While Brodie unconvincingly denied this at first, he subsequently retracted this denial when told to swear to it, telling the magistrate, 'No, I'd rather rot in jail than swear to a lie. The magistrate in Canada said he would release him if Brodie denied making the jump. In 1889, Brodie was arrested when he dived off Horseshoe Falls. Shortly afterwards, he was quoted as saying that he was 'not disposed to try bridge-jumping again'. He earned $500 for the stunt, and contemporary reports differ on whether he escaped serious injury or was seriously injured in the stunt. On November 9, 1888, Brodie jumped from the Poughkeepsie Railroad Bridge at a height of 222 feet into the Hudson River. Only one month after Brodie's jump, Larry Donovan jumped from an even higher point of the bridge, making him the first confirmed survivor of a Brooklyn Bridge leap. The NYPD said in 1986, the 100th anniversary of the supposed jump, that two or three people jump from the bridge every year and some live. McCullough said that it was commonly believed by skeptics that a dummy was dropped from the bridge, and that Brodie merely swam out from shore and surfaced beside a passing barge. In his book The Great Bridge, historian David McCullough said that he probably did not make the jump. Hastings, said that Brodie had told him that he didn't make the leap and never said he did.

The Brooklyn Eagle reported in 1930 that a retired police sergeant and friend of Brodie, Thomas K. Wagers were made for and against, but Brodie never announced when he would make the attempt. Controversy ĭoubt whether Brodie actually made the claimed jump arose immediately and has lingered to this day.īrodie, who was unemployed and aware of the publicity generated by Odlum's fatal jump, bragged to his pals on the Bowery that he would take the jump. It was subsequently claimed that a dummy was thrown from the bridge and that Brodie fell out of a row boat. If true, he would have been the first person to have jumped off the bridge and survived, but his claim was disputed. Steve Brodie's bar on the Bowery circa 1886Īnother account holds that Moritz Herzber, a liquor dealer, offered to back a saloon for Brodie if he made the jump and lived. Ī Bowery storekeeper named Isaac Meyers claimed that he encouraged Brodie to jump off the Brooklyn bridge after Brodie said that he wanted to be famous. In other accounts he is described as a bookmaker and gambler. The Times described Brodie as a 'newsboy and long-distance pedestrian' who jumped from the bridge to win a $200 bet, equal to $6,000 today. He leaped into the East River, feet first, and emerged uninjured, though with pain on his right side. The New York Times backed his account of the jump and said that Brodie practiced for the leap by making shorter jumps from other bridges and ships' masts, and that it was witnessed by two reporters. The contemporary New York Times account said the jump was from a height of about 120 feet (37 m). With the consent of his wife, the jump supposedly made by Brodie on July 23, 1886, was from a height of 135 feet (41 m), the same as a 14-storey building. īy July 1886, Brodie was penniless, having lost a fortune on race tracks and other betting games. named Robert Emmet Odlum, the brother of women's rights activist Charlotte Odlum Smith, was killed while attempting the same stunt in May 1885.

A swimming instructor from Washington, D.C. The bridge, then known as the East River Bridge, had opened just three years before Brodie's claimed jump.

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