Is it true that in Black Thursday burnt American investors massively jumped from skyscrapers?

The opinion is that after the 1929 exchange panic, which marked the beginning of the great depression in the United States, many ruined entrepreneurs committed suicide, jumping from the windows of New York skyscrapers. We checked how true this city legend is.

Here's what the authors of Timofei Sergei write, Dmitry Kulikov and Pyotr Mostova in his book “The ideology of Russian statehood. Continent Russia ": “In October 1929, great depression erupted in the United States,” the financial bubble of monetary emissions burst, which also included the securities of business societies issued by the private procedure. The exchange collapsed, burying conditions and people, many of which 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. ”

The fact that “the bankrupt businessmen jumped on the heads of passers -by,” writes Boris Kagarlitsky in his book "Managed democracy". A similar thought can be read in the works "The largest and most stable world states»Valeria Bashkirova and Alexander Solovyov,"Geniuses of foreign intelligence"Nikolai Dolgopolova, as well as on the site Km.ru.

"Black Thursday", as the events are called October 24, 1929, did not happen out of the blue and had its own prerequisites. He was preceded by a speculative boom in the mid-1920s, when the Americans massively bought stocks of various companies, anticipating the upcoming increase in the price of them. The growing demand really inflated prices, which attracted all new inhabitants who took promotions on credit, often secured by other previously purchased securities. Starting on September 3, 1929, the industrial index of DOW - Jones, reaching the peak, began the fall. By Thursday, October 24, 1929, the index has already lost about 20% compared to September, in the previous day fell by 4.6%, and in the morning an unprecedented panic began on the exchange. On this day, 12.9 million shares were sold, in the following days-about 30 million, which is why the market decreased by 40% in a week and lost about $ 30 billion in capitalization-more than the US government spent over the entire World War I. People lost all their savings, enterprises and banks announced bankruptcy.

Then the country began to fly about the mass fall from the windows of the residents of New York. By The first rumors, 11 speculators on the same Thursday committed suicide. The Black Day was replaced by black humor - the next day newspapers The statement of the comedian, Willa Rogers, bypassed: “When Wall Street entered a corkscrew, it was necessary to stand in line to get a window from which you could jump out, and speculators sold places for bodies in the East River River.” Another comedian Eddie Cantor in one of his speeches in 1929 toldAs in a local hotel, he was asked about the room on the 19th floor: "Do you sleep or jump?" The jump of a ruined businessman from the window has become part of the American popular culture and is still found in movie and on television - for example, in the show Mad Money On the CNBC channel, especially sad exchange reports are accompanied by a sound effect in which you can hear a beating glass, a removable cry and a distant slap.

But what facts are behind this stereotype? Really, level Suicides in the United States from the second half of the 1920s steadily grew, reaching the peak in 1932, when 17.4 out of every 100,000 Americans committed suicide. From October 24 to the end of 1929, The New York Times is about 100 times reported On suicides and suicide attempts, including some cases outside New York. But only eight of these people jumped from the building, bridge, boat or airplane, and only half of the falls was associated with the financial crisis.

Moreover, the level of suicides in New York in the first few weeks after the exchange collapse was virtually lower than in the summer of 1929, during the take-off of the market, and even lower than during the same period a year earlier. On November 14, the chief forensic expert New York introduced mortality statistics, after which the New York Times on November 14 was released with heading “There are fewer suicides in the city. The numbers refute the stories about their growth due to losses in the stock market. ”

It is reliably known only about Two Cases of suicide by jumping from a great height in New York associated with the Black Thursday. On November 7, Khulda Borovski, a clerk with a 28-year work experience in a brokerage company, being on the verge of exhaustion from overwork, jumped from the roof of a 40-story skyscraper Ekuitel-Building on Manhattan. Nine days later, 65-year-old George Kutler, the head of the company's wholesale trade and a player on the New York commodity exchange, which energized large losses, jumped off the ledge on the seventh floor near the office of his lawyer and fell on a car parked on Wall Street.

To some extent, the future English Prime Minister Winston Churchill contributed to the spread of the myth of mass suicides in New York. Telling In the newspaper about the events of October 24, Churchill, who stopped at the Savoy Plaza Hotel, said that he had witnessed a terrible scene: “Under my very window, the gentleman rushed down from the 15th floor and scattered into pieces, causing a wild pierce and the arrival of the firefighter.” Indeed, that day of the newspaper Passed The news about the fall of a person from the 16th floor of the hotel, but his name was Otto Matthis, he was a German chemist, who, according to preliminary data, simply dizzy, and this was at 8:30 in the morning, even before the collapse of the stock market. But the stereotypes of mass suicides have so firmly penetrated into American society that, by testimony The same Churchill, in another episode, a worker who smoked a pipe on a beam of an unfinished building of 120 m above Manhattan gathered a decent crowd under him, waiting for the “desperate speculator” to commit the last act in his life.

Thus, rumors about mass jumping of burnt dealers in New York in 1929 are nothing more than a city legend that has no real reasons.

Photo on the cover: X/f "Hadsaker's assistant" (1994)

Not true

What do our verdicts mean?

Read on the topic:

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