape, Heritte insisted on going on at the evening performance.