Did investors really jump to their deaths when the stock market crashed in ?

If so, was it just on Wall Street or all over the country? Admit it, you want this to be true. You want to believe there was a time when ruined tycoons, brought low through their own foolishness and greed, would do the decent thing and commit suicide, in contrast to the modern practice of going before a congressional committee and taking the fifth. In short, you want to believe in a better world. And you know what? People wanted to believe in it at the time. Even while the financial meltdown was in progress, reporters in downtown Manhattan were checking out a rumor that 11 busted brokers had jumped out of windows.

London newspapers gleefully told of pedestrians threading their way through the bodies of fallen speculators.

Legend has it that the cops dragged one poor guy off a ledge, only to discover that he was just a window washer. Will Rogers observed, "When Wall Street took that tail spin, you had to stand in line to get a window to jump out of, and speculators were selling space for bodies in the East River. Who can blame them? My life savings are gone! These people DESERVE TO DIE!

Well, they probably did, but they probably didn't, at least not on October 24 or the even more catastrophic Black Tuesday, October No less an authority than economist John Kenneth Galbraith addressed the subject in his book The Great Crash,first published in That's not to say that a few failed investors, executives, etc.

But the suicides happened all around the country, didn't necessarily involve jumping out the window, and for the most part didn't take place immediately following the crash. Several well-publicized suicides did fulfill the stereotype. Winston Churchill, visiting New York, was awakened the day after Black Tuesday by the noise of a crowd outside the Savoy-Plaza Hotel.

The Year of the Great Crash historian William K. Klingaman says asphyxiation by gas was the most common forex data feed providers of doing oneself in, although there was considerable variety.

history - Stock Market Crash of Did Wall Street investors jump off buildings? - Skeptics Stack Exchange

The wife of a Long Island broker shot herself in the heart; a utilities executive in Rochester, New York, shut himself in his bathroom and opened a wall jet of illuminating gas; a St. Louis broker swallowed poison; a Philadelphia financier shot himself in his athletic club; a divorcee in Allentown, Pennsylvania, closed the doors and windows of analyst binary options trading system home and turned on a gas oven.

October Stock Market Crash Suicides by Worst Stock Market Crashes

In Milwaukee, one gentleman who took his own life suicides due stock market crash 1929 a note that read, 'My body should go to science, my soul to Andrew W. Mellon, and sympathy to my creditors. You have to admire a guy like that. Now if only some of the current crop of pirates would take the hint. Send questions for Cecil Adams to: Send comments about this website to: Advertise suicides due stock market crash 1929 the Straight Dope! Your direct line to thou- sands of the smartest, hippest people on the planet, plus a few total dipsticks.

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