Men Struggle On Dizzy Ledge

Firemen Try to Rescue an Insane Patient Who Wants to Jump.

NEW YORK, April 25. – Crazed by pain, caused by an abscess in one of his ears, Robert Hindman, a patient in the eye and ear hospital yesterday gave battle to three firemen on a narrow window edge of the hospital, seventy-eight feet from the ground. While his nurse was absent from the room for a moment Hindman ran to the window, leaped to the ledge, defied any one to come to him. A fire truck in charge of Captain William Clark, was summoned to capture the mad man. A ladder was run up to the high ledge and Captain Clark and two of his men ascended. When the captain reached the ledge Hindman seized him and shook him as though he were a child. At times the fireman was turned head over heels and the mad man was playing with him before hurling him to the street. The other firemen tried to reach their chief but the narrowness of the ledge would not permit. Suddenly Clark seized Hindman by the throat and pushed him toward the window where waiting attendants pulled the struggling men into the hospital ward. Hindman, who seemed to have the strength of ten men, was overpowered at last and bound hand and foot. Later he was taken to Bellevue hospital in a straight jacket.

--The Fort Wayne News, Fort Wayne, Indiana, April 25, 1904, page 1.