Remember the Triangle Fire

One of the first non-fiction books to bear the nameplate of my personal library was The Pessimist's Guide to History ("An irresistible compendium of catastrophes, barbaraties, massacres and mayhem"), which I bought for myself in the 7th grade.

In its pages, I was introduced to a range of horrific historical events and natural disasters. Some would inspire further research, i.e. the Albigensian Crusade, subject of a 10th grade Regional Studies paper. Others would become more real to me through the course of my travels, i.e. the Halifax Explosion, a permanent exhibit at the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, visited as part of the Great Canadian Tour of 2001. (Incidentally, their collection also includes a permanent exhibit on that more famous clusterfuck of the 20th century, the sinking of the Titanic; being the nearest major port, Halifax became the final resting place of the majority of the recovered detritus, human and otherwise.)

And there on page 193: The Triangle Shirtwaist Company Fire.

Just ten minutes before quitting time on March 25, the six hundred employees of New York's Triangle Shirtwaist Company were startled by the ringing of a fire alarm. The employees -- mostly sixteen to twenty-three-year-old immigrant girls -- panicked as flames broke out in a pile of oil-soaked cotton rags on the eighth floor and spread rapidly to piles of cotton cloth and hanging shirtwaists, the fitted shirts for women manufactured by the company.

Screaming employees on the eighth floor rushed between the closely spaced sewing machines to the narrow exit and raced for stairways and the elevator. Workers on the ninth and tenth floors saw flames shooting from the windows below, and soon the fire spread to those floors. There was only one narrow fire escape, and many were trapped on the upper floors. A number of girls burned to death while waiting in vain for the elevator. Others forced open the elevator doors when it stopped running, and thirty women leaped into the shaft to escape the fire, their broken bodies piling up at the bottom.

Other employees rushed to the windows. Crowds on the street watched in horror as girls, their hair and clothes on fire, threw themselves out the windows and crashed through the sidewalk covers into the basement below... Fire nets were useless as girls toppled into them four and five at a time.

Thirty minutes after the fire began in the supposedly fireproof building, 145 [now officially 146] employees, mostly young girls were dead. (Flexner 1992)

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Fast-forward some twenty years and I meet one Rebecca O'Leary -- ginger-haired dancer, historian, Clark Gable aficionado and all-around awesome person -- and become peripherally aware of her interest in said tragedy.

Which brings us to... today.

March 25 will mark the centennial of the Triangle Fire. In light of this anniversary, two new documentary films explore the background and aftermath of the incident. The excellent Triangle Fire, which recently aired on PBS (see preview below and/or follow the link to view it online in its entirety), and Triangle: Remembering the Fire, which will air on HBO on March 21.

Watch the full episode. See more American Experience.

In addition, a consortium of organizations and individuals calling itself the Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition is spearheading commemorative events in New York City and beyond. In Central Pennsylvania, Gettysburg Stage will be performing The Triangle Factory Fire Project by Christopher Piehler and Scott Alan Evans, which "uses eyewitness accounts, court transcripts and other archival material to create a dramatic moment-by-moment account of this historic fire and the social upheaval that followed." The production is directed by, you guessed it, Rebecca O'Leary. (Follow the link for performance and ticketing information.)

Outrage in the wake of the Triangle Fire paved the way for government oversight of working conditions. Then again, that oversight is only consequential when and where it can be actively enforced. Triangle Fire premiered on PBS on the same day that the FBI arrested the security chief at Massey Energy on charges related to last year's deadly mining disaster in West Virginia. The indictment

accuses Stover of lying to federal agents about an apparent systematic effort to deceive federal mine safety inspectors...Stover and his guards used a special radio frequency to warn miners underground when inspectors arrived at the mine. That gave the miners the chance to mask or fix serious safety problems and avoid citations, fines and closure orders.

29 workers died.

And as Eileen Boisen Nevitt touches upon in her reflection on the life of her grandmother, a Triangle Fire survivor, the majority of American clothing is still manufactured by young women under harsh if not life-threatening working conditions, whether in Bangladesh, China, or still in the United States. "A century later, the Triangle Fire remains an enduring legacy with global implications."

A police officer and others with the broken bodies of Triangle fire victims at their feet, look up in shock at workers poised to jump from the upper floors of the burning Asch Building. The anguish and gruesome deaths of workers was witnessed firsthand by many people living or walking near the corner of Greene Street and Washington Place. Others read about it in the many newspaper reports circulated during the following days and weeks, bringing the conditions of garment worker into public scrutiny as it had been during the shirtwaist strike of 1909.
The Triangle Factory Fire
Photographer: Brown Brothers, March 25, 1911 Kheel Archives, Cornell University