The claim

The following letter from a roofer (sic) is addressed to [name of the accident insurance company]
and describes the consequences of an ill-advised action (original report - not made up!)

What follows is the story of a strange accident at work, in which a barrel attached to a rope and filled with bricks plays an important role.

Our conclusion

No, this text is not an authentic report of an industrial accident. Today, this narrative is widely shared on social media, but it has a long history, dating back to newspaper reports from the 19th century.

Insurance in Germany is a huge business. The largest provider of property and casualty insurance alone, Allianz, turned over over 10 billion euros . With the many policies taken out and damage reports received, there are of course always strange cases and unbelievable stories.

Through the Internet and previously with the help of fax machines, “real” insurance reports were repeatedly shared, the veracity of which is doubtful and the origin of which is difficult to determine. We already investigated such a strange report of damage, the story of the brave little fence, They say that schadenfreude is the most beautiful joy. There must be something to it, otherwise Klaus, the forklift driver not have achieved such cult status. But today we want to focus on a different story.

___STEADY_PAYWALL___

A roofer's accident report

The following letter from a roofer is addressed to the AUVA (General Accident Insurance Institute) and describes the consequences of an ill-advised action (original report - not made up!):

In response to your request for additional information, I would like to tell you the following: In question three of the accident report, I stated “unplanned action” as the cause. They asked me to describe in more detail what I want to do with this.

I am a roofer by profession. On the day of the accident I was working alone on the roof of a new six-story building. When I finished my work, I had about 250 kg of bricks left. Since I didn't want to carry her down the stairs, I decided to lower her down in a barrel on the outside of the building, attached to a rope that ran over a pulley. So I tied the rope down to the ground, went to the roof and loaded the barrel. Then I went back down and untied the rope. I held it to slowly lower the 250 kg of bricks.

If you read question 11 of the accident report forms, you will see that my body weight at the time was around 75 kg. Because I was very surprised when I suddenly lost my footing and was pulled upwards, I lost my presence of mind and forgot to let go of the rope. I don't think I need to say that I was being pulled up the building at ever increasing speed. Around the third floor I hit the barrel that was coming from above. This explains the fractured skull and broken collarbone.

Slowing only slightly, I continued my ascent and didn't stop until the front phalanges of the fingers of my hand were crushed into the roll. Luckily, I kept my presence of mind and held on to the rope with all my strength despite the pain. However, at about the same time, the barrel hit the ground below and the bottom of the barrel popped out of the barrel. Without the weight of the bricks, the barrel now weighed about 25 kg. At this point I refer again to my body weight of 75 kg stated in question 11.

As you can imagine, I now began a rapid descent.

At the height of the third floor I again encountered the barrel coming from below. This resulted in the two broken ankles and the abrasions on my legs and abdomen. The collision with the barrel delayed my fall so that my injuries when I hit the pile of bricks were minor and I only broke three vertebrae. However, I regret to inform you that as I lay there on the pile of bricks and saw the empty barrel six stories above me, I lost my presence of mind again.

I let go of the rope and this time the barrel came down unchecked, knocking out three of my teeth and breaking the bone of my nose. I very much regret the incident and hope to be able to serve you with my precise information. For more detailed information, please call me as I sometimes find it difficult to express myself in writing.

Text from the website of an occupational safety company (sic!)

The search for clues begins

This text, with slight modifications, has repeatedly appeared in various forms in various Internet forums. Before that, he had already decorated the bulletin boards in many companies and made his rounds via email or fax. A film adaptation of such a letter to the Swiss SUVA can be found in the Arbeitsschutzfilm.de . The short clip is edited there and also on YouTube and the credits have been shortened.

In the comments below the clip there is speculation about the origin of the film and the accident report, as well as the faithful implementation of the text:

The literary basis is a French humoresque that appeared in Le Humanite in the mid-1960s and was printed in the East Berlin BZA in 1969. Such stories were already circulating around the world back then.

based on the text of the pulley

The pulley is not a pulley…. but the mast cast looks good.

Sounds a lot like: The Dubliners – The sick Note

Hello, it originally comes from Norway and was filmed in 1996!!! It's not all Ricola and the Swiss didn't shoot it. The original is by Guttorm Petterson

Norway, 1996? Nearly. The short film “Skademeldingen”, produced by Filmhuset for the Norwegian accident fund, was shot in Oslo in 1993. It was directed by Guttorm Petterson earned an international reputation larger productions over the next two decades Here is the original with subtitles:

Norway, France, Ireland, America?

The story of the injured roofer is also known outside of German-speaking countries. It's time to expand your search:

Le Humanite in the mid-1960s served as the literary basis for the film “Damage Report”. A translation was probably printed in the East Berlin evening newspaper BZA .

The information portal bedachungen-info.de about the Norwegian short film

When you do a Google search with English keywords, a video by The Dubliners appears at the top: The Sick Note. Even before his time with The Dubliners, singer Seán Cannon performed alone in pubs with this song. However, the song is not written by him, but by folk singer Pat Cooksey. This says the following about the history of its origins:

There has been a lot of speculation about this song for many years. I wrote this song under its original title Paddy and the Barrell in 1969 and performed it for the first time at The Dyers Arms in Coventry at that time, and in 1972 Sean Cannon, who later became a member of The Dubliners, began performing it in folk clubs under the title Playing The Sick Note

The song is based on Gerard Hope's wonderful address to the Oxford Union, but the story in a simpler form comes from the English music halls of the 1920s and appeared in Readers Digest in 1937.

The Sick Note on irish-folk-songs.com
Seán Cannon explains why Paddy can't come to work today

Oxford, England in 1958

A video would probably be a bit much to ask for such a semi-public event in 1958, but fortunately there is an audio recording of Gerard Hope's speech. In one of the oldest debating clubs in the world, that of the student association The Oxford Union Society, the musician and comedian performed his Lament of a Bricklayer (English: The Bricklayer's Lament) December 4, 1958 The story begins like this:

I've got this thing here that I must read to you.
Now, this is a very tragic thing… I shouldn't, really, read it out.
A striking lesson in keeping the upper lip stiff is given in a recent number of the weekly bulletin of 'The Federation of Civil Engineering Contractors' that prints the following letter from a bricklayer in Golders Green to the firm for whom he works.

Respected sir,

when I got to the top of the building, I found that the hurricane had knocked down some bricks off the top…

The Bricklayer's Story on monologues.co.uk


The aforementioned “Federation of Civil Engineering Contractors Weekly Bulletin” actually existed and was produced in London from 1952 to 1990. If that had been our only lead, we would probably have dug deeper into the British National Archives , but across the pond there is an urban legend about a barrel of bricks.

Barrel of Bricks: Myth, Sketch

Anyone looking for strange stories, urban legends or persistent rumors that can be technically verified will inevitably end up with videos by Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman. The MythBusters have investigated a variant of the story that is also known in the United States: Barrel of Bricks Myth:

The Myth: A bricklayer using a pulley to lift a wooden barrel filled with bricks from the top of a three-story building could be repeatedly injured.
Verdict: Plausible

Summary of the experiment on the series' fandom page

The experiment was conducted in Season 1, Episode 3 using the crash test dummy “Buster”. With the help of a little trickery it was possible to reconstruct the accident described. The injuries also seemed plausible to Adam and Jamie.

In the United States, this urban legend seems to have been popular over the decades. Fact-checking site Snopes cites a 1997 version online and a Saturday Night Live : In a presidential debate, Senator John Kerry tells the story of a construction worker who repeatedly injured himself on the job while trying to to lift a barrel of bricks. This was intended to point out a lack of protection through health insurance. The story can be found in the autobiography of a US admiral from 1952 and also in a novel from 1902: At Home with the Jardines by Lilian Bell:

I'm going to tell you something that the wild horses couldn't get out of me, just for you:

First of all, you were told that we are building a house and you know how interested I am in all the details. For example, there was a pile of bricks left on the third floor that clearly belonged to the basement. I had to climb ladders as the hole for the stairs had been left open. With the pulley for raising and lowering materials still there and an empty barrel sitting invitingly nearby, I decided to help nature by lowering the bricks to their final location. So I filled the barrel with them and hung it on the pulley...

In the chapter A Letter from Jimmie the story takes its fateful turn

Even further back in time

Snopes discovered that author Lilian Bell did not make up this story, but rather took it from a local newspaper in 1895:

The laws of gravity

The law of gravity was well illustrated recently on Cedar Street. A man held a rope that ran over a pulley into a second-story window, where it was attached to a barrel with an iron chain weighing about 600 pounds. The barrel was on the windowsill and due to a mishap the man inside the building let go of the barrel without informing the man on the ground. The result, an illustration of the law of gravity, was that the barrel fell down and the man fell up because he was holding on to the rope.

To complicate matters further, the barrel hit the ground so hard that the bottom fell out, naturally taking the contents with it. And again gravity showed itself, as the barrel was lighter than the man, and he fell to the ground with a dull thud while the barrel flew upwards.

Then he made the mistake of his life by letting go of the rope to feel his bruises, because the barrel, which was heavier than the loose end of the rope, quickly fell down and hit him just as he was picked itself up, which in turn confirmed the pull of gravity.

But the spectators did not realize the seriousness of the situation.

Cedar Rapids Evening Gazette , January 11, 1895

But the story still doesn't end there. The Cedar Rapids Evening Gazette of Iowa had copied only one older article that had been published the previous year: in the Sunday morning edition of the Saint Paul Daily Globe, October 21, 1894.

Conclusion

The “Accident Report of a Roofer” is a story that is already 127 years old. The story of the barrel on a rope and the construction worker is known in many countries and is told in a variety of different ways. Who knows, perhaps an Egyptian epitaph will appear at some point telling of an unfortunate accident at work involving a barrel while building the pyramids.


More on the topic: History of the brave little fence

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