Horace D. Ward | Bedward was never the joke
Originally published by The Gleaner Read the original
Ask most Jamaicans about Alexander Bedward and you will get a smile, then the story of the man who tried to fly to heaven. That reflex is a colonial inheritance, and it has cost us a national teacher. Bedward did announce that he would ascend to heaven on December 31, 1920. When it did not happen, the authorities committed him to Bellevue, where he died in 1930. What the evidence does not support is a physical attempt to fly. The Jamaica Observer noted in 2021 that no record of one exists, and t