John William Warde

Who was John William Warde?

John William Warde was a twenty-six-year-old native of Southampton, New York who committed suicide on July 26, 1938. He leaped from a window ledge of the seventeenth floor of the Gotham Hotel at 5th Avenue and 55th Street in Manhattan. The son of a Long Island express agent, his eleven-hour dilemma before jumping held three hundred New York City Police Department officers at bay. They were afraid of making a move.

Warde earlier had become upset by a remark made by his sister while he was sitting with a group of people in a 17th-floor room of the hotel. He dashed for a window and then occupied the ledge, balancing there from morning until late in the evening.