Leech Plans Second Plunge Over Niagara

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.

Keeps His Youth By Risking Life

1920

Man Does Peril Stunts to Stave Off Age

Says Fear is "Vampire" That Breaks One's Spirit

LOS ANGELES -- Physical fear and undue caution, to which the softened city dweller becomes increasingly subject, are the twin vampires that help prematurely to steal away a man's youth and break his spirit.

Out of this conviction, L. W. Walker, capitalist, philanthropist and famous daredevil of 64 years, has evolved a singular formula for staving off "age" while growing old.

Whenever he sees the "vamps" in the offing he promptly takes 'em out on a mountain top, into the tip of a giant tree or drapes himself over a precipice with them, and pronto -- they're gone.

Wins Name as Daredevil

For years Walker has performed hazardous feats that have won him a name in the clan of daredevils. And, to add zest to his adventures, he garnishes them with wager readily taken by men already in the grip of fear.

His winnings -- and he seldom loses when he attempts a humanly possible exploit -- are devoted to the poor and the handicapped.

Here are some of Walker's most recent stunts, all wage-winners (and remember he's 64!):

Stood out at right angles half way up a 100-foot tree, one foot in the crotch of a limb.

Hung by the knees, head down, from topmost branch of a towering pine.

Stood erect, hands free, on the top of another tree leaning over a deep chasm.

Climbed an almost vertical mountain wall to a point which many hardy young mountaineers had pronounced inaccessible.

Scaled a cliff where the foothold was so precarious that he had to be rescued with ropes from above.

Dived Among Sharks

Walker has proof of many other equally hair-raising performances, and continues to add to the list whenever he feels in need of a "bracer."

Once he dived into a school of sharks that lashed away in terror as the "old" man splashed his defiance.

He is now taking up aviation by way of further diversion and conquest of fear, claiming that he is growing steadily younger as his life-span lengthens toward the proverbial three-score-and-ten.

As modest as he is fearless, Walker gives freely, but without ostentation, from his ample funds to those he feels deserving.

Woman Scales Stack 225 Feet High on Dare

1909

Makes Trip in Painter's Swing to Chimney Top at Rockford, Ill., While Friends Watch.

Rockford, Ill., Oct. 9 — Rather than take the "dare" of her friends, Mrs. L. D. Morris yesterday made a trip alone in a painter's swing to the top of a chimney 225 feet high. She went up on the outside of the chimney, perched on a narrow board secured between two ropes, while scores looked on in anxiety.

At the top Mrs. Morris waved her handkerchief to the group below, and after she had spent a few minutes enjoying the view, was let down, none the worse for her experience.

The stack is a new one, almost completed, and the tallest in Rockford.

"A Rockford woman went to the top of the water works chimney on an inside elevator," said Mrs. Morris. "I said I had nerve to go up on the outside of a higher one in a painter's swing, although they wouldn't believe me, but I did it. The view repaid me."

—The Cedar Rapids Evening Gazette, Cedar Rapids, IA, Oct. 9, 1909, p. 9.

'Crash Of Death' Stunt Driver In Hair-Raising Performance

Ogden, Utah, 1937

STUNTER FLIPS AUTO ON BACK

'Crash Of Death' Performed Before Small Crowd At Stadium

Before a small and shivering crowd of spectators, Jerry Edwards, 32-year-old Detroit stunt driver, presented his hair-raising "crash of death" performance Saturday night in the Ogden stadium.

"This is one of the smallest crowds I've ever showed before," Edwards told the onlookers through a loud-speaking system. "But I have to work just as hard for you as I do when I perform before 20,000 people, as I have often done."

PRECEDES CAMPAIGN

Edwards was brought here under the auspices of the junior chamber of commerce as the forerunner of a county-wide safety week campaign sponsored by a citizens' safety council, comprising Ogden service clubs.

The climax to the show, in which Edwards used two stock light sedans, came when the dare-devil sped his crimson machine up a wooden platform, crashing full somersault and bottoms-up again on the sodded field.

NO SERIOUS HURTS

During the four years Edwards has been presenting his death-defying stunts, he has never suffered serious injury, although he has been put out of "commission" temporarily and unable to finish his show.

"The best thing to do when you have a flat tire is to step on the gas — not the brakes," Edwards told the crowd.

He said one of the best precautions against accidents is to keep both hands firmly on the steering wheel.

—The Ogden Standard-Examiner, Ogden City, Utah, May 9, 1937, page 10A.