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Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Life Jumpers

Posted by Brendan Kiley on Tue, Jun 2, 2009 at 5:15 PM

That couple found dead at the bottom of Beachy Head with their young son in one rucksack and a collection of soft toys in the other?

Turns out their son had died at home of meningitis four days earlier. So they drove themselves and their boy to Britain's notorious suicide spot and pitched themselves over the edge. Tragic, certainly. But it's also a little surprising to those of us steeped in Dan's "every child deserves a mother and a father" posts, who wrongly assumed the parents had suicided themselves and murdered their kid. We are relieved to be wrong.

Then there's this story from a survivor of Beachy Head who tried to jump twice and failed:

When I got there I remember lying on the ground looking at the sky and thinking about my mother and that I couldn’t do it. That was what kept me from jumping: my parents and husband.

I went to a nearby pub where apparently they can tell from the way you look whether you’d been trying to jump and I made up an excuse. They were very understanding and called me a taxi.

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Also thrown over the chalk cliffs of Beachy Head, back in the 1800s: the ashes of Friedrich Engels.

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Photos—of the cliff and of a cable-car used to build the Beachy Head lighthouse—from Wikipedia.

Comments (8) RSS

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that's maybe the saddest thing i've ever heard. heartbreaking.

Posted by spoiler alert on June 2, 2009 at 5:55 PM

A friend of mine fell off beachy head by mistake and survived. She'd been to a nearby rave and was pretty messed up, and somehow wandered off the cliff. Somehow landed on a small patch of sand right between all the rocks.Broke a bunch of bones and screwed up her back for a year or so, but pretty well recovered. Also made tabloid front pages: "Idiot rave girl falls off beachy head and survives"

Posted by Stowe on June 2, 2009 at 5:59 PM

Damn, too much caffeine today and not enough proofreading. Hopefully my last comment makes some sense ...

Posted by Stowe on June 2, 2009 at 6:04 PM

That really is horribly tragic... I can't fathom how unimaginably painful it must be for a (normal, loving, non-shitty) parent to lose their only child.

Posted by Queen of Sleaze on June 2, 2009 at 6:20 PM

Pls call WSDOT, they love to put fences up at places like this.

Posted by Washington State Dept of Transportation on June 2, 2009 at 6:25 PM

Isn't that the spot the horde of nekkid wimmins ran Michael Palin off in The Meaning of Life?

Posted by The Max on June 2, 2009 at 6:55 PM

They were given resources to tend to their child.

They could have used them and their own efforts to help other needed children still alive.

Suicide is vanity.

Posted by Mean Machine on June 2, 2009 at 7:15 PM