Window Washer Fall & Rescue Chicago

Companies arrived to find a window washer that had been working over a steel grate that covered the space. An angle iron which supported one side of the grate gave way sending the worker down into the hole.

Window washer falls in Deerfield: A window washer fell about 20 feet through an iron grate to the concrete floor. He was washing windows and stepped on the iron grate which gave way and caused him to fall into the concrete vault.

Firefighters rescue window washer in Deerfield: A window washer who suffered serious injuries after falling into a deep hole in Deerfield Tuesday was rescued by firefighters who raised him out in a rescue basket, officials said. The 47-year-old man was washing windows at the Arbor Lake Centre office building at 1751 Lake Cook Road when he stepped on a grate that gave way, causing him to fall into a 20-foot-deep ventilation shaft, according to a news release from the Northbrook Fire Department. Although the man was conscious and alert, he suffered multiple injuries.

Rescue workers lowered a ladder down to treat the worker, and removed broken grates blocking the 3-foot-wide shaft. Because the 3-foot-wide shaft was too narrow to carry the worker out, a technical rescue team with members from various fire departments used a special hook, rope and pulley system to lower a rescue basket into the shaft and lift the patient out, the release stated. Paramedics then took the worker to Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge. Deerfield Police are investigating the incident. 

Northbrook technical rescue: Northbrook units were called to 1751 W. Lake Cook Road in Deerfield before 11AM today for a worker that had fallen 15 feet into a concrete well alongside a building. Companies arrived to find a window washer that had been working over a steel grate that covered the space. An angle iron which supported one side of the grate gave way sending the worker down into the hole. A TRT response was requested. Firefighters in the hole stabilized the patient and packaged him in a stokes basket while rope techs setup rigging to hoist him to ground level.

Northbrook Tower 12 is over the concrete well where the worker fell.

A ladder is placed over the hole for the team.

The ladder is secured in place.

Firefighters on the ground provide equipment to the firefighters working with the patient.

The stokes is pulled up from the hole.

The angle iron supporting the grate broke free from this ledge.

A view into the area where the worker fell.

The Lost Art Of Window Gazing

Play School was a British children's television series produced by the BBC which ran from 21 April 1964 until 11 March 1988. The opening sequence for Play School during its run, the first being "Here's a house, here's a door. Windows: 1 2 3 4, ready to knock? Turn the lock - It's Play School." Many older window cleaners will remember the long running series & featured in the story below by John Holton.

Between Here & Home: The lost art of window gazing (By John Holton) - I stumbled across my old school reports in the filing cabinet the other day, including one from my Year 8 science teacher, who wrote, “…if John spent as much time attending to his work as he does staring out of the window, he could achieve anything”.  Sorry Mr Campbell. It wasn’t your fault. My gaze has always been drawn to the hole in the wall. I was the kid mesmerised by the arched window on Play School.

There’s still nothing quite like sitting in the window of my favourite café, sipping tea as life goes on around me; travelling by train with my nose pressed against the glass, the world blurring; wandering the streets of any town at night; the glow emanating from windows; lives playing out behind glass. It’s hard to believe, amid our cities of steel and glass, that window glazing has only been the norm, for the working classes, since the mid-19th century.

Though in 1696 there were enough glazed windows in British homes for William III to introduce a window tax. It made staring out at the world an expensive business and caused some householders to brick up their windows. It seems the aristocracy have always found ways to feather their nests from the necessities of life – air, water… a view. I’m guessing the king’s vista remained unimpeded.

Staring out the window, as Mr Campbell demonstrated, often gets bad press. But some of the world’s most important ideas wouldn’t have happened without some serious window gazing. Literary critic Burton Roscoe said, “Few can ever understand that a writer is working when he’s staring out the window.”

Poet Billy Collins put it more lyrically: The birds are in their trees – the toast is in the toaster – and the poets are at their windows… The clerks are at their desks – the miners are down in their mines – and the poets are looking out their windows… Of course, he’s not just poeticising about poets, but anyone who creates.

Architects, engineers, designers, even scientists, are among history’s most revered window gazers. Indeed, Einstein described his Theory of Relativity with the image of a traveller staring from the window of a moving train.

I was at the launch of Bendigo’s stunning art gallery redevelopment on Saturday, and while all the new spaces are beautifully conceived, the Frances & Harold Abbott Foundation Gallery in particular captured my imagination. It has a spectacular, high corner window that looks upon a stone wall and the trees of Rosalind Park; there are glimpses of Peter (the rabbit sculpture) and, if you look at the right angle, eerie reflections of passers-by. It shares its space with the work of Del Kathryn Barton and Patricia Piccinini, but that window is a work of art without peer.

It’s a perfect view of our changing city. I know I’ll stare from it often.

Daylight Robbery & How Window Cleaning Has Changed

A local documentary about window cleaning in Birmingham, UK in the 1950s including an interview with Dennis H Bayley, founder of Sheldon Industrial (Holdings) Limited and George Drew one of his window cleaners.

These days, Sheldon Industrial (Holdings) Limited has expanded their services to a complete service company. Sheldon’s has even provided water decontamination services in civilian and military nuclear reactors, including nuclear submarines.

"Draper Drew receiving you" says the driver. Six teams with twelve radio controlled vans once took seventy men to Glasgow for three weeks on one contract alone. Dennis Bayley talks about how he started the window cleaning firm with just a ladder & bucket. Insurance charges were so high that it wasn't worth servicing private houses.

Finally Sam, a two man operator talks about tax dodging & how to "make a pile." "Private houses don't pay," he says but he doesn't want to grow too big. A remarkable insight into window cleaning where "there is room for the little man & scope for the big one," says the smarmy interviewer.

Window Tax: The window tax was a property tax based on the number of windows in a house. It was a significant social, cultural, and architectural force in England, France and Scotland during the 18th and 19th centuries. To avoid the tax some houses from the period can be seen to have bricked-up window-spaces (ready to be glazed at a later date), as a result of the tax.

The tax was introduced in England and Wales under the Act of Making Good the Deficiency of the Clipped Money in 1696 under King William III and was designed to impose tax relative to the prosperity of the taxpayer, but without the controversy that then surrounded the idea of income tax. At that time, many people in Britain opposed income tax, on principle, because they believed that the disclosure of personal income represented an unacceptable governmental intrusion into private matters, and a potential threat to personal liberty. In fact the first permanent British income tax was not introduced until 1842, and the issue remained intensely controversial well into the 20th century.

When the window tax was introduced, it consisted of two parts: a flat-rate house tax of 2 shillings per house (£11.12 as of 2012), and a variable tax for the number of windows above ten windows in the house. Properties with between ten and twenty windows paid a total of four shillings (£22.25 as of 2012), and those above twenty windows paid eight shillings (£44.5 as of 2012). The number of windows that incurred tax was changed to seven in 1766 and eight in 1825. The flat-rate tax was changed to a variable rate, dependent on the property value, in 1778. People who were exempt from paying church or poor rates, for reasons of poverty, were exempt from the window tax. Window tax was relatively unintrusive and easy to assess. The bigger the house, the more windows it was likely to have, and the more tax the occupants would pay. Nevertheless, the tax was unpopular, because it was seen by some as a tax on "light and air".

Blocked-up windows in Edinburgh: In Scotland a Window Tax was imposed after 1748. A house had to have at least seven windows or a rent of at least £5 to be taxed. A similar tax existed in France from 1798 to 1926, the Doors And Windows Tax. There was a strong agitation in England in favour of the abolition of the tax during the winter of 1850–1851, and it was accordingly repealed on 24 July 1851, and a tax on inhabited houses substituted.

Daylight robbery: The term "daylight robbery" is thought to have originated from the window tax as it was described by some as a "tax on light". However, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the phrase daylight robbery was first recorded in 1949, many years after the "window tax", which places doubt upon the claim. However, the phrase originates from at least 1916, when it was mentioned in Harold Brighouse’s play Hobson's Choice. It should be remembered that the OED records only the first provable written instance of the phrase that its etymologists can find, so the phrase might have been used in everyday speech beforehand, or even in published writing.