The Postcard
A postcard bearing no publisher's name that was posted in Kentish Town, London using a halfpenny stamp on Tuesday the 11th. March 1913. The card was sent to:
Mr. A. Ward,
688, Holloway Road,
London N.
The message on the divided back was as follows:
"How would you like
to be a sailor?
W. G."
A New Altitude Record
So what else happened on the day that the card was posted?
Well, on the 11th. March 1913, Edmond Perreyon of France set a new record for highest altitude in an airplane, reaching 19,281 feet.
The Charge of the Light Brigade
The day also marked the death at the age of 81 of Godfrey Morgan, Viscount Tredegar, Welsh officer in the British Army.
Tredegar, who was born in 1831, was a survivor of the Charge of the Light Brigade as captain of a unit in the 17th. Lancers that rode into the "Valley of Death" during the Crimean War in 1854.
Settlement of The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire
Also on the 11th. March 1913, the last of the civil suits arising from the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of the 25th. March 1911 were settled.
Building owners Max Blanck and Isaac Harris paid $75 apiece for each dead woman, man or girl whose family had brought a wrongful death suit.
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire
The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, on Saturday, 25th. March 1911, was the deadliest industrial disaster in the history of the city, and one of the deadliest in U.S. history.
The fire caused the deaths of 146 garment workers – 123 women and girls and 23 men – who died from the fire, by smoke inhalation, falling, or jumping to their deaths. 78 individuals were injured.
Most of the victims were recent Italian or Jewish immigrant women and girls aged 14 to 23; of the victims whose ages are known, the oldest victim was 43-year-old Providenza Panno, and the youngest were 14-year-olds Kate Leone and Rosaria "Sara" Maltese.
The factory was located on the 8th., 9th., and 10th. floors of the Asch Building, which had been built in 1901. Later renamed the "Brown Building", it still stands at 23–29 Washington Place near Washington Square Park, on the New York University (NYU) campus.
Because the doors to the stairwells and exits were locked – a common practice at the time in order to prevent workers from taking unauthorized breaks and to reduce theft – many of the workers could not escape from the burning building and jumped from the high windows.
The fire led to legislation requiring improved factory safety standards and helped spur the growth of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU), which fought for better working conditions for sweatshop workers.
Background to the Disaster
The Triangle Waist Company factory, which was owned by Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, produced women's blouses, known as "shirtwaists".
The factory normally employed about 500 workers, who worked nine hours a day on weekdays plus seven hours on Saturdays, earning for their 52 hours of work between $7 and $12 a week, the equivalent of $191 to $327 a week in 2018 currency, or $3.67 to $6.29 per hour.
The Fire
At approximately 4:40 pm on March 25, 1911, as the workday was ending, a fire flared up in a scrap bin under one of the cutter's tables at the northeast corner of the 8th. floor.
The first fire alarm was sent at 4:45 pm by a passer-by on Washington Place who saw smoke coming from the 8th. floor. Both owners of the factory were in attendance, and had invited their children to the factory on that afternoon.
The Fire Marshal concluded that the likely cause of the fire was the disposal of an unextinguished match or cigarette butt in a scrap bin containing two months' worth of accumulated cuttings.
Beneath the table in the wooden bin were hundreds of pounds of scraps left over from the several thousand shirtwaists that had been cut at that table. The scraps had piled up from the last time the bin was emptied, coupled with the hanging fabrics that surrounded it; the steel trim was the only item that was not highly flammable.
Although smoking was banned in the factory, cutters were known to sneak cigarettes, exhaling the smoke through their lapels in order to avoid detection.
A New York Times article alternatively suggested that the fire had been started by the engines running the sewing machines.
Also a series of articles in Collier's noted a pattern of arson among certain sectors of the garment industry whenever their particular product fell out of fashion or had excess inventory in order to collect insurance.
The Insurance Monitor, a leading industry journal, observed that shirtwaists had recently fallen out of fashion, and that insurance for manufacturers of them was "fairly saturated with moral hazard".
However, although Blanck and Harris were known for having had four previous suspicious fires at their companies, arson was not suspected in this case.
A bookkeeper on the 8th. floor was able to warn employees on the 10th. floor via telephone, but there was no audible alarm, and no way to contact staff on the 9th. floor.
According to survivor Yetta Lubitz, the first warning of the fire on the 9th. floor arrived at the same time as the fire itself.
Although the floor had a number of exits, including two freight elevators, a fire escape, and stairways down to Greene Street and Washington Place, flames prevented workers from descending the Greene Street stairway, and the door to the Washington Place stairway was locked.
This was to prevent theft by the workers; the locked doors allowed managers to check the women's purses.
Various historians have also attributed the exit doors being locked to management's wanting to keep out union organizers due to management's anti-union bias.
The foreman who held the stairway door key had already escaped by another route. Dozens of employees escaped the fire by going up the Greene Street stairway to the roof. Other survivors were able to jam themselves into the elevators while they continued to operate.
Within three minutes, the Greene Street stairway became unusable in both directions. Terrified employees crowded onto the single exterior fire escape – which city officials had allowed Asch to erect instead of the required third staircase – a flimsy and poorly anchored iron structure that may have been broken before the fire.
It soon twisted and collapsed from the heat and overload, spilling about 20 victims nearly 100 feet (30 m) to their deaths on the concrete pavement below. The remainder waited until smoke and fire overcame them.
The fire department arrived quickly, but was unable to stop the flames, as their ladders were only long enough to reach as high as the 7th. floor. The fallen bodies and falling victims also made it difficult for the fire department to approach the building.
William Gunn Shepard, a reporter at the tragedy, reported:
"I learned a new sound that day, a sound
more horrible than description can picture –
the thud of a speeding living body on a
stone sidewalk".
Elevator operators Joseph Zito and Gaspar Mortillaro saved many lives by traveling three times up to the 9th. floor for passengers, but Mortillaro was eventually forced to give up when the rails of his elevator buckled under the heat.
Some victims pried the elevator doors open and jumped into the empty shaft, trying to slide down the cables or to land on top of the car. The weight and impacts of these bodies warped the elevator car and made it impossible for Zito to make another attempt.
A large crowd of bystanders gathered on the street, witnessing 62 people jumping or falling to their deaths from the burning building. Louis Waldman, later a New York Socialist state assemblyman, described the scene years later:
"One Saturday afternoon in March of that year –
March 25th., to be precise – I was sitting at one
of the reading tables in the old Astor Library.
I was deeply engrossed in my book when I
became aware of fire engines racing past the
building.
Along with several others in the library, I ran out
to see what was happening, and followed crowds
of people to the scene of the fire.
When we arrived at the scene, the police had
thrown up a cordon around the area and the
firemen were helplessly fighting the blaze. The
eighth, ninth, and tenth stories of the building
were now an enormous roaring cornice of flames.
Word had spread through the East Side, by some
magic of terror, that the plant of the Triangle Waist
Company was on fire, and that several hundred
workers were trapped.
Horrified and helpless, the crowds – I among them –
looked up at the burning building, saw girl after girl
appear at the reddened windows, pause for a terrified
moment, and then leap to the pavement below, to
land as mangled, bloody pulp. This went on for what
seemed a ghastly eternity.
Occasionally a girl who had hesitated too long was
licked by pursuing flames and, screaming with
clothing and hair ablaze, plunged like a living torch
to the street. Life nets held by the firemen were torn
by the impact of the falling bodies.
The emotions of the crowd were indescribable.
Women were hysterical, scores fainted; men wept as,
in paroxysms of frenzy, they hurled themselves
against the police lines."
Aftermath of the Fire
146 people died as a result of the fire: 123 women and girls and 23 men. Most victims died of burns, asphyxiation, blunt impact injuries, or a combination of the three.
The first person to jump was a man, and another man was seen kissing a young woman at the window before they both jumped to their deaths.
Bodies of the victims were taken to Charities Pier (also called Misery Lane), located at 26th. Street and the East River, for identification by friends and relatives.
Victims were interred in 16 different cemeteries. 22 victims of the fire were buried by the Hebrew Free Burial Association in a special section at Mount Richmond Cemetery. In some instances, their tombstones refer to the fire.
Six victims remained unidentified until Michael Hirsch, a historian, completed four years of researching newspaper articles and other sources for missing persons, and was able to identify each of them by name. Those six victims were buried together in the Cemetery of the Evergreens in Brooklyn. Originally interred elsewhere on the grounds, their remains now lie beneath a monument to the tragedy, a large marble slab featuring a kneeling woman.
Consequences of the Fire
The company's owners, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris – both Jewish immigrants – who survived the fire by fleeing to the building's roof when it began, were indicted on charges of first- and second-degree manslaughter in mid-April; the pair's trial began on the 4th. December 1911.
Max Steuer, counsel for the defendants, managed to destroy the credibility of one of the survivors, Kate Alterman, by asking her to repeat her testimony a number of times, which she did without altering key phrases.
Steuer argued to the jury that Alterman and possibly other witnesses had memorized their statements, and might even have been told what to say by the prosecutors.
The prosecution charged that the owners knew the exit doors were locked at the time in question. The investigation found that the locks were intended to be locked during working hours based on the findings from the fire, but the defense stressed that the prosecution failed to prove that the owners knew that.
The jury acquitted the two men of first- and second-degree manslaughter, but they were found liable of wrongful death during a subsequent civil suit in 1913 in which plaintiffs were awarded compensation in the amount of $75 per deceased victim. The insurance company paid Blanck and Harris about $60,000 more than the reported losses, or about $400 per casualty.
Rose Schneiderman, a prominent socialist and union activist, gave a speech at the memorial meeting held in the Metropolitan Opera House on April 2, 1911, to an audience largely made up of the members of the Women's Trade Union League. She used the fire as an argument for factory workers to organize:
"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."
The New York State Legislature then created the Factory Investigating Commission to investigate factory conditions in New York and other cities, and to report remedial measures of legislation to prevent hazard or loss of life among employees through fire, unsanitary conditions, and occupational diseases.
The Commission held a series of widely publicized investigations around the state, interviewing 222 witnesses and taking 3,500 pages of testimony. They hired field agents to do on-site inspections of factories.
They started with the issue of fire safety, and moved on to broader issues of the risks of injury in the factory environment.
New York City's Fire Chief John Kenlon told the investigators that his department had identified more than 200 factories where conditions made a fire like that at the Triangle Factory possible.
The Commission's findings led to thirty-eight new laws regulating labor in New York state, and gave them a reputation as leading progressive reformers working on behalf of the working class.
The Commissions's reports helped modernize the state's labor laws, making New York State one of the most progressive states in terms of labor reform.
New laws mandated better building access and egress, fireproofing requirements, the availability of fire extinguishers, the installation of alarm systems and automatic sprinklers, and better eating and toilet facilities for workers, and limited the number of hours that women and children could work.
In the years from 1911 to 1913, the new laws recommended by the Commission were legislated with the support of Governor William Sulzer.
As a result of the fire, the American Society of Safety Professionals was founded in New York City on the 14th. October 1911.
Harris and Blanck
Harris and Blanck, after their acquittal, worked to rebuild their business, opening a factory at 16th. Street and Fifth Avenue. In the summer of 1913, Blanck was once again arrested for locking the door in the factory during working hours. He was fined $20, which was the minimum amount the fine could be.
In 1918, the two partners closed the Triangle Shirtwaist company and went their separate ways. Harris resumed working as a tailor, while Blanck set up other companies with his brothers, the most prominent of which was Normandy Waist company, which earned a modest profit.
Legacy of the Fire
The last living survivor of the fire was Rose Freedman, née Rosenfeld, who died in Beverly Hills, California, on the 15th. February 2001, at the age of 107.
She was two days away from her 18th. birthday at the time of the fire, which she survived by following the company's executives and being rescued from the roof of the building. As a result of her experience, she became a lifelong supporter of unions.
Centennial of The Fire
The commemoration of the fire drew thousands of people, many holding aloft "146 Shirtwaist-Kites" conceived by artist Annie Lanzillotto and designed and fabricated by members of The Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition, with the names of the victims on sashes, as they listened to speakers.
From July 2009 through the weeks leading up to the 100th. anniversary, the Coalition served as a clearinghouse to organize some 200 activities as varied as academic conferences, films, theater performances, art shows, concerts, readings, awareness campaigns, walking tours, and parades that were held in and around New York City, and in cities across the nation, including San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Minneapolis, Boston and Washington, D.C.
The ceremony, which was held in front of the building where the fire took place, was preceded by a march through Greenwich Village by thousands of people, some carrying shirtwaists – women's blouses – on poles, with sashes commemorating the names of those who died in the fire.
At 4:45 pm EST, the moment the first fire alarm was sounded in 1911, hundreds of bells rang out in cities and towns across the nation. For this commemorative act, the Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition organized hundreds of churches, schools, fire houses, and private individuals in the New York City region and across the nation. The Coalition maintains on its website a national map denoting each of the bells that rang that afternoon.
The Permanent Memorial
The Coalition launched an effort to create a permanent public art memorial for the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire at the site of the 1911 fire in lower Manhattan.
In 2012, the Coalition signed an agreement with NYU that granted the organization permission to install a memorial on the Brown Building and, in consultation with the Landmarks Preservation Commission, indicated what elements of the building could be incorporated into the design.
Architectural designer Ernesto Martinez directed an international competition for the design. A jury of representatives from fashion, public art, design, architecture, and labor history reviewed 170 entries from more than 30 countries, and selected a spare yet powerful design by Richard Joon Yoo and Uri Wegman.
On the 22nd. December 2015, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced that $1.5 million from state economic development funds would be earmarked to build the Triangle Fire Memorial.
The design of the memorial consists of a stainless-steel ribbon that cascades vertically down the corner of the Brown Building (23-29 Washington Place) from the window-sill of the 9th. floor, marking the location where most of the victims of the Triangle fire died or jumped to their death.
The steel ribbon is etched with patterns and textures from a 300-foot long cloth ribbon, formed from individual pieces of fabric, donated and sewed together by hundreds of volunteers. At the cornice above the first floor, the steel ribbon splits into horizontal bands that run along the east and south façades of the building, floating twelve feet above the sidewalk.
The names of all 146 workers who died will be laser-cut through these panels, allowing light to pass through. At street level, an angled panel made of stone glass at hip height will reflect the names overhead. Testimonies from survivors and witnesses will be inscribed in this reflective panel, juxtaposing the names and history.