Sam Patch suffered a very difficult childhood at the hands of his drunkard father. These circumstances had an adverse effect on Sam’s growth, which directly led to his disregard for danger and accelerated his fame as a daredevil. As a coping mechanism for his situation, all Sam Patch could do was begin work in a Pawtucket textile mill at the early age of 7. Those who knew him recounted that “in his twenties, Sam Patch was described as melancholy, verging on morose. He may have retreated into himself at an early age. He was also a heavy drinker…drunkenness and melancholy: these were what Greenleaf Patch finally possessed, and what he passed on to his second son.2” Sam Patch was also known to have a powerful suicidal drive, and he indeed ended…show more content… This didn’t sit well with Sam Patch, who was described as an “angry and not particularly admirable victim of the huge social process that was creating places like Pawtucket and Paterson and granting money and respect to people like Timothy Crane”. Sam Patch wanted to spoil Crane’s project, and the way he did it was monumental. As the bridge was to be assembled on the falls, all attention was diverted instead on the daring Sam Patch, who stood on the edge of the falls, at a seventy-foot elevation. Sam jumped down into the falls in perfect Pawtucket fashion, and captivated his first audience. He, the proletariat, triumphed against the greedy capitalist. It is said that Sam’s leap at Clinton Bridge was an act of vandalism. Timothy Crane was an enterprising, successful man, and Sam Patch was a sullen failure who risked his life to ruin Crane’s celebration.5 Sam Patch would never again jump for a purpose other than just putting on a show. After his Passaic Falls jumps, Sam proceeded to jump from the Hoboken luxury ship into the Hudson River, then into the terrifying Niagara Falls, and finally plunging to his end in the Genesee River. On his final tour, Sam Patch garnered more money than he had ever known and national acclaim as America’s first
