Las Vegas Age

Rescuers Seek to Reach Man, 92, At Well Bottom

WILMINGTON, Kent, England, Nov. 29. (U.P.)-William Sales, a 92-year-old Danish "gaffer" whose age and agility made him a pride of the countryside, lay at the bottom of an 80-foot well tonight while the efforts of hundreds of men to reach him proved in vain.
The sympathy of the dwellers in the narrow Darent valley went out to his 90-year-old wife, who had not yet been told that her companion of a long lifetime had slipped and fallen into the well. It was feared that the old man was dead and that the shock of his fate would prove too great for the woman.
She was taken to the home of friends, who evaded her occasional questions about when her husband was coming to join her.
The deep well was old, dry and out of use.
Sales was walking over the well, which was covered with a cement top, when it collapsed under him.
The old man fell down the well, but the cover lodged about 30 feet from the top. His cries were heard after he fell, showing that he had not been killed at once, but it was not believed probable that he could have survived his long imprisonment, which began yesterday morning.
The chances of rescuing him alive appeared so hopeless that when darkness fell, it was reported the rescuers would abandon their efforts until morning.