1920
BUFFALO, N. Y. — Bobby Leech, the barrel wizard of Niagara Falls, is to risk again the plunge of death over the great Canadian cataracts. He announced that on Aug. 25 he will attempt to successfully duplicate his barrel trip of 1911.
Leech is one of the few who have ridden the falls and the rapids and lived to tell the story. Only a few weeks ago Charles G. Stephen lost his life in an attempt to match Leech's feat. Stephen's barrel was shattered at the base of the great falls, and splintered sections of it, gathered from the stream far below, constituted the first silent testimony of his fate.
In his second gamble with death Leech is playing for a stake of $2,500 and shares of stock in a Canadian steel company. He wins both if he lives. Both are offered by the steel company, which is to make Leech's barrel, because it wishes its product to be submitted to a supreme test of endurance.
Leech will superintend the construction of the barrel. It will be made of aluminum and steel and of an egg-shaped design which Leech has drawn. He also will attend to every detail of the preparation of the steel-treated leather housing in which he will be held within the barrel. He has no doubt that the trip will succeed and declines to be moved by the tragic end suffered by those who have dared and failed before and since his successful trip over the falls nine years ago.
And, apparently, Leech is not the only one who is willing to take the trip, altho he happens to be the only one actually preparing to do so. The mayor has received scores of letters since Stephen's death, expressing a willingness on the part of individuals to risk the fall of death.
—The Saturday Blade, Chicago, Aug. 7, 1920, p. 3.
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