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The lady in the picture with the mirror held above her head was Mrs. Edna Egbert from the 1940s. The photographer caught her in the ready to swing position, as cops gets ready to dodge. The year was 1942 and Mrs. Egbert was living in the building No. 497 Dean Street at that time. But what made Mrs. Egbert go out onto the ledge? She was clearly distraught, but why? Mrs. Egbert, apparently, had a reason.
In the past, year her son, Fred, had gotten married, joined the army, and had not written a single letter to his mother since a long time. As any mother in this difficult time would tell you, with the war raging on, she must have presumed her son was dead. So, out of frustration, nervousness, or fear, she climbed out onto her ledge and announced, “I’m going to jump!
If you’re wondering how you could kill yourself from only the second floor, to either side of Ms. Egbert was a spiky iron fence that could have easily impaled her life, until the cops arrives the scene.
The hero in this suicide drama was the first policeman to arrive on the scene. He kept Mrs. Egbert on her ledge by talking and engaging with her for 25 minutes or so until his fellow officers could rig up a net below her window ledge.
Without the net, it was unlikely to save her, unless Mrs. Egbert took a swan-dive that she was going to do more than break a leg or a hip by jumping from the window ledge. But the cops weren’t taking any chances. The woman’s house had a sharp spiky fence out front that could have made things miserable if she got a good jump and landed just right on it. Meanwhile, a crowd of 600 people gathered below on the street in front of the house, according to the Daily News, as officers Ed Murphy and George Munday tried to persuade her to go back into her building. Mrs. Egbert, though, was brandishing that mirror and, by now, she had started swinging it at them. Finally, as one of the officers grabbed at her wrist, Mrs. Egbert took the leap, landing safely in the police net, whereupon she was taken to Bellevue for observation.
According to census records, Mrs. Edna Egbert was either 42 or 44 years old, not 50 as noted in every article about this dramatic story. Her husband John Egbert was 64 and their wayward son Fred was 20 years old. Whatever became of Mrs. Egbert and her non writing son Fred is still unknown.
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