Beheaded in 60 feet fall from hotel

A man who crashed 60 feet from a city hotel during the night struck a beam while falling and was decapitated. He was walter James Garlick, 40, duco-sprayer, the father of four children.

Clad only in underpants, he fell from a third floor window of the Durban Club Hotel, Elizabeth Street. The decapitated body was found at 7 o’clock this morning by a caretaker.

Garlick had been staying at the hotel for the past week and early last night visited his wife and family, who live in Abercrombie Street, Redfern. Police are satisfied he over balanced while leaning out the window. They think he had been dead only a short while when the body was discovered.

Police have established that Garlick had been drinking in his room.

“Statue smashed”

The body was discovered by Mr. Alfred Maddox, 58, caretaker of Blashki Building, Hunter Street. “I let the cleaners in about 5 o’clock and about 7 one of them , came and told me: ‘There’s a statue or something smashed up in the yard’,” he said.

“I did not think it could be a statue, but got a terrible, shock when I went down and found the body.”

In flight the body had crashed on to a beam stretching across the yard about 20ft from the ground. Detectives interviewed the licensee, of the Durban Club Hotel (Mr. E. J. Young). Government Medical Officer (Dr. C. E. Percy) was sum-moned to examine the body.

– Sun (Sydney), Wednesday 20 September 1950.

• The long-gone Durban Club Hotel was located at 3 Elizabeth Street, Sydney (on the south west corner of Hunt Street). It was a freehouse, and closed for business on June 30 1961. The license was transfered to a hotel in Cremorne on November 11 1968.