Clifford Calverley: Flirting with Death for Fun and Fame

Clifford Calverley sits on a chair that sits on a wire.

Niagara Falls has lured daredevils dating back to at least the mid 1800s. Some tumbled over the falls in barrels or other devices. Some attempted to swim across the rapids. And of course, some have walked the wire from one end to the other. Many, but not all, survived their intrepid feats.

Perhaps the most daring of these risk-takers was a wire walker named Clifford Calverley.

On October 12, 1892, twenty-two-year-old Calverley attached a ¾” steel cable across the Niagara River gorge, two hundred feet above the rushing rapids. After just a few months of training while living in Toronto, Calverley performed several successful stunts before an amazed crowd, including a walk across the wire in just over six minutes.

But walking across Niagara River was nothing new. Calverley was the eighth person to do it. However, his time was the fastest. And after an initial crossing, he went back out to flirt with danger and dazzle the crowd a little more. He lay on the wire, sat on a chair, unfolded a newspaper to read, and even swung himself over the rope, dangling from his toes as his head pointed straight downward.

The Dundee Courier and The Dundee Weekly News described the reaction to the latter stunt: “At this stage many of the spectators, thinking probably of the dreadful consequences of the slightest slip, turned away shuddering from the sight, but the bold gymnast pulled himself up again and safely reached terra firma.”

The New York Times proclaimed him “the champion high-wire walker of the world.”

Clifford Calverley stands on one leg hundreds of feet above the rushing river.

Nine months later, in July of 1893, Calverley set up his wire again and added new stunts to his repertoire. This time, according to 1901’s The Niagara Book, he walked across wearing baskets on his feet, cooked meals on the rope, and gave night exhibitions.

One might think Calverley had to be crazy to attempt such death-defying stunts. Well, he did indeed have his head examined. A Toronto phrenologist, Professor F.J.L. Cavanagh, said the wire walker had “a smooth head around the ears and uncommonly well formed around the eyes. He is an intelligent, agile, and courageous young man.”* Of course, it didn’t take a head-groping quack to realize Calverley possessed great agility and courage.

Although the daredevil escaped with his life, he left the wire with very little money. Any payments he received barely covered, if at all, his costs in arranging the wire. Instead, his true reward was fame.

Decades later, a 1937 issue of Life featured him at age 69. It claimed that he wished to repeat the stunt once more, demonstrating he remained as courageous as ever.

Clifford Calverley pushes a wheelbarrow across the wire.

See more stereoview photos of Clifford Calverley and other wire walkers at hartzmanstereoviews.com.

* From Cavanagh’s Phrenology: Being an Explanation of the Mental Faculties and Guide to Self Improvement of the One For Whom it is Marked, as Indicated by the Configuration of the Cranium, 1895