An Aerial Honeymoon

The Williamsburg Bridge, also called the New East River Bridge in the early 1900s, was not officially opened until 1903.  But in 1901 there were "complications of a peculiar character" involving an illicit honeymoon trip to the top of the bridge's Brooklyn tower. Furthermore, the groom happened to have two wives. One was eager to clamber up the bridge tower. The other was equally eager to have the groom thrown in jail.

William Carroll, a 21 year old Canadian, was a section foreman for the New Jersey Steel and Iron Company, and worked on the Manhattan Bridge. He was legally married to a 23 year old woman named Alice. And he had a common law wife, too - Alice's sister Agnes. Alice and Agnes were also Canadian - from Montreal; the Eagle noted that Agnes spoke with an English accent.

Agnes told the magistrate in court that she'd met Carroll in Montreal and went off to live with him "as his wife" in St. Anne, near Montreal, and in Buffalo, Yonkers, Boston and finally Brooklyn. Meanwhile, William had been writing to Agnes' sister Alice, who was still in Montreal, working in "an eating saloon." Alice wanted to come down to New York and become an actress,and she joined William and Agnes in the fall of 1900. William transferred his affections to Alice and began to abuse Agnes, who (having quite rightly had enough of all this) packed up and moved out in December 1900.

William told Alice that he was not legally married to Agnes so they could marry, which they did in January 1901. And Alice wanted to celebrate her marriage in an exciting way. She decided that climbing the bridge tower "would be a decidedly novel way to celebrate their marriage and at the same time to give her the opportunity to say she was the first woman to make the ascent of 335 feet." They went up with a woman friend and a gentleman with the wonderful name of Shamrock Rearwick.

The whole matter came to the attention of the courts when a friend asked Agnes if she had been the bride who had just climbed the New East River Bridge tower. She knew exactly who had done it, and this enraged her. She went to court and got a warrant for William's arrest. And the poor police officers who went to arrest him had to climb all the way up the tower, too - a dangerous business involving climbing up several 20 foot ladders and "steep and rough wooden stairs."

Poster image from Library of Congress; 1901 image of the New East River Bridge from NYPL Digital Gallery. Carroll story from "Aerial Honeymoon Leads to an Arrest," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, March 14, 1901, p. 20.