The Montgomery advertiser., 1902-03-16
HUMAN FLY" TO SUE CHICAGO
E. s. Sutherland Alleges Rope Fur
 nished Was Too Weak.

Chicago Chronicle.
 against the City of Chicago for personal in- 1uries sustained in work on the Chicssc Ave nue waterworks tower. The human ny is a dizzy heights of church steeples. hasstaffs, towers. and lofty buildings for the purpose of making repairs, flying flags. or painting the statues, towers, steeples and stacks which he climbs. His has been long and adventurous career, but without serious mishap until he % year. He % dec,sres % that he ~ was obliged to use use ropes furnished by the city: that the ropes were unequal to the strain of bearing his himself by grasping . projecting ledge from being dashed to death on the pavement many nsnSred of s: ss0w nd that he nas spinal cord.
 All these charges the "human ny makes in who insists that his client may be % badly injured through the weakness of the ropes by the City Of GnicsSo ss S. to be tion ''steeple jack and that if such Is the case he is clearly entitled to damages from ment of the City of Chicago will have some thing to say about that before the damages are paid and probably the testimony est, of sev; 7; Whatever T the ri merits of the lawsuit may be. himself the human ny'', has an odd and dangerous calling, which has taken him into many queer places in all parts @ & of the world. world; and steeples in existence. including the Eidel tower of Paris the Cathedral at Cologne. the claims to hold the record for the forty-eight highest climbs ever made without the aid of ladders or scanolding Sutherland sI has meth, s used by no other 'steeple- jack in the busi- ness.
 The graduated into his present line of work from the navy. having been for some years on the United States steamship Vermont. It there that he learned to climb and be- to tn 1oftv fu without losing his nerve. He developed lik- ing for lofty climbing. He practiced tricks in own for lgetting to the cross trees and the fighting tops and the maintruck and all the other airy parts of the warships in hurry that there was living to be made in climb ing and that there was very little competi- S%t Sp ditfisule o, one and sutherland set himself to devise some new method for cambering up church steeples and hagpoles which would not
 In casting about for some Way of improve ing the methods of ascending stacks and steepiss sutherlands attention was sat attrseted m h,i room Like Robert Bruce. who was inspired to renewed exertions by the persistence of e spider which he saw falling down two or three times. Sutherland was seized with the idea of duplicating the methods of the fly. He found out that the fly was enabled to crawl up surface as smooth as glass pane by the use of little suction pads or cups in its feet and ne set hiulseit 10 the thsh ot uupicntihk tnese. After many experiments and trials he sue ceeded in perfecting an arrangement for his feet, which. while 1t cannot be trusted as inn plicitly to sustain his weight as the fly trusts its nimble feet. aids materially fin climbing up c steeple at an angle of 60 degrees or less invention and are used by no other 'steepe- jack in the business. Sutherland has been enabled to do some very tall climbing to all most inaccessible places. He uses system of ropes in addition to the suction pads and has a peculiar knot with which he ties his about to come down, and when opens when he merely shakes the ropes on reaching terra firma, allowing the ropes to come t,imbiing down after him. At the Milwaukee Carnival last fall he made a great hit by ascending to the top of the City Hall three times a day. of the building at an angle of 45 degrees to a point well out in the street. and then pull ing down the rope
 Besides raising the American flag on the Eiffel Tower. in Paris. these are some of the more notable climbs Sutherland has made: Ma N. J.; State Normal German Catholic and Congregational towers. Terre Haute. Ind. |; cathedral. Cologne: Trinity Church, St. Pat rick's Cathedral. New York; City Hall, Phila- delphia; Counwty Courthouse tower. San Ber- nardlno and Los Angeles. Cal. Santa Fe. N. M: First Methodist Episcopal Church, ogden chemical stack. Glasgow; Antlers. Colorado Springs; electric light stack. Pueblo: Mills building. Pacific Mutual Chronicle. San Fran cisco; water tower. Grand Pacific Hotel. Sic gel-Cooper's poles and stacks. Chicago: o. N. T. thread mills. Newark. N. l.; Trinity Meth odist Episcopal Church, Brown Palace Hotel Denver; water tower. Lexington. Neh.; Cal vary Church, Louisville; St. Paul's. London Trinity, Lima O.; Press. Cincinnati; Govern ment towers and poles from coast to coast