1911 — March 25, Fire, Triangle Shirtwaist Company, Asch Bldg., New York, NY –146-147

–146-147.  Blanchard estimate.[1]

 

–~150  New York Times. “The Calamity.” 3-26-1911.

—  148  Oklahoma State Capital, Gunter.  “148 Perished In Fire,” March 26, 1911, p. 1.

—  147  Elkus (Counsel Factory Investigating Commission). The Survey, Vol. XXX, 6-21-1913.

—  147  NFPA. “New York Factory Fire Perils.” Quarterly of the [NFPA], V6/N4, Apr 1913, 894

—  147  “Phases of Fire Prevention Teachers Should Know,” Safety Engineering, 31/4, 1916, 201

—  146  Berger, Joseph. “Remembering Triangle Fire’s Jewish Victims.” NY Times. 3-1-2011.

—  146  Broyles, Janell. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire of 1911. NY: Rosen Pub., 2004, 7.

—  146  Crew, Sabrina (ed.). The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. 2004, p. 4.

—  146  Grant. “Triangle Fire Stirs Outrage and Reform.” NFPA Journal, May/June 1993, 73-82.

—  146  Kolen, Amy.  “Fire,”  Massachusetts Review, Vol. 42, No. 1, Spring 2001, pp. 13-36.

—  146  Marsico, Katie. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire…Legacy of Labor Rights. 2010, 6.

—  146  Murphy Institute, CUNY.  “Out of the Smoke and the Flame:  The Triangle…,” 2011.

—  146  National Fire Protect. Assoc. Spreadsheet on Large Loss of Life Fires (as of Feb 2003).

—  146  NYT. “Charge Girl’s Death to Factory Owners. Coroner’s Jury Name…” 4-18-1911.

—  146  New York Times, “The Century’s Worst Fires,” March 26, 1990

—  146  New York Times. “Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire (1911).” 3-11-2011 update.

—  146  PBS American Experience. Triangle Fire. “Introduction.” 2012.

—  146  Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition. ©2017. Accessed 10-3-2017.

—  146  Smith. Dennis Smith’s History of Firefighting in America... 1978, p. 125.

—  146  Sutherland.[2]  “After Triangle:  What’s Changed…,” NFPA Journal, Mar/Apr 2011.

—  146  Von Drehle, David.  Triangle: The Fire That Changed America. Grove Press, 2004, p. 3.

—  146  Wikipedia. “Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire,” Apr 3, 2011 update.

—  145  Barlay, Stephen. Fire: An International Report. Brattleboro: S. Greene, 1973, p. 154.[3]

—  145  Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters. EM DAT Database.

—  145  History.com. This Day in History, Disaster, March 25, 1911. Fire Kills 145 at Triangle.

—  145  National Fire Protection Association. Key Dates in Fire History. 1996.

—  145  National Fire Sprinkler Association. F.Y.I.  1999, p. 6.

—  145  Wickware, Francis G. (Ed.). The American Yearbook 1911, V. 2, pp. 835-836.

—  144  NYT. “City Will Bury the Unidentified…Another Victim Dies in Hospital.” 3-31-1911.

—  143  NYT. “Many Now Tell of Fire Traps. Over 1,000 Factory Workers…” 3-29-1911.

—  143  Portsmouth Daily Times, OH. “New York Fire Horror Claimed 143…” 3-27-1911, 1.

—  142  NYT. “Blame Shifted on All Sides for Fire Horror…142d Victim Dies.” 3-28-1911.

—  141  New York Times. “141 Men and Girls Die in Waist Factory Fire…” 3-26-1911.

—  141  NYT. “Locked in Factory…Survivors Say, When Fire Started…Cost 141…” 3-27-1911.

–>140  NY Tribune. “More Than 140 Die as Flames Sweep Through…Factory…,” 3-26-1911, 1.

 

Narrative Information

Elkus: “In response to a widespread demand for an impartial inquiry into working conditions the New York State Factory Investigating Commission was appointed two years ago.  This was the first step in a comprehensive plan of remedial legislation.  The commission was given broad powers and the scope of the investigations it was directed to undertake was wide.  The investigation was to cover such matters as fire hazard in factories, general sanitary conditions, child labor, women’s work, accident prevention, occupational poisoning, manufacturing in tenements, and the organization of the Labor Department and the administration and enforcement of the labor law.

“The conditions confronting the commission during the first few months of its existence were hardly encouraging.  Everywhere there seemed to be a spirit of antagonism between employers and workers.  The Labor Department, in whose hands was placed jurisdiction over all matters affecting the health and safety of workers in industrial establishments, was comparatively insignificant, having a small work force and a still smaller appropriation to work with.  It was ignored by the manufacturers and the workers for the most part placed little reliance upon it.  It did not, and with its limited resources could not, perform its function of bringing about a steady improvement of working conditions through the education of manufacturers and workers….

“Testimony – not hearsay or conjecture, but legal evidence – was taken in every large city of the state… All sides were heard.  No commission heretofore has ever permitted any counsel but its own to interrogate witnesses.  This commission permitted counsel for interested parties to examine and cross-examine witnesses…. Suggestions concerning legislation which the commission thought practicable or worthy of discussion were embodied in the form of bills, and thousands of these were printed and sent throughout the state to persons interested for criticism and suggestions.  Hearings were held in a number of cities to consider these tentative bills, and many persons appeared and criticized the bills and proposed amendments…. In order that there might be no technical mistakes in the bills, the commission called into consultation the Legislative Bill Drafting Bureau of Columbia University.

“A noticeable change took place in the attitude toward the commission as the investigation progressed…. Manufacturers who had hitherto regarded their employees with less respect than they did their machinery began to realize that they had not grasped industrial conditions and that they had made a mistake in their treatment of employees, not alone from the human stand-point but from the standpoint of dollars.

“Of the thirty-two laws recommended by the commission at the last session of the Legislature thirty passed….Their enactment gives New York state a labor law second to none in the world.  Laws for the protection of factory workers in case of fire provide for the prohibition of smoking in workrooms, for fire drills, fire alarm signal systems and adequate fire-escapes and stairways.  Others limit the occupants in a factory building to the number that can safely escape by means of the exits provided and prescribe in detail requirements for the future construction of factory buildings….

“What the commission considers of even greater importance that the foregoing measures is the law reorganizing the Department of Labor.  By this law the department is lifted from the obscure position it has heretofore occupied and is made one of the great departments for the state government.  An Industrial Board was created to make a detailed rules and regulations for safety and sanitation in different industries under varying conditions….”  (Elkus (Counsel, Factory Investigating Commission). The Survey, Vol. XXX, 21 June 1913.)

Grant:  “The fire that swept through the New York City sweatshop in 1911, killing 146 garment workers, shocked the nation and ushered in a new era in life and fire safety in the American workplace. [Sidebar]

“Saturday, March 25, 1911, was a fine spring day in New York City.  It was a workday, and many people — including the employees of the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, one of the city’s largest garment manufacturers – were looking forward to their approaching day of rest.

“The Triangle occupied the top three floors of the 10-story Asch Building near Manhattan’s Washington Square. At 4:45 p.m., eighth-floor watchman Joseph Wexler rang the quitting bell, signaling the end of the workday.

“The Triangle was a loft factory, so-called because it occupied the top floors of a tall building. A shortage of factory space in New York had forced many companies to set up factories in buildings originally designed as store rooms or offices.  These locations allowed companies to keep their electrical costs low by taking advantage of sunlight.

“The eighth floor was crowded.  Of the more than 600 people who worked at the Triangle, 275 worked on that floor. Most were women who operated five tandem rows of sewing machines on 4-foot-wide tables… Men staffed two cutting tables. What little floor space remained was partially occupied by stock.

“The ninth floor was more crowded than the eighth.  Nearly 300 women operated eight tandem rows of sewing machines on long tables… The tenth floor housed the executive offices, the show room, the stock room, and the shipping area. Thirty of the 60 employees on this floor pressed manufactured shirtwaists with gas-heated irons…

“Most of the Triangle’s workers were young women who were newly arrived in the United States.  Although many could not speak English, they had found work making shirtwaists, high-necked blouses for women popularized by the Gibson Girl. The shirtwaist had made the Triangle

a successful enterprise.  Working the sewing machines at the Triangle meant long hours. At quitting time, the women s purses were searched to ensure they weren’t stealing.  In addition, doors were often locked to prevent employees from slipping away from the work tables to rest. Workers who complained were fired….”  (Grant, Casey Cavanaugh. “Triangle Fire Stirs Outrage and Reform.” NFPA Journal, May/June 1993, pp. 73-82.)

History.com: “Despite a good deal of evidence that the owners and management had been horribly negligent in the fire, a grand jury failed to indict them on manslaughter charges. The tragedy did result in some good, though— the International Ladies Garment Workers Union was formed in the aftermath of the fire[4] and the Sullivan-Hoey Fire Prevention Law was passed in New York that October. Both were crucial in preventing similar disasters in the future.”  (History.com. This Day in History, 25 Mar 1911. “Fire Kills 145…Triangle…,” 12-06-2008.)

Murphy Institute, CUNY: “March 25, 2011 will mark the one hundredth anniversary of one of the most important events in the history of the U.S. labor movement, the Triangle Fire.

“On that date, a fire broke out on the top three stories of a relatively new building just east of Washington Square Park, which housed the Triangle Shirtwaist Company, a large manufacturer of women’s clothes (a building which today houses New York University classrooms).

“Though the building was modern and advertised as fire-proof, the cramped layout of the factory space, large piles of flammable materials, locked doors, inadequate fire escape, and the inability of New York City fire truck ladders to reach high enough to rescue the people trapped by the flames led to a staggering loss of life.

“All told, 146 workers died that day, mostly young Jewish and Italian women workers, many still in their teens, some as young as fourteen, killed by the fire or their desperate leaps to the ground to escape the heat and flames. It is the largest industrial tragedy in the history of New York City.

“In the months and years after Triangle, a new set of arrangements and institutions emerged. Under pressure from leaders of the Jewish community, garment unionists and employers set up a system of negotiation, arbitration, and self-regulation called the “Protocols of Peace,” that promised to upgrade conditions for workers, give them a voice in the operation of the establishments where they worked, improve safety conditions, and eliminate strikes and violent confrontations.

“For its part, New York State passed a whole series of new laws regulating factory safety which, along with unionization, gradually eliminated the worst conditions workers faced. These efforts would reach fruition in the New Deal, in many respects the creation of the coalition of forces that came together in the aftermath of the Triangle Fire.

“If Triangle is an old story, one about a century ago, it is also a very current story. While the United States was successful, at least for a while, in eliminating the worst abuses of the sweatshop era and improving the lives of its working people, there are millions of workers today who face conditions not unlike those faced by the Triangle workers.

“What people sometimes refer to as the global sweatshop is a vast archipelago of workplaces, in many of which young female workers toil long hours in dangerous conditions, very often without union representation or democratic rights.

“The problem of how to regulate the workplace and create a safe, decent life for working people is with us today, just as it was at the time of the Triangle Fire.

“This conference will gather unionists, public officials, scholars and students to examine a wide range of issues that reflect the complexity and importance of the fire’s legacy.” (Murphy Institute, City University of New York.  “Out of the Smoke and the Flame:  The Triangle…,” 2011.)

NFPA:  “Timed to commemorate the second anniversary of the Asch Building fire — in which 147 employees of the Triangle Waist Company lost their lives on March 25, 1911 — the Committee of Safety of the city of New York made its annual report public on that date.  Calling attention to the influence exerted in behalf of the creation of the Bureau of Fire Prevention and the appointment of the State Factory Commission, the report adds:—

The committee has made studies of fire conditions in 2,365 factories in the city, and its conclusions are therefore illustrative of actual conditions. These specifically show the common occurrence throughout the city of defects and dangers similar to—sometimes worse than—those existing in the Asch Building. Investigation of 433 buildings showed the stairways to be unsafe in over one half. In three fourths of the buildings the emergency exits, outside fire escapes and out­side stairs were unsafe. About fifty per cent had doors which opened inward or were obstructed.

A special study of the number of occupants in relation to the capacity of exits was made in fireproof loft buildings in a district comprising fifteen blocks— bounded by Fifth and Eighth Avenues and Twenty-third and Twenty-eighth Streets. There were found to be 221 factories, employing 5,650 persons, in this district in which the number at work was greater than the emergency capacity of the exits.

Forty-three per cent of the total number (2,432 working people) are unprovided with exits in case of fire. Eighty per cent of the buildings presented a condition in which the discrepancy between the exit capacity and the number of occupants was glaring.

This kind of overcrowding, which was one of the main causes of death in the Triangle fire, still offers a menace to life in New York factories. The dangers in the older buildings on the lower east and west sides, which are non-fireproof and in which proper precautions are conspicuous by their absence, lie chiefly in the fact that the exits are of such unsafe construction and maintenance that persons using them in time of fire are not protected from flames, panic or suffocation.

“This is not a reassuring report made by the Committee of Safety. Do the citizens of New York need another Asch Building horror to furnish the spur to action, the need of which has been made so clear?”  (National Fire Protection Association.  “New York Factory Fire Perils.” Quarterly of the National Fire Protection Association. Vol. 6, No. 4, Apr 1913, p. 394-395.)

NYT Retrospective:  “….The fire spread quickly — so quickly that in a half hour it was over, having consumed all it could in the large, airy lofts on the 8th, 9th and 10th floors of the Asch Building, a half block east of Washington Square Park. In its wake, the smoldering floors and wet streets were strewn with 146 bodies, all but 23 of them young women.

“The Triangle shirtwaist factory fire, as it is commonly recorded in history books, was one of the nation’s landmark disasters, a tragedy that enveloped the city in grief and remorse but eventually inspired important shifts in the nation’s laws, particularly those protecting the rights of workers and the safety of buildings.

“The tragedy galvanized Americans, who were shaken by the stories of Jewish and Italian strivers who had been toiling long hours inside an overcrowded factory only to find themselves trapped in a firestorm inside a building’s top floors where exit doors may have been locked. At least 50 workers concluded that the better option was simply to jump.

“Triangle was one of the nation’s largest makers of high-collar blouses that were part of the shirtwaist style, a sensible fusion of tailored shirt and skirt. Designed for utility, the style was embraced at the turn of the century by legions of young women who preferred its hiked hemline and unfettered curves to the confining, street-sweeping dresses that had hobbled their mothers and aunts.

“The company had become notorious two years before when its owners, immigrants themselves, managed to withstand a 13-week industry-wide strike, without giving in to demands for better conditions and union representation.

“The fire accomplished what the strike could not. From the city’s grief sprang government investigations and transformative legislation, first in New York State and then the nation.

“In New York a state legislative commission was formed to study the fire and the safety of factories. The commission was led by two unlikely reformers, the Tammany Hall politicians Robert F. Wagner and Alfred E. Smith. Aware of the public outrage, they spearheaded changes in state legislation to require fire sprinklers, fire drills and unlocked and outward-swinging doors, and inspired a bill limiting work to 54 hours without overtime.

“Leon Stein, author of the definitive history, “The Triangle Fire” (ILR/Cornell University Press, 1962), noted that the commission’s first year of work “resulted in the addition of eight new laws to the labor code; it produced twenty-five new laws the following year, and three in 1914.” Wagner and Smith’s work helped them vault respectively to the United States Senate and the governor’s mansion.

“That reform spirit also made its way to Washington, where the National Labor Relations Act, also known as the Wagner Act, was passed in 1935, assigning rights to workers, including strengthening their right to organize.

“And by a striking serendipity, one of the fire’s onlookers was 30-year-old Frances Perkins, who had been having tea at a patrician townhouse on Washington Square and heard the wail of fire engines. Perkins, who was part of the New York commission, went on to become Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s secretary of labor, the first female cabinet member. In that job, she helped craft federal laws that limited working hours nationally and the age children could work, set floors on wages and inaugurated the social security system. Years later she said the New Deal was “based really upon the experiences that we had had in New York State and upon the sacrifices of those who, we faithfully remember with affection and respect, died in that terrible fire on March 25, 1911.”

“Perkins pledged that the victims would never be forgotten. And, indeed, labor unions and their descendants every year mark the anniversary of the fire at the former Asch Building (now called the Brown Building, which houses science laboratories and classrooms for New York University) by reciting each victim’s name with the toll of a bell, and chalk outlines drawn on the sidewalk where so many bodies fell.

“But six of the 146 had never been identified. The day those “unknowns” were buried by the city in the Cemetery of the Evergreens, on the border of Brooklyn and Queens, had been the culmination of the city’s outpouring of grief, as hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers turned out in a driving rain for a symbolic funeral procession sponsored by labor unions and other organizations, while hundreds of thousands more watched from the sidewalks.

“A century later, a researcher, Michael Hirsch, finally put names to each of the six. And so in 2011, at the centennial commemoration of the fire, the names of all 146 dead would finally be read.”  (New York Times. “Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire (1911).” 3-11-2011 update.)

Safety Engineering: “The Asch building fire is another ter­rible charge against exit failures and the lack of automatic sprinkler protection. In this fire one hundred and forty-seven lives were lost when inflammable ma­terial upon which the employees were working and the waste which littered the floor blazed with inconceivable rapidity, and set the imprisoned workers jumping from the windows to their death.” (Safety Engineering. “Phases…Fire Prevention Teachers Should Know,” V31/4, Apr 1916, p. 201.)

Smith: “The Asch Building was a ten-story structure that stood near the city’s famous Washington Square.  Designed originally as a place where mercantile goods were to be sold and stored, it now housed several “loft facto­ries,” the largest of which was the Triangle Shirtwaist Company occupying the top three floors.

“On this particular Saturday afternoon, the rest of the building was empty, since the other tenants worked a five-and-a-half-day week.  But the Triangle owners de­manded a full six-day week of their mostly immigrant workers, so over six hundred employees still labored over their crowded work tables, cutting and sewing flimsy materials into the fashionable ladies’ blouses of the day. At 4:45, just as the workers were getting ready to leave, someone spotted a fire smoldering in a rag bin on the eighth floor.  A few of them grabbed fire buckets and tried to put it out, but the flames had already leapt to the tissue paper and cloth scraps that covered the wooden work tables and wooden floors.

“Within moments the eighth floor was ablaze, and the young cutters and sewers were racing for the only two doorways off the floor.  One opened into a passageway purposely kept narrow so that the girls could pass through it only one at a time—a measure designed by the owners so that everyone’s handbag could be checked each night for any stolen goods. This led to two small eleva­tors, each capable of holding only about a dozen people, and to a narrow set of winding stairs guarded by a door that opened inward.  The other doorway also led to a staircase, but as the now panic-stricken workers tried to open that door, they found it bolted shut from the outside —another management measure, this time to guard against any employees sneaking out for a break.

“Even against these terrible odds, most of the eighth floor workers were able to escape with their lives.  On the ninth floor, though, it was a different story. There flames licking up from below entered the windows, setting fire to the patterns and blouses that hung there.  In no time that floor was almost completely ablaze, and the nearly three hundred workers there had even less time to escape than their co-workers downstairs.  Everywhere their at­tempts to flee were thwarted.  They too faced the locked door and the narrow passageway, but by this time the narrow stairway was full of smoke and the elevators were already too full to take on more passengers.

“In the face of the advancing flames the screaming young women did desperate things. More than thirty of them jumped into the elevator shaft, crushing themselves and others and putting the elevators they sought to ride down, out of commission.  Some tried to use the building’s single fire escape, but the intense heat had softened it to the point that it twisted itself away from the wall, send­ing the would be escapees tumbling into the courtyard below.  Another sixty climbed out on window ledges where they hovered until the flames caught them.  Then, to the horror of the crowd below, they stepped off the ledges and came crashing down nine stories to the pave­ment. Firefighters, on the scene within three minutes, valiantly tried to catch them in life nets, but the hundred-foot drop was just too great. (It was calculated that the bodies of three of these young girls, falling from that height, landed with a dead weight of sixteen tons.)

“Firefighters could do little to battle the fire from the ground—their aerial ladders went only as high as the sixth floor and their water towers to the seventh—but they raced up the stairs with their hose in a mad dash to douse the flames in time to save more people from jumping. Within eighteen minutes they had the fire under control, but it was too late. Nearly 150 Triangle em­ployees were dead or dying and another 70 were seriously injured.

“Once again greed and human insensitivity had taken an incredible toll of 146 lives. In the investigation that inevitably followed, it was discovered that no sprinkler system had been installed in the building because it would have cost five thousand dollars. A third staircase was not constructed, as required by law, because the ar­chitect argued that the single fire escape fulfilled this requirement. And of course the locking of doors was done to save a few dollars in pilfering and a few stolen minutes of rest for the dollar-per-day employees.

“But once again tragedy led to change. Within a short time after the disaster thirty new ordinances were incor­porated into New York’s fire code, and many other com­munities followed suit….” (Smith, Denis.  Dennis Smith’s History of Firefighting in America...  1978, pp. 123-125.)

Sutherland:  “…on March 25, 1911…the Triangle Waist Co., a maker of women’s blouses, caught fire and burned in New York City, killing 146 and injuring scores.  More than 60 died when they jumped from the building’s upper floors, their final moments witnessed by thousands of horrified onlookers. Triangle remains the deadliest accidental industrial building fire in the nation’s history.  It also helped spark profound change in American society, including sweeping reforms that included the adoption and enforcement of a host of workplace safety measures. The development and creation of NFPA 101®, Life Safety Code®, can be traced directly to the Triangle fire.

“…however, the conditions that led to the Triangle disaster 100 years ago haven’t disappeared: they’ve merely relocated, again and again, following the paths of least resistance provided by the evolving global economy.  What once made Manhattan so attractive for the barons of the garment industry — a seemingly endless supply of cheap labor, no protections for workers, and few workplace regulations — has existed, to varying degrees, in Mexico, Central America, Thailand, India, China, Bangladesh, and elsewhere. “As we’ve exported these jobs, we’ve also exported our factory fires,” says Robert Ross, a professor of sociology at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, and author of the book Slaves to Fashion: Poverty and Abuse in the New Sweatshops. “I’ve been researching these fires since 2005, and it’s uncanny how these events repeat themselves: unsafe conditions, locked doors, women and girls jumping out of windows. It’s the same problem over and over.”

“That’s why, in most of the upcoming commemorations of the 100th anniversary of the Triangle fire, remembrances of the event itself will take place side by side with observances of more recent fires that have plagued the international garment industry. There will be demands for industry accountability, and for governments to honor promises of regulation and enforcement. There will be calls for workers to continue to fight for unionization. There will be demands that U.S. authorities crack down on the illegal, unregulated sweatshops that continue to operate across the country, as clothing makers seek to take advantage of the latest waves of inexpensive immigrant labor. There will be earnest assessments of how far global workplace safety has come, and how far it has yet to go.  What binds those agendas, though, is Triangle.  A century later, it has lost none of its power to move us, or to horrify us.

“Triangle remains a pivotal event in American workplace fire safety, but it was not unique.  Fires periodically killed workers in a variety of industrial settings in turn-of-the-century America; just four months before Triangle, a fire in a light bulb factory in Newark, New Jersey, spread to the floor above, which housed the production facilities for an underwear maker, resulting in the deaths of 25 garment workers.  The Triangle Waist Co., which occupied the top three floors of the 10-story Asch Building in Greenwich Village, at the corner of Washington Place and Greene Street, had experienced fires itself, but none that couldn’t be doused with the buckets of water that were located strategically on each floor.

“In 1911, technology and practices that could have protected workers — enclosed stairways, fire walls, fire doors, automatic sprinkler systems, fire drills — existed, and in some cases were required, but few building owners bothered to implement them. Design shortcuts were common; the law called for a structure the size of the Asch Building to have three stairways accessing each floor, but the architect had received an exemption from the Building Department and provided just two, along with an exterior fire escape at the rear of the building that descended only as far as the second floor.  The regulatory emphasis was on constructing buildings that could withstand fire, not protecting their inhabitants.  “My building is fireproof,” insisted Joseph P. Asch of his namesake building, which he’d constructed in 1901, to newspaper reporters the day after the fire. He also insisted that the building complied with all New York City codes — though as reformers, journalists, and a growing chorus of politicians were already pointing out, Asch’s claims of compliance were far from a guarantee of a fire-safe building.

“The fire began on the eighth floor at about 4:40 p.m., as the factory’s roughly 500 workers — mostly young immigrant women, recent arrivals from Italy or Russia — were quitting for the day and heading for their customary exit, a pair of freight elevators located along the back wall, near the windows overlooking Greene Street.  After having their handbags searched for stolen fabric or blouses, workers would board the elevators, which would take them to the ground floor.  Each floor measured about 100 feet (30 meters) per side, and the large open area of the eighth floor contained tables used for cutting fabric, which was then assembled into shirtwaists, or blouses, by workers seated at sewing machines, which were mounted on six long tables.  The blouses were made of thin cotton, and scraps were stored in bins beneath the cutting tables.  An estimated ton or more of highly combustible scraps filled the bins on March 25.

“It was from one of the bins located near the freight elevators that workers first noticed smoke, then flame, most likely the result of a match or cigar butt dropped into a bin by a cutter.  Some of the men ran for buckets of water; in the moments it took them to return, the fire had billowed into something untamable.  The water had no effect, and the fire spread into the room, cutting off the route to the freight elevators and threatening the access to a nearby stairway.  Everything was fuel for the fire: the wooden tables and chairs, the wooden floor soaked with oil from the sewing machines, the fabric and blouses and tissue paper heaped around the room.  Smoke raced along the ceiling as bits of flaming ash floated about, igniting yet more fires.  A few moments more, and the room was an inferno, the workers screaming as they pushed toward the remaining exits: the stairwell near the freight elevators, and a stairwell and a pair of passenger elevators located diagonally across the large room, near the Washington Place windows.

“Each floor tells its own story.  On the eighth, most of the workers tried to cram into the two stairwells, but the door to the Washington Place stairs was locked — the idea was to funnel everyone through the Greene Street freight elevators, which made it easier to monitor theft.  A machinist named Louis Brown was able to fight through the crowd to unlock the door to the Washington Place stairwell, only to find that it opened inward; he wrenched it open, and workers poured down the steps.  Other workers rang frantically for the passenger elevators, which took agonizingly long to descend and return.  Someone managed to drag in a standpipe hose from a stairwell in a last-ditch effort to fight the blaze, but no one could make it work.  A small group of workers risked the flimsy iron fire escape, broke a window on the sixth floor, reentered the building, and were rescued by firefighters, who were at the scene a little more than five minutes after the fire began.  Windows on the eighth floor began to blow out from the intense heat, and flames shot up the side of the building, especially at the rear near the fire escape.  A worker made a panicked call to the tenth floor, where the owners’ offices were located, alerting them of the fire.  She tried to call the ninth floor but couldn’t get through.  Most of the people on the eighth floor got out.

“Even with the alert from the eighth floor, the situation on ten quickly deteriorated.  Within minutes, smoke and enormous flames were shooting up past the floor-to-ceiling windows on the Greene Street side, and the room was filling with smoke.  The floor included a pair of long pressing tables, shipping facilities, and, along the Washington Place side, offices for Triangle’s owners, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris.  The elevators were delayed, and fire was blasting into the stairwells of the floors below, blocking escape.  The stairwell near the Greene Street side led to the roof, and most of the roughly 60 workers on ten, along with Blanck and Harris, retreated there.  Flame and heavy smoke from below made even the rooftop precarious, and the roofs of the two adjoining buildings were too high to climb to.  A professor and his students in a neighboring New York University building came to the group’s aid, and used painters’ ladders to help the Triangle workers climb to safety.  All of the people from ten who made it to the roof were rescued.

“No such options were available to the more than 250 workers on the ninth floor.  The room was dominated by eight 75-foot-long (25-meter) sewing machine tables, 30 workers to a table.  No warning call had come from the floor below, and most of the workers were still idling as they awaited the freight elevators, collected their coats and pocketbooks, or chatted with co-workers at the long tables.  By the time they realized what was happening, five minutes after the fire began on the eighth floor, flames were shooting up past the large windows at the rear of the room; within moments, fire had blown out the windows and was rapidly pushing its way in, threatening to cut off the freight elevators and neighboring stairs.

“Terrified workers scrambled over the machines and the long, close-set tables to reach elevators or stairwells. The elevators, already besieged by calls from the eighth and tenth floors, were slow to arrive.  Workers raced for both stairwells, and again found the door to the Washington Place stairs locked.  This time, though, no one could unlock it or pry it open.  A number of people got down the Greene Street stairwell, but intense flame at the eighth floor soon blocked the way down for the rest.  A few braved the growing flames in the stairwell and headed for the tenth floor, but many seemed unaware that the stairs led to the roof and the possibility of safety. People crowded in desperation onto the steep, narrow fire escape.  The passenger elevators finally arrived, and women surged into the cars, 20 or more in cars designed for 10, some with their hair or dresses aflame.

“About 10 minutes after the fire began on the floor below, intense flames had divided the ninth floor, cutting off many workers from the exits.  Fire backed them toward the Washington Place and Greene Street windows.  Observers on the streets below initially thought the smoking shapes falling to the pavement were bundles of fabric being salvaged by the factory’s owner; it became clear soon enough what was happening.  They began to come down in pairs, and in threes and fours.  Firefighters deployed life nets, but the people fell with too much force, smashing through the webbing.  A hook and ladder arrived, but its ladder reached only to the sixth floor; a girl paused in a ninth-floor window, made an impossible leap for the ladder’s top wrung nearly 30 feet (10 meters) below, and missed.  At the back of the building, the fire escape collapsed, pitching dozens of people, many of them already burning, to their deaths.

“The two passenger elevators continued to ferry workers from the ninth floor to the lobby.  One of them tried to return to the ninth but was stopped by warped tracks at the eighth floor, the result of intense heat blowing into the elevator shaft.  A few workers pried open the doors to the shaft and jumped for the cable.  A few survived.  Most missed, or sought the shaft as a desperate alternative to the overwhelming flames.  The second car became stuck at the bottom of the shaft, unable to move because of the volume of bodies that had landed on it, bending its iron roof. “They kept coming,” one of the elevator operators recalls, in Leon Stein’s classic book The Triangle Fire. “Some of their clothing was burning as they fell.  I could see the streaks of fire coming down like flaming rockets.”

“It was over in a little more than 15 minutes. “At 4:57 a body in burning clothes dropped from the ninth floor ledge [and] caught on a twisted iron hook protruding at the sixth floor,” Stein writes.  “For a minute it hung there, burning. Then it dropped to the sidewalk. No more fell.”

“Triangle’s reign as the world’s deadliest industrial building fire (excluding bombings and explosions) lasted until 1993, when the Kader toy factory fire near Bangkok, Thailand, killed 188 and injured hundreds.  It wasn’t the garment industry this time, but it bore a close resemblance. A workforce of mostly women and girls, some as young as 13, made toys for American companies that included Fisher-Price, Hasbro, Kenner, and others, according to The New York Times. There were significant fuel loads in the form of fabric, plastics, and stuffing materials. There were no sprinkler systems, alarms didn’t function properly, and the exits were woefully inadequate. The authors of the NFPA fire investigation report on the incident trace a clear line back to 1911. “In terms of analyzing the Kader fire, a direct comparison with the Triangle fire provides a useful benchmark,” they write. “Topics that deserve mention in terms of similarities include the initial fuel package, extent of horizontal and vertical fire separations, fixed fire protection systems, arrangement of exits, and fire safety training…Inadequate exit arrangements was perhaps the most significant factor in the high loss of life at both the Kader fire and the Triangle fire.” Use of the Life Safety Code, they go on to say, “would have dramatically reduced the loss of life.”

“One of the authors of the report was Casey Grant, now research director of the Fire Protection Research Foundation. “When you look at a fire like this, you can’t help but think we’re condemned to reliving Triangle over and over again,” says Grant, who toured the Kader site and worked with the International Labor Organization, a United Nations agency that monitors international labor standards, to compile the report. “Collectively, I think we’re making progress on these issues around the world, but we have a ways to go.”  Grant is quick to note that while developed countries can serve as safety examples for poorer, less regulated nations, they’re far from perfect models; a 1991 fire at an Imperial Foods chicken processing facility in Hamlet, North Carolina, killed 25 workers and injured 54 when locked doors prevented their escape. Investigators found that the plant had never received a safety inspection during its 11 years of operation.

“While such fires receive significant media coverage in the U.S., it’s often a different story when the fire is half way around the world.  In his introduction to the 2001 edition of Stein’s book, the journalist William Greider offers a caustic assessment of the muted reaction to the Kader fire, a result of the global economic conditions that spawned it.  “Abusive conditions are now scattered around the world, often in obscure places that are not visible to the public,” he writes; outrage is local and not widely reported.  “Most developing countries, including China and Thailand, have sound laws that require safe working conditions,” he continues.  “These laws are widely unenforced and regularly evaded by businesses, including the subcontractors who supply major American multinationals…the laws are subverted by fierce competition among poor countries, all of whom are desperate for foreign investment and new factories that promise jobs and growth.”  He quotes a Thai minister of industry who sums up the predicament that comes with punishing lawbreakers: “If we punish them, who will want to invest here?”

“Manufacturers’ so-called “race to the bottom” — aggressively scouring the globe for locations with the cheapest labor and the fewest regulatory concerns — is now embodied by Bangladesh, where roughly 5,000 garment factories employ some 3 million workers, making it the country’s largest industry, and one that continues to bear the garment industry’s historic burden of fire. According to the International Labor Rights Forum, between 2006 and 2009, 414 workers were killed in 213 reported garment factory fires.  In February, 2010, another fire near Dhaka killed 21 workers in a sweater factory that produced clothing for H&M and other brands.

“A pair of sentences in a New York Times story on the Ha-Meem fire suggests that not much differentiates the fire safety concerns of 2011 Bangladesh and 1911 New York City:  “Piles of clothes in garment factories are easily combustible.  Fires can be very deadly because some factory owners lock exits to prevent workers from leaving their machines.”

“The building is still there, or at least most of it. The Asch Building has since been incorporated into a larger building housing classrooms and offices for New York University, but the facades along Washington Place and Greene Street look much as they did a century ago.  On March 25, thousands will gather at the building to commemorate the fire.  They’ll imagine the corner as it might have looked in 1911, and they’ll imagine people poised high in the windows, flames billowing behind them.

“In 1911, there were no laws requiring fire sprinklers or fire drills in New York City factory buildings, many of them as tall or taller than the Asch Building.  Stein writes that by September, 1909, the city numbered 612,000 workers in 30,000 factories, and that by early 1911 about half that total number was employed above the seventh floor.  The fire department’s ladders and hoses were generally only effective up to the sixth floor.

“Of the 146 who died in the Triangle fire, all but six had been working on the ninth floor.  Of the dead, 129 were women and girls.  More than 60 of the victims where teenagers; the youngest were 14.  Among the dead was a mother and her two daughters.  Eight months after the fire, Triangle’s owners, Blanck and Harris, were acquitted by a jury on charges of manslaughter.  The Triangle Waist Co. moved to another building, and in 1913 an inspector in New York City’s newly formed Bureau of Fire Prevention found a door to the factory locked with a chain, during working hours and with 150 workers inside.  Blanck was arrested and fined $20.  That same year, a garment factory fire in Binghamton, New York, killed 35 workers, drawing immediate comparisons to Triangle.

“By then, though, the spectacle of Triangle had touched off an intense period of reform. By 1914, the state of New York had enacted dozens of laws that reshaped factory safety, including fire safety, and became a national model.  At the urging of a young reformer named Frances Perkins, who would go on to become Secretary of Labor under Franklin Roosevelt, NFPA expanded its mission from protecting buildings to protecting the people who worked in them, and undertook efforts that would eventually result in the creation of the Building Exits Code, the precursor to the Life Safety Code.  These steps were all part of a broader progressive reform movement that addressed not only safety, but wage-and-hour issues, an end to child labor, and much more. It has been argued that the central tenet of FDR’s New Deal — government as protector of the people — was born in the flames of Triangle.

“But as the historian Mike Wallace points out, gains won are often, and easily, lost. “Many of the initial post-Triangle reforms were strenuously opposed by conservative businessmen…[who were] soon back in the saddle and able to halt, hamstring or reverse liberal initiatives,” he writes in a 2003 New York Times review of Triangle: The Fire That Changed America, a book by the journalist David Von Drehle. “The New Deal expanded the terrain of social democracy, but by the late 1930s, opponents had regained the initiative and dismantled many of its signature programs.  In the 1960s and 1970s, reformers won health and safety and pollution regulations; today’s free marketers are whittling these away.  And sweatshops that exploit vulnerable and unorganized immigrant workers are again alive and malignantly well in New York City.”

“While the working definition of sweatshops involves abuse of wage and hour laws, Joel Shufro, who has been executive director of the New York Committee for Occupational Safety and Health for 32 years, says the problems rarely stop there. “If employers aren’t following wage laws, they surely aren’t following safety and health regulations,” he says.  “Our experience is that in many cases the dictum ‘safety pays’ is not applicable for these employers — it’s cheaper in many cases for them to expose workers to toxics and hazards and to literally discard these people.” Threats like these speak to the “tremendous need” to expand enforcement, Shufro says, because the current mechanisms in place to protect workers are insufficient. “The safety net that grew out of Triangle has protected workers and citizens for generations, but it’s being shredded by people who are hostile to any form of regulation, both in Washington, D.C., and in many states.”

“The sociologist Robert Ross tells of a recent visit to a small garment factory in the Chinatown section of Boston.  “There was a security grate that came three-quarters the way down the front door, so you had to get on your hands and knees to get into the place,” he says.  “There were fleece garments piled shoulder high in the aisles, and the door at the back was padlocked from the outside.  It was a miniature Triangle waiting to happen.”

“Triangle wasn’t the only fire in Lower Manhattan that left an impression on Leon Stein. In March, 1958, a large fire erupted in a factory building just blocks from his office, and five blocks from where Triangle had occurred.  He rushed to the scene, a six-story building at Houston Street and Broadway. A fire had begun in a textile factory on the third floor, and spread to a union garment factory on the fourth.  A large section of the fourth floor had collapsed, killing 24.  The building had no sprinklers, an inadequate fire escape, and had not conducted fire drills. It had been more than three decades since NFPA created the Building Exits Code.

“As he watched bodies being lowered to the street in baskets, Stein suddenly saw a friend in the crowd: Josephine Nicolosi, who’d survived the eighth floor of Triangle and whose story he would include in his book, The Triangle Fire, which he would publish in 1962. She was crying. She gripped his wrists and shook them in despair.  “What good have been all the years?” she asked him, imploring, as smoke rose from the building behind her. “The fire still burns.”

SIDEBAR

“’Organizations  Like Yours…’

“Twenty years before becoming a key player in FDR’s New Deal, Frances Perkins, a witness to the Triangle fire, urged NFPA to champion workplace safety.

“Frances Perkins saw it with her own eyes. She was 30, a social worker living in New York City, and was visiting a friend for Saturday tea in Greenwich Village when the afternoon was split by the wail of sirens. She and her friends ran to the other side of Washington Square, and were among the throngs who witnessed the spectacle of the Triangle fire firsthand.

“The fire, and the subsequent impassioned calls to action by labor reformers, had a profound impact on Perkins, and she vowed to take up the reform cause. She wasted little time; by the following year, she had become executive secretary of the Committee on Safety, a non-governmental body formed in the days following the Triangle fire to push for system-wide reforms for worker safety. It was as part of her extensive lobbying efforts that Perkins — who had also become an expert in the minutiae of building safety — addressed the 17th annual meeting of NFPA in May, 1913, in New York.  Specifically, Perkins urged the organization to advocate for codes that protected not just buildings, but also the people who worked in them. NFPA created the Committee on Life Safety the following year, and in 1927 issued the Building Exits Code, the forerunner to today’s Life Safety Code®.

“Perkins was named Secretary of Labor in 1933 by Franklin Roosevelt, becoming the first female Cabinet secretary in U.S. history.

“The following are excerpts from Perkins’ 1913 speech to NFPA’s members, “The Social and Human Cost of Fire.”

“Although the information given out by your association…would sometimes make it appear that the protection of property against fire was the only interest of the organization, more and more there is coming into your organizations, and into the literature dealing with these problems of industrial fires, a point of view which emphasizes the human element in fire protection.”

“It is the duty of organizations like yours and like the Committee on Safety, which I represent, to take these problems seriously and to recognize the responsibility of increasing human health and happiness by fire prevention. The people who go out to work in these factories cannot secure this protection for themselves…It is because these people who go out to work in the factories are not their own masters, that it is necessary for organizations like yours and the Committee on Safety to insist upon safety for them.”

“Buildings have been built all over the country, unquestionably fireproof buildings, which are largely death traps, because the necessities of the human beings who may be in that building when it catches fire have never been taken into consideration. Of what use is a fireproof building if you cannot get out of it?”

“Only last fall, in one small district [of the city], composed mostly of fairly new [high-rise industrial buildings], out of 55 buildings we found 48 having all the conditions which caused the greatest loss of life in the Asch Building.”

“…It is the intention of a group like yours here to spread accurate information. For that purpose you should utilize not only the technical knowledge which all your associates can give you, but you can easily secure great interest in the phases of fire prevention matters which concern human life among all philanthropic organizations, but chiefly women’s clubs, who just now are becoming significant factors in every state. They can easily carry on a propaganda of fire prevention and protection, because as women of the leisure class they are for the most part released by our industrial conditions from working for their living and have nothing to do but use their energy for the benefit of humanity.”

“An organization like yours should make a study of these hazardous industries, publish the results and publish a set of rules for these industries which would make the people in such factories safe. The maximum of your regulations would be adopted all through the country by enlightened employers who want to do what they can to mitigate the evils of industry and the minimum can be enforced upon others by enacting these regulations into law…”

“We must work together with this idea in mind, that it is human life and happiness which we are trying to save, and that this is the most important thing, the most valuable social and spiritual asset in any community.”

SIDEBAR

“The Evolution of Safety – From Triangle to the Life Safety Code:

March 1911 – Triangle Waist Co. fire kills 146

May 1911 – NFPA annual meeting in New York City includes a presentation on fire drills, marking a growing concern among members for safety to life in buildings. A committee on private fire departments is renamed “Committee on Private Fire Departments and Fire Drills.”

June 1911 – Non-governmental Committee on Safety is formed in New York to eradicate industrial fires.

June 1911 – Committee on Safety helps bring about the New York State Factory Investigating Commission, formed to examine manufacturing workplace issues. The commission soon begins creating model legislation introducing sweeping changes in state labor practices and workplace safety.

May 1912 – At the NFPA annual meeting in Chicago, the Committee on Private Fire Departments and Fire Drills presents two pamphlets for adoption, both on fire drills.

June 1912 – Frances Perkins, a 32-year-old social worker, is named executive secretary of the Committee on Safety.

May 1913 – Frances Perkins addresses the NFPA annual meeting in New York City and urges the organization to create a broad range of safety-to-life measures in the workplace.

1914 – NFPA creates the Committee on Safety to Life. The committee presents its first report at the annual meeting the following year, including a special section on egress, a statement that sprinklers can save lives, and preliminary specifications for outside fire escapes.

1915 – At its annual meeting, NFPA adopts revised specifications for fire escapes. The following year, the work done by the Committee on Safety to Life on fire escapes is published in a pamphlet, “Outside Stairs for Fire Exits.”

1918 – NFPA’s Committee on Safety to Life publishes a pamphlet, “Safeguarding Factory Workers From Fire.”

1921 – NFPA’s Committee on Safety to Life is enlarged to include representation from an array of interested groups. Work begins on the further development and integration of previous Committee publications into a comprehensive guide to exits and related features of life safety from fires in all classes of occupancy.

1927 – First edition of NFPA’s Building Exits Code published.

1933 – Frances Perkins becomes Secretary of Labor under Franklin Roosevelt.

1948 – Some of the language in the Building Exits Code is modified for use in legal statutes, following a series of disastrous fires in the early and mid 1940s, including the Cocoanut Grove Night Club fire in Boston that killed 492 people.

1966 – Following the 1963 restructuring of the Committee on Safety to Life, the 1966 edition of the Code reflects a complete revision, as well as a new title: Code for Safety to Life from Fire in Buildings and Structures. It’s also known by its unofficial name, the Life Safety Code. It is decided that the Code would be revised and republished on a three-year schedule.

1977 – The Committee on Safety to Life is reorganized.

1981 – The new edition of the Code features major editorial and structural changes reflecting the organization of the modern Code.

2003 – The name of the Code is officially changed to Life Safety Code.”

(Sutherland.  “After Triangle:  What’s Changed…,” NFPA Journal, Mar/Apr 2011.)

 Wickware:  “A factory fire near Washington Square, New York, results in the death of 145 persons.” (Wickware. The American Yearbook 1911, V. 2, pp. 835-836.)

Wikipedia:  “In one of the most infamous incidents in America’s industrial history, the Triangle Shirtwaist[5] Company factory in New York City burns down on this day in 1911, killing 145 workers. The tragedy led to the development of a series of laws and regulations that better protected the safety of factory workers.

“The Triangle factory, owned by Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, was located in the top three floors of the Asch Building, on the corner of Greene Street and Washington Place, in Manhattan. It was a true sweatshop, employing young immigrant women who worked in a cramped space at lines of sewing machines.[6] Nearly all the workers were teenaged girls who did not speak English and made only about $15 per week working 12 hours a day, every day.  In 1911, there were four elevators with access to the factory floors, but only one was fully operational and the workers had to file down a long, narrow corridor in order to reach it. There were two stairways down to the street, but one was locked from the outside to prevent stealing and the other only opened inward. The fire escape was so narrow that it would have taken hours for all the workers to use it, even in the best of circumstances.

“The danger of fire in factories like the Triangle Shirtwaist was well-known, but high levels of corruption in both the garment industry and city government generally ensured that no useful precautions were taken to prevent fires. The Triangle Shirtwaist factory’s owners were known to be particularly anti-worker in their policies and had played a critical role in breaking a large strike by workers the previous year.

“On March 25, a Saturday afternoon, there were 600 workers at the factory when a fire began in a rag bin. The manager attempted to use the fire hose to extinguish it, but was unsuccessful, as the hose was rotted and its valve was rusted shut. As the fire grew, panic ensued. The young workers tried to exit the building by the elevator but it could hold only 12 people and the operator was able to make just four trips back and forth before it broke down amid the heat and flames. In a desperate attempt to escape the fire, the girls left behind waiting for the elevator plunged down the shaft to their deaths. The girls who fled via the stairwells also met awful demises–when they found a locked door at the bottom of the stairs, many were burned alive.

“Those workers who were on floors above the fire, including the owners, escaped to the roof and then to adjoining buildings. As firefighters arrived, they witnessed a horrible scene. The girls who did not make it to the stairwells or the elevator were trapped by the fire inside the factory and began to jump from the windows to escape it. The bodies of the jumpers fell on the fire hoses, making it difficult to begin fighting the fire. Also, the firefighters’ ladders reached only seven floors high and the fire was on the eighth floor. In one case, a life net was unfurled to catch jumpers, but three girls jumped at the same time, ripping the net. The nets turned out to be mostly ineffectual.

“Within 18 minutes, it was all over. Forty-nine workers had burned to death or been suffocated by smoke, 36 were dead in the elevator shaft and 58 died from jumping to the sidewalks. With two more dying later from their injuries, a total of 145 people were killed by the fire. The workers’ union set up a march on April 5 on New York’s Fifth Avenue to protest the conditions that had led to the fire; it was attended by 80,000 people.[7]

At a memorial for the victims on April 2, 1911 at the Metropolitan Opera House, one of the speakers, Rose Schneiderman said:

I would be a traitor to these poor burned bodies if I came here to talk good fellowship. We have tried you good people of the public and we have found you wanting. The old Inquisition had its rack and its thumbscrews and its instruments of torture with iron teeth. We know what these things are today; the iron teeth are our necessities, the thumbscrews are the high-powered and swift machinery close to which we must work, and the rack is here in the firetrap structures that will destroy us the minute they catch on fire.

This is not the first time girls have been burned alive in the city. Every week I must learn of the untimely death of one of my sister workers. Every year thousands of us are maimed. The life of men and women is so cheap and property is so sacred. There are so many of us for one job it matters little if 146 of us are burned to death.

We have tried you citizens; we are trying you now, and you have a couple of dollars for the sorrowing mothers, brothers and sisters by way of a charity gift. But every time the workers come out in the only way they know to protest against conditions which are unbearable the strong hand of the law is allowed to press down heavily upon us.

Public officials have only words of warning to us – warning that we must be intensely peaceable, and they have the workhouse just back of all their warnings. The strong hand of the law beats us back, when we rise, into the conditions that make life unbearable.

I can’t talk fellowship to you who are gathered here. Too much blood has been spilled. I know from my experience it is up to the working people to save themselves. The only way they can save themselves is by a strong working-class movement.”

(Wikipedia, “International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, Accessed 12-11-2008.)

 

Newspapers of the Time

March 26:  “

(New York Times. “141 Men and Girls Die in Waist Factory Fire; Trapped High Up in Washington Place Building; Street Strewn With Bodies; Piles of Dead Inside.” 3-26-1911.)

March 27:  “New York, March 27 – One hundred and forty-two persons — nine-tenths of them girls from the East Side — were crushed to death the pavements, smothered in smoke, or shriveled crisp in a factory fire Saturday afternoon in the worst disaster New York has known since the steamship General Slocum was burned to the water’s edge off North Brothers island in 1904, when a fire destroyed the Triangle Shirtwaist factory.

“New York, March 27 (United Press) – Veteran firemen today said that the escape of any of the 750 girls employed in the Triangle Shirtwaist factory was a miracle.  The investigation by Fire Marshal Beers is well under way. It has been shown there that the fire started from a cigarette or match thrown into some waste and that employes fought it 35 minutes before n alarm was turned in. Meanwhile a machinist tried to get the girls o march out by a single fire escape, but their panic heightened by the variety of languages prevented it.

“Testimony shows that had order prevailed and if the girls had tried to use this escape they would have taken three hours to get out. It ahs also developed that a state fire inspector O.K.’d this building last February….”  (Portsmouth Daily Times, OH. “New York Fire Horror Claimed 143 Victims.” 3-27-1911, p. 1.)

 

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New York Times. “City Will Bury the Unidentified. Mayor Ends Controversy Over Possession of the Fourteen Bodies of Fire Victims…Another Victim Dies in Hospital.” 3-31-1911. At: http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9D05E1DB1439E333A25752C3A9659C946096D6CF

New York Times. “Doors Were Locked, Say Rescued Girls. Workers Huddled Against Them as Fire Spread, According to Strike Leader. Mass Meeting of Protest.” 3-27-1911. Accessed at: http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9404E6DA143EE033A25754C2A9659C946096D6CF

New York Times. “Drilling for Life.” 3-30-1911. Accessed at: http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9401E3DB1439E333A25753C3A9659C946096D6CF

New York Times. “Faint in a Frenzy Over Tales of Fire. Fifty Shirt Waist Girls, Upset by Socialist Oratory, Carried Out of Central Palace Meeting. The Mayor’s Name Hissed.” 3-30-1911. At: http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9C00E4DB1439E333A25753C3A9659C946096D6CF

New York Times. “Fire-Escape Laws to be Strengthened. Labor Commissioner’s Power Over Factories will Probably be Extended. Denies Responsibility Here.” 3-28-1911. Accessed at: http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9A05E5DD1431E233A2575BC2A9659C946096D6CF

New York Times. “Fire Sufferers’ Fund Swelled to $50,485.” 3-30-1911. Accessed at: http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9802E4DB1439E333A25753C3A9659C946096D6CF

New York Times. “Forgot Fire Hose in Factory Panic. Battalion Chief Worth Says its use by Employes Would Have Saved Many Lives. The Nets Proved Useless.” 3-29-1911. Accessed at: http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9E0DE6DB1439E333A2575AC2A9659C946096D6CF

New York Times. “Greed the Trouble, Clergymen Assert. Fire Disaster Due to Disregard of the Toilers in the Rush for Riches. Should Bring Reforms.” 3-27-1911. Accessed at: http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9807E6DA143EE033A25754C2A9659C946096D6CF

New York Times. “Lack of Fire Drill Held Responsible. Company Advised to Train Its Workers, Says Industrial Engineer, but Ignored Him.” 3-26-1911. Accessed at: http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9D05E0D61331E233A25755C2A9659C946096D6CF

New York Times. “Locked in Factory, The Survivors Say, When Fire Started that Cost 141 Lives. Two Doors Still Locked in Ruins and Others Burned Away Where Many Victims Fell.. Proprietors Deny This. District Attorney to Ask Grand Jury to Fix Responsibility for the Disaster. Death List Stays at 141.” 3-27-1911. Accessed at: http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9505E6DA143EE033A25754C2A9659C946096D6CF

New York Times. “Many Now Tell of Fire Traps. Over 1,000 Factory Workers Give Secret Information to Civic Committee. Death List Goes to 143.” 3-29-1911. Accessed at: http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9502E6DB1439E333A2575AC2A9659C946096D6CF

New York Times. “Sad All-Day March to Morgue Gates. Thousands of Curiosity Seekers Crowd Real Mourners to View the Bodies. Many Women Collapse.” 3-27-1911. Accessed at: http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9E04E6DA143EE033A25754C2A9659C946096D6CF

New York Times. “Sprinkler Systems in Factories” [Letter to the Editor]. 3-29-1911. Accessed at: http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9400E5DB1439E333A2575AC2A9659C946096D6CF

New York Times. “Supt. Miller Home; Won’t Talk of Fire. Asch Building is Being Restored Apparently to Its Original Condition. Three More Identified. 16 Victims Still Unclaimed. Survivors Testify That Panic Was Chiefly to Blame. One Tells of Rotten Hose.” 3-30-1911. At: http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9F02E4DB1439E333A25753C3A9659C946096D6CF

New York Times. “The Calamity.” 3-26-1911. Accessed at: http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9B03E0D61331E233A25755C2A9659C946096D6CF

New York Times. “The Century’s Worst Fires.” 3-26-1990. Accessed at:  http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE2D9113CF935A15750C0A966958260&n=Top%2FReference%2FTimes%20Topics%2FSubjects%2FF%2FFires%20and%20Firefighters

 New York Times. “The Fire Investigation.” 3-28-1911. Accessed at: http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9B07E4DD1431E233A2575BC2A9659C946096D6CF

 New York Times. “The Washington Place Fire.” 3-27-1911. Accessed at: http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9F02E6DA143EE033A25754C2A9659C946096D6CF

 New York Times. “Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire (1911).” 3-11-2011 update. Accessed 12-19-2013: http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/t/triangle_shirtwaist_factory_fire/index.html

New York Times. “Want New Building Laws. City Club Speakers Think Saturday’s Fire Should Bring Sharper Lines.” 3-30-1911. Accessed at: http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9E02E4DB1439E333A25753C3A9659C946096D6CF

New York Tribune. “More Than 140 Die as Flames Sweep Through Three Stories of Factory Building in Washington Place,” March 26, 1911, p. 1. Accessed at:  http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030214/1911-03-26/ed-1/seq-1/

Office of Justice Programs, United States Department of Justice.  Community Crisis Response Team Training Manual: Second Edition (Appendix D:  Catastrophes Used as Reference Points in Training Curricula). Washington, DC: OJP, U.S. Department of Justice.  Accessed at:  http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/ovc/publications/infores/crt/pdftxt/appendd.txt

Oklahoma State Capital, Gunter.  “148 Perished In Fire,” 3-26-1911, p. 1.  Accessed at:  http://www.amazon.com/s/qid=1301964318/ref=sr_pg_5?ie=UTF8&sort=-titlerank&keywords=two%20rivers&rh=n%3A163856011%2Cn%3A%21624868011%2Ck%3Atwo%20rivers%2Cp_n_feature_browse-bin%3A625151011%2Cp_n_feature_browse-bin%3A625151011&page=5

PBS, American Experience. Triangle Fire. “Introduction.” 2012. Accessed at: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/schedule/

Pepper, Chester L.  “Phases of Fire Prevention All Teachers Should Know.”  Safety Engineering, Vol. 31, No. 4 April 1916, pp. 197-202.  Google digitized at: http://books.google.com/books?id=mtcMAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=editions:LCCNsc80000582&lr

Portsmouth Daily Times, OH. “New York Fire Horror Claimed 143 Victims.” 3-27-1911, p. 1. At: http://newspaperarchive.com/fullpagepdfviewer?img=60842311&sterm=triangle+shirtwaist

Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition. ©2017. Accessed 10-3-2017 at: http://rememberthetrianglefire.org/

Smith, Dennis.  Dennis Smith’s History of Firefighting in America:  300 Years of Courage.  NY:  The Dial Press, 1978.

Sutherland, Scott. “After Triangle:  What’s Changed – And What Hasn’t – in the 100 years Since the Triangle Waist Co. Fire,” NFPA Journal, Mar/Apr 2011.  Accessed 4-4-2011 at:  http://www.nfpa.org/publicJournalDetail.asp?categoryID=2157&itemID=50572&src=NFPAJournal&cookie_test=1

Von Drehle, David.  Triangle:  The Fire That Changed America.  Grove Press, 2004, 352 pages.  Partially digitized by Google.  Google digitized at:  http://books.google.com/books?id=Xw4fjRQFusQC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Triangle:+The+Fire+That+Changed+America&ei=KrJBSd-MEYWGyATr692-DA#PPA3,M1

Wickware, Francis G. (Ed.). The American Yearbook 1911, V. 2, “The Austin Dam Failure,” 692. New York and London: D. Appleton and Company, 1912.  Digitized by Google at: http://books.google.com/books?id=qZMLAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_v2_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q=&f=false

Wikipedia. “Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire,” 4-3-2011 update.  Accessed at:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fire

For further reading see, for example:

 

Houle, Michelle M. Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire: Flames of Labor Reform. Enslow Publishing Inc., 2002.

Nobleman, Marc Tyler. We The People: The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. Minneapolis, MN: 2008. Google digital preview at: http://books.google.com/books?id=BY7QWnNzMRUC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

Stein, Leon. The Triangle Fire (Centennial Edition). First published in 1962 by J. B. Lippincott. ILR Press/Cornell Paperbacks Centennial Edition, 2011. Partially Google digitized at: http://books.google.com/books?id=Bz67-uqTwYwC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

 

[1] While we present references showing a range of over 140 to approximately 150, most of the sources note 146-147.

[2] Executive editor of NFPA Journal.

[3] “145 girls died — some in the workroom, others in the street after jumping from the windows.” Cites Bernard J. Reilly, who was the Deputy Chief Fire Marshal of the New York Bureau of Fire Investigation at time of the writing of Barlay’s book.

[4] Actually the ILGWU “was founded in 1900 in New York City by seven local unions…”  (Wikipedia, “International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union.”)

[5] “…women’s blouses were known as ‘shirtwaists’ in those days, or simply as ‘waists’.”  (Von Drehle 2004, 7)

[6] “…at the end of each day, the factory workers had to line up at a single unlocked exit to be ‘searched like thieves,’ just to prevent pilferage of a blouse or a bit of lace.”  (Von Drehle 2004, 7)

[7] “More than 100,000 people participated in the funeral march for the victims.”  (Wikipedia, “International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union.”)