STEEPLEJACK'S ORDEAL

Taranaki Herald, Volume LIV, Issue 13791, 24 October 1908, Page 8

STEEPLEJACK'S ORDEAL

FALLING CLUTCH AT A 7{OPE 170 FKET IN THE AIK.

Ainsworth. a Bradford steeplejack, described one day last month to jurymen, who could not repress a shudder, how be «as saved by a lucky clutch at a rope-end whilst falling with Ins comrade from a mill chimney 170 teet in height. Conway, the other steeplejack, was not so fortunate, and met an instaneous death. The men had climbed the great stack in the usual way, by clamping ladder upon ladder to the brick until the ladders reached the top. They tested every stave of the ladder t\s ice in their dangerous work. At the end they sat on a plank placed across two staves. Suddenly one of the staves on which they rested broke, the plank tilted beneath them, and instantly they were in the air, falling to the earth 170 feet below. As he fell a swinging rope whipped across Ainsworth's band, and his fingers closed upon it. The jerk was terrible, but his grip was made marvellously strong by the knowledge that it meant life or death.

tie hung, suspended, whilst his comrade was already mangled and dead on the earth. His hold was precarious and slippery; by great muscular exertion ho got his other hand to the rope. Then dangling, he struggled up slowly -a terrible test of strength lasting several minutes. He won. He reached one of the ladders and clung there. Then, as be realised that he lived and was practically safe, he slowly descended to the group which had conveyed away his comrade's remains. Ainsworth denied that a flash of lightning, seen at the instant he fell, caused the catastrophe. The jury, in Couway's case, returned a verdift of "Accident."