A fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory in New York City killed 146 people on this day in history, March 25, 1911, and marked the beginning of a host of new workplace safety reforms.
The fire broke out on the 8th floor of the Asch Building, headquarters of the Triangle Waist Company, notes Cornell University's Triangle Fire online exhibit.
The victims ranged in age from 14 to 43, although most were in their late teens or early 20s.
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The oldest victim was Providenza Panno, 43, born in Italy and living in the United States for six years at the time of her death, notes Cornell University.
The two youngest victims, Kate Leone and Rosaria Maltese, were only 14 years old. Leone was born in the United States; Maltais was born in Italy and lived in the United States for four years.
The vast majority of the 146 people killed were women, most of whom were recent immigrants to the United States from Eastern Europe and Italy.
A view of the roof of the Asch Building at Washington and Greene streets is visible after the deadly March 25, 1911 fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York. (FPG/Getty Images)
Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, two Russian immigrants known as the “shirt kings,” owned the Triangle factory.
A “shirt waist” is a women's item of clothing that was popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Fashion Institute of Design and Marketing (FIDM) website states.
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“Most commonly worn by young women, the shirttail was typically paired with a dark-colored skirt and accessorized with a belt or scarf,” FIDM said.
The shirtwaist, pictured here, was a popular garment for women in the early 20th century. (Alamy)
In 1901, Blanck and Harris moved their business to the 8th floor of the new Asch Building in New York, the Cornell website states.
Although Joseph J. Asch, the building's owner, insisted that the building was fireproof, he did not have the required number of stairs to exit the building.
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“Against the objections of the superintendent, the architect requested and was granted an exception to the rule that required three enclosed staircases for the 10,000 square feet of building space,” the Cornell website states.
“He was only allowed to put two staircases in place, claiming that the emergency ladder at the rear would serve as a third staircase and therefore a means of egress in the event of a fire.”
Relatives and friends of the victims of the deceased Triangle Shirtwaist Company employee lined up to identify their loved ones. (Hulton Archives/Getty Images)
Within a decade, the Triangle Waist Company would expand to the 9th and 10th floors of the Asch Building, employing hundreds of people, mostly immigrants, in an entrepreneur-style system.
“Factory owners dealt only with subcontractors, who negotiated the price of goods and employed their own workers on the same premises. Triangle's owners did not keep payroll records for these workers and never knew exactly how many of them were in the building. at some point,” the Cornell web page noted.
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The wages of these workers were generally very low and working conditions at the factory were harsh.
Blanck and Harris “were adamantly opposed to unions” and even fired workers they believed were interested in unionizing.
“They were known for their disregard for fire and safety measures, for subjecting workers to the indignity of having their bags searched before leaving for the day and for the strict discipline imposed during working hours,” Cornell's website said.
Victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire were dumped in the street in front of the building. (Hulton Archives/Getty Images)
On March 25, the owners' disregard for workplace safety came to a head when a fire broke out and quickly spread through three floors of the factory, killing 146 of the approximately 500 workers in just a few days. minutes.
To this day, we still don't know what caused the fire, although we think it could have been a badly discarded cigarette, notes the Encyclopedia Britannica.
“Something has to be done. We have to turn this into some sort of victory, some sort of constructive action.”
Firefighters who arrived at the scene found that the factory doors were locked and did not open outwards, preventing them from opening the doors amid the crowd trying to escape.
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Additionally, the fire truck's ladders did not extend beyond the sixth floor, making rescue impossible.
Many workers jumped to their deaths to escape the flames, even though the nets used by firefighters were not strong enough to catch them.
Firefighters found that neither their ladders nor hoses were high enough to reach the flames on the eighth, ninth and tenth floors of the Asch Building in Manhattan's Greenwich Village. (George Rinhart/Corbis via Getty Images)
The fire remained the deadliest workplace incident in New York until the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
In December 1911, Blanck and Harris were both tried – and acquitted – of manslaughter charges. It could not be proven that either man knew the factory gate was locked.
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On March 11, 1914, nearly three years after the fire, building owner Asch settled 23 individual civil suits from the families of those who died in the fire, according to the website Famous-Trials.com.
Crowds of people stand in the streets, waiting to identify the bodies of immigrant workers who perished in the Triangle Fire in New York on March 25, 1911. (Hulton Archives/Getty Images)
Settlements averaged about $75 for each person killed.
The deaths of the 146 people were not in vain, however; The Triangle fire marked the beginning of a series of new worker protection reforms, laws and policies.
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Frances Perkins, who became Secretary of Labor in 1933 under President Franklin D. Roosevelt and was the first female cabinet secretary, witnessed the fire and its aftermath.
The devastation made him realize that “something has to be done. We have to turn this into some kind of victory, some kind of constructive action,” the Labor Department's website said.
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“Perkins and other leaders with direct experience of the Triangle fire, such as New York Governor Al Smith, quickly helped pass new workplace safety standards into law in the New York State, setting an example for the rest of the country,” the Department of Labor said.
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