Is it true that on Black Thursday, failed American investors jumped from skyscrapers en masse?

It is widely believed that after the stock market panic of 1929, which marked the beginning of the Great Depression in the United States, many bankrupt entrepreneurs committed suicide by jumping from the windows of New York skyscrapers. We checked how true this urban legend is.

This is what the authors Timofey Sergeytsev, Dmitry Kulikov and Pyotr Mostovoy write in their book “Ideology of Russian statehood. Continent of Russia": “In October 1929, the Great Depression broke out in the United States - the financial bubble of money issues burst, which included privately issued shares and securities of business companies. The stock exchange collapsed, burying fortunes and people, many of whom jumped from the windows of famous American skyscrapers. The development of American capital has ended. The country’s internal resources were used to the end.”

Boris Kagarlitsky also writes in his book “Bankrupt businessmen jumped on the heads of passers-by in flocks.”Guided Democracy" A similar idea can be read in the works “The world's largest and most enduring fortunes"Valeria Bashkirova and Alexander Solovyov, "Geniuses of foreign intelligence» Nikolai Dolgopolov, as well as on the website KM.ru.

"Black Thursday", as the events of October 24, 1929 are commonly called, did not happen out of the blue and had its own prerequisites. It was preceded by a speculative boom in the mid-1920s, when Americans massively bought shares of various companies, anticipating the upcoming rise in their prices. The growing demand really inflated prices, which attracted more and more ordinary people who took shares on credit, often secured by other previously purchased securities. Beginning on September 3, 1929, the Dow Jones Industrial Average began to fall after peaking. By Thursday, October 24, 1929, the index had already lost about 20% compared to September, the previous day fell by 4.6%, and in the morning an unprecedented panic began on the stock exchange. On this day, 12.9 million shares were sold, and in the following days - about 30 million more, which is why the market fell by 40% over the week and lost about $30 billion in capitalization - more than the US government spent during the entire First World War. People lost all their savings, businesses and banks declared bankruptcy.

Then news of a massive fall from the windows of New York residents spread around the country. By first rumors, 11 speculators committed suicide on the same Thursday. The “black” day was replaced by black humor - the next day newspapers humorist Will Rogers said: “When Wall Street went into a tailspin, you had to stand in line to get a window to jump out of, and speculators were selling places for bodies in the East River.” Another comedian Eddie Cantor in one of his performances in 1929 told, as in a local hotel he was asked about a room on the 19th floor: “Should you sleep or jump?” The jump of a bankrupt businessman from a window has become part of American popular culture and is still seen in movie and on television - for example, in the show Mad Money On CNBC, particularly sad stock reports are accompanied by a sound effect in which you can hear breaking glass, a retreating scream and a distant slap.

But what facts are behind this stereotype? Really, level Suicide rates in the United States have risen steadily since the second half of the 1920s, peaking in 1932 when 17.4 out of every 100,000 Americans committed suicide. From October 24 until the end of 1929, The New York Times newspaper about 100 times reported about suicides and suicide attempts, including some cases outside New York. But only eight of these people jumped from a building, bridge, boat or plane, and only half of the falls were related to a financial crisis.

Moreover, the suicide rate in New York in the first few weeks after the stock market crash was actually lower than it was during the summer of 1929, during the market's takeoff, and even lower than the same period the year before. November 14, New York's Chief Medical Examiner presented mortality statistics, after which the New York Times on November 14 published title “There are fewer suicides in the city. The numbers belie stories of their rise due to stock market losses.”

It is only known for certain about two cases of suicide by jumping from a high altitude in New York City associated with Black Thursday. On November 7, Hulda Borowski, a brokerage clerk with 28 years of experience, jumped from the roof of the 40-story Equity Building in Manhattan, close to exhaustion from overwork. Nine days later, 65-year-old George Cutler, head of a wholesale grocery firm and a heavy-losing New York Mercantile Exchange player, jumped from a seventh-floor ledge outside his lawyer's office and fell onto a car parked on Wall Street.

To some extent, the spread of the myth of mass suicide in New York was facilitated by the future English Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Telling In a newspaper account of the events of October 24, Churchill, who was staying at the Savoy Plaza Hotel, reported that he witnessed a terrible scene: “Under my very window a gentleman threw himself down from the 15th floor and was blown to pieces, causing a wild commotion and the arrival of the fire brigade.” Indeed, on that day the newspapers handed over news about a man falling from the 16th floor of a hotel, but his name was Otto Matthies, he was a German chemist, who, according to preliminary data, simply became dizzy, and this happened at 8:30 in the morning, even before the stock market collapse. But stereotypes about mass suicide have become so deeply ingrained in American society that, certificate the same Churchill, in another episode, a worker smoking a pipe on the beam of an unfinished building 120 m above Manhattan gathered a decent crowd below him, waiting for the “desperate speculator” to commit the last act of his life.

Thus, rumors about massive jumps of failed businessmen in New York in 1929 are nothing more than an urban legend that has no basis in reality.

Cover photo: The Hudsucker's Henchman (1994)

Not true

What do our verdicts mean?

Read on topic:

1. 1929 Stock Market Crash: Did Panicked Investors Really Jump From Windows?
2. The Jumpers of '29