1911 N.Y. factory fire caused outrage, led to reforms

One hundred and ten years ago on March 25, 1911, 146 workers (originally reported as 148) lost their lives in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York.

An investigation revealed that only one stairway led to the ground, and the mostly immigrant women workers fleeing the fire found the exit doors blocked. Many of them burned to death. Others perished when they jumped from the upper floors of the 10-story building.

The Triangle Shirtwaist fire was one of the deadliest workplace catastrophes in U.S. history and remained the deadliest in New York City’s history until the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001.

The preventable tragedy was a critical event in labor history. The public outcry drew attention to the labor movement and to other groups working to improve women’s and immigrants’ rights in the workplace and helped bring about reforms in occupational health and safety laws.

From The San Diego Union, Sunday, March 26, 1911:

148 PEOPLE KILLED IN NEW YORK CITY IN 20 MINUTES

Eighth, Ninth and Tenth floors of Shirt Factory are Scenes of Worst Disaster Since Gen. Slocum Burned.

SCORES OF GIRLS LEAP TO THEIR DEATH

NEW YORK, March 25 — One hundred and forty-eight persons — nine-tenths of them girls from the east side — were crushed to death on the pavements, smothered in smoke or burned to a crisp in a factory fire this afternoon in the worst disaster New York has known since the steamship General Slocum was burned to the water’s edge of North Brother Island in 1904.

One hundred and forty-one bodies had been removed from the ruins at midnight, and seven of the forty injured had died in hospitals. This, it is believed, completes the list of dead, most of whom are unidentified.

Grief-crazed relatives besieged the morgue as the bodies were laid out.

Nearly all, if not all, of the victims were employed by the Triangle Waist company on the eighth, ninth and tenth floors of a ten-story loft building at No. 23 Washington place, on the western fringe of the down-town wholesale district.

Partners of the firm, Isaac Harris and Max Blanck escaped, carrying with them over an adjoining roof Blanck’s two young daughters and a governess.

There was not an outside fire escape on the building.

ORIGIN OF FIRE UNKNOWN

How the fire started perhaps never will be known. A corner of the eighth floor was its point of origin, and the three upper floors only were swept.

On the ninth floor fifty bodies were found; sixty-three or more persons were crushed to death by jumping; more than thirty clogged the elevator shafts. Loss to property will not exceed $100,000.