The miracle fall -The luckiest children alive. . . those were little Elsie Brown and her 12-year-old sister Ruby who survived a spectacular murder attempt by their father on the Clifton Suspension Bridge in September, 1896.
Charles Brown, a Birmingham grocer, was bankrupt and losing his mind. He had five children and could no longer support his family. In despair he took the two girls all the way to Bristol and to the Suspension Bridge.
The wretched children were forced to walk up and down in the darkness, howling winds and pouring rain for an hour until their maddened father suddenly seized first Ruby and then Elsie and hurled them over the parapet.
The girls’ guardian angels must have been on overtime that dreadful night. For the winds were so violent that great up-currents of air somehow caught the falling bodies and cushioned their falls.
And a further chance in a million. The girls both splashed into the murky waters of the River Avon within a few feet of a passing pilot boat. It was the work of a moment to drag the terrified youngsters to safety.
Only a handful of people have survived the terrible fall from the Clifton Suspension Bridge. The most celebrated was young lover Sarah Ann Henley.
Sarah was a local girl from St Philip’s in Bristol. In 1885 she was 22 and working in a Bristol factory when she was jilted by her boyfriend.
The heartbroken girl made her way up from industrial St Philips to Clifton and the bridge and, in despair, she leapt from the parapet. She was saved by victorian women’s fashion.
This was the age of wide skirts and voluminous petticoats and as she tumbled through the air, this mass of material acted like a sort of parachute to break her fall. Instead of crashing like a stone she drifted in the wind and sailed across to a sticky landing in the deep mud of the riverside.
The drama wasn’t over. Her rescue from the mud was a difficult business but at last she was brought safely to firm ground and then to hospital where she was found, amazingly, to have suffered no more than a few light bruises but deep shock. Sarah’s tale has a happy ending. She later married, lived to the ripe old age of 84 and was quite a celebrity.
Did he dive or didn’t he?
Only one person has claimed to have made the daredevil dive from the Clifton Suspension Bridge into the River Avon more than 250 foot below and survived - American adventurer Lawrence Donovan.
This noisy self-publicist arrived in Bristol in 1889. He told everyone who would listen to him that he had already dived from the Brooklyn Bridge in New York, half the height of its British counterpart, and that he was ready for Clifton’s far greater challenge.
The day and time were announced and crowds gathered to watch his spectacular attempt. Donovan made a great show of stomping back and forth along the bridge, but always with police alongside him. Whenever he made the slightest move to go near the edge, he was promptly restrained by the officers. After a while the crowds melted away, disappointed.
But one night shortly afterwards a carriage driven by two men came clattering onto the bridge. Out came a figure which plunged into the water below. Almost immediately afterwards Donovan was rescued on the Leigh Woods side of the river, claiming he had made his dive weanng a specially-designed metal body protector.
Onlookers say it was a dummy, not Donovan, which had sailed through the air and smashed into the water. Donovan was taken to hospital at once. The sceptical staff who examined the remarkably unharmed American remarked dourly that the adventurer was suffering from 'an ailment certainly not caused by a jump from the bridge'.
The Golden Gate Bridge may be more glamorous, and that one in Japan may be longer, but the Clifton Suspension Bridge is a magnificent piece of Victorian engineering, spanning the breathtaking Avon Gorge high above the waters - or more usually mud - of the River Avon. It is as much a symbol of the city as the Eiffel Tower is of Paris or the Leaning Tower is of Pisa.
Unfortunately the bridge has often been used for suicide attempts. The road below has now been covered over to prevent road accidents as a result of 'jumpers'. There is a high safety railing to help prevent suicides, and the Samaritans have a call box at the towers either end of the bridge, so that people in distress have an alternative to jumping.
Vimal Dajibhai was a 24-year-old electronics graduate who worked at Marconi Underwater Systems in Croxley Green. In August 1986 his crumpled body was found lying on the pavement 240 feet below the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol.
An inquest was unable to determine whether Dajibhai had been pushed off the bridge or whether he had jumped. There had been no witnesses. The verdict was left open. Yet, authorities did their best to pin his death on suicide.
A man unknown in his late 20's to early 30's was found in the early hours of the morning on the 19th of May 1996 at the bottom of Clifton Suspension bridge, Bristol. Possessions found on him, an old student card with all details scratched off, was found with various other possessions in a blue holdall.
He was a well built man with size 11 shoes and had slightly receeding brown/fair hair and blue/grey eyes. He was wearing blue 'Lee' denim jeans, a black leather jacket, a black sweatshirt with 3 buttons at the neck and brown boots. He had no scars or tattoos. Other items in his possession were Silk Cut cigarettes, an old copy of Sir Thomas More's 16th century Utopia, a well used copy of the Bible, a paperback copy of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S Thompson, and a book of Batman stories.
His holdall also held a sleeping bag, clothes, soap, razors, a tin opener, a corkscrew, a red penny whistle, a road map of Britain and a cardboard sign saying 'Sleeping rough, thank you'.
The Dangerous Sports Club was founded by David Kirke, Chris Baker and Ed Hulton. They first came to wide public attention by inventing bungee jumping, by making the first modern jumps on 1 April 1979, from the Clifton Suspension Bridge, Bristol, England. This was treated as a novelty for a few years, then became a craze for young people, and is now an established industry for thrill seekers.
Dangerous Sports Club came to town and won themselves a place on front pages across the world. Their plan? The most outrageous, daredevil April Fool's Day stunt of them all. The club's most reckless members were planning to jump off the Clifton Suspension Bridge. And they succeeded. The next day's Post reported: 'Four daredevils jumped off Clifton Suspension Bridge as an April Fool's Day stunt—and lived to drink a champagne toast dangling halfway down the Avon Gorge.
'The four—all members of the exclusive Dangerous Sports Club—took the terrifying 250 ft plunge with only two-inch thick elasticated ropes between them and a sticky end in the murky waters of the River Avon. 'Nothing had been left to chance in planning the carefully-detailed stunt, except whether the 100ft ropes would be strong enough to hold them as they plummeted down at 50 mph.
'The only practice jumps they had done were from a tree in a friend's garden. 'Police and the Bridge authorities had been tipped off earlier that a stunt was planned and security was tight as the jump deadline of 6 a.m. passed without incident. 'Then, shortly before 8.30 a.m., three cars drove on to the bridge from Clifton and the four leapt out. They quickly secured their harnesses and fixed the ropes to the Bridge supports. 'Cheered on by friends from Oxford and Bristol Universities, expedition leader David Kirk, Alan Weston, Simon Keeling and Tim Hunt, younger brother of racing driver James Hunt, dropped the ropes over the side. 'Lecturer Mr Kirk was the first to jump, wearing morning dress with a topper strapped under his chin and clutching a bottle of champagne for luck.
'Simon Keeling (22) another Oxford post-graduate followed with diplomat's son Alan Weston (23) close on his heels. 'Tim Hunt shut his eyes before jumping and then all four dangled patiently waiting to be hauled up as police closed the bridge to traffic for 20 minutes. 'One spectator, Mr Nick Barrett, an Oxford student, said; 'They must have bounced down about 200 feet and then up to 70 feet and then down again.' 'All four were then taken to Southmead police station—Simon nursing a bruised jaw after the rope hit him on his way down.
'Later David said: 'It was a wonderful experience, very exhilarating.' 'The Dangerous Sports Club chose the Clifton Suspension Bridge—Britain's highest suspended span—because nobody had staged a controlled jump there before.'
Tim Hunt walked onto the bridge, attached a lengthy bungee cord, and leapt off. His plan was to set himself on fire, cut the cord, and drop into the river below, quenching the flames. Unfortunately his knife was not up to the task. The blazing man dangled over the river for 26 interminable seconds, before he found a spare knife and severed the rope. At long last he plunged into the river, which extinguished the flames, and swam off.
Tim was taken to the Bristol Royal Infirmary and later transferred to the Burn Unit in the city. A spokesperson for the Dangerous Sports Club told the BBC, 'His heart is in the right place, but stunt men usually put on flame-retardant suits.' Tim himself told the BBC that it was a thrill-seeking stunt that went horribly wrong. After that brief comment, he demanded 1000 pounds for a full interview.
In 1985, Shirley Bassey (Goldfinger) had a daughter named Samantha, that was found below it, having fallen from the bridge. Some say suicide, Shirley insists she was pushed.
West fans of superstar Shirley Bassey, whose daughter died in Bristol 18 years ago, last night welcomed the singer opening her heart about the tragedy for the first time. The Welsh diva yesterday told of the devastating death of 21-year-old Samantha Bassey, who was found at the bottom of Clifton Suspension Bridge in 1985.
And she admitted the loss of her daughter still haunts her. Bassey said: 'They make out she committed suicide, but every time someone writes that, it's like a stab of pain in my heart.
'Samantha would never have done that. She enjoyed having a go at me too much.
'She had my resolve and was strong like me. We clashed, yes. But then we were so similar.'
The incident has always been surrounded in mystery. The body of Samantha was found in Avon Gorge after she had spent an evening at a pub in Bristol.
The 66-year-old singing sensation admitted it was the lowest point in a roller-coaster private life.
She said: 'I tortured myself. Samantha's death had been my fault. If I'd been a better mother... so many thoughts run through your head.'
Now enjoying her 50th year in showbiz, Bassey's incredible singing success has been in contrast to a chequered life off-stage.
Born in the Tiger Bay (Splott) area of Cardiff in 1937, she was the youngest of six sisters and one brother.
Her mother was Welsh and her father Nigerian. He disappeared when she was two.
Samantha's father, the openly homosexual B-movie director Kenneth Hume, killed himself at 40.
Shirley also divorced her second husband and manager Sergio Novak after 10 years of marriage.
But the shock of losing her daughter hit her hardest, and even led to Bassey temporarily losing her famous voice.
'It was a combination of the guilt and the grief and the nervous strain,' she said.
'It didn't send me round the bend. It could have done, but it didn't. That battling instinct came out again and told me to get up and get out on stage.
'I couldn't sit around for ever feeling sorry for myself. Samantha wouldn't have wanted that.'
Two weeks later, Bassey walked on to the stage of New York's Carnegie Hall, dressed in a simple black gown - and the audience greeted her with a five-minute standing ovation.
'Their response was incredible,' she said, 'so uplifting.' Meanwhile, the legendary singer has spent the rest of her life putting some of the wave of personal emotions into her performances.
'I've always been rather dramatic,' she said.
'I noticed that audiences responded to that. It makes them feel I'm telling them a bit about my life.'
THE first person to lose their life on the bridge was George Green, of Portishead. That was in May 1866 — 18 months after the bridge had first opened. A newspaper report of the time described him as 'a family man' whose brothers were well known in the city as an alderman and shipowner.
'He presented himself at the toll house and appeared to be in thoughtful mood', the report continued, 'he was observed to press his hand to his head as if suffering from some painful sensation there. Almost immediately afterwards he placed his hands upon the railings, which are about four feet high, and jumped over. His body was observed to twirl over as it descended and then to fall with a heavy thud upon the mud of the Avon, where the tide had receded'.
Since then, about 400 other souls have taken their own lives by jumping from the bridge.
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