Hi and welcome once again to Mr. Dweeps, I am Tim. Welcome to the podcast where we take a lighthearted look at the dark side of history. Today we're going to talk about the Triangle Shirtwaist Company Fire that occurred back in 1911.
It killed 146 garment workers in New York City. Now the tragic event, we're going to discuss that. But before we do let me remind everyone that we are a comedy podcast and we use adult language. So if adult language affends you.
We don't know if we're a comedy podcast but we definitely use adult language. Yes we do. We can say that for certain. We're going to probably use adult language.
We don't curse like when Brandi's really want to kiss us at E rating. She really is. She has a say like a sailor. She's a foul mouth.
Brandi is on assignment in North Korea. She's visiting with the... Her cousin. Hanging out there probably playing video games with him and drinking rice wine or whatever.
Whatever they drink are in North Korea. They play cards against humanity for real opportunity. They do nothing. Brandi is not with us today.
She'll be with us next time or soon. We just have problems with holidays getting all three of us together. We don't like our Jimmy. I didn't want to say that.
This was kind of our cover. I am joined by the man who's considered the most dangerous man in podcasting today. A man who has been described as an oasis in the desert of despair. I'm talking about a course.
The very honorable Reverend Colonel Charles Bullrigard, Hawk Waters III, affectionately known as the Southern gentleman. How are you today? Oh not bad, Jimmy. Not bad.
It is cold out. I know Colonel, you've worked in some sweatshops in your day. I have. I've actually owned a few.
So this is right of your alley than this story. You know, have you studied this story much? I have, Jimmy. You've got some background.
Yeah, because I made sure that my factories were fireproofed. I see. So you're benevolent. As long as they worked, yeah.
All right. So you want to just jump into the story? Let's jump right into the story. On March 25, 1911, a fire broke out at the Triangle.
A short ways company factory in New York City. The fire in New York City on March 25, 1911 was the deadliest industrial disaster in the history of the city, one of the deadliest in US history. The 500 workers who were mostly young women located on the eighth, ninth and tenth floor of the ash building. It's kind of ironic that this is called the ash building.
Yeah, sadly. They got it before and after the ash building. Yeah, eight, ninth and tenth floors. They tried to escape, but due to poor conditions, locked doors and faulty fire escape.
146 of these folks workers died in the fire. A large number of deaths in the Triangle, Shert, waste factory fire exposed dangerous conditions and high rise factories at the time and prompted the creation of new building fire and safety codes throughout the United States. So give me a little background. The Triangle, Shert, Waste Company was owned by two men, Max, Blank and Isaac Hayes.
Harris. I mean, sorry. Isaac Hayes. That's a shit.
Cool. If it was Isaac Hayes. Isaac Hayes is one bad mother. Yeah.
I mean, this was both men immigrated from Russia as young men. And they met when they got to the United States. And by 1900, they had a little shop together on Woodstard Street in New York. They named it the Triangle, Shert, Waste Company.
The business grew quickly and within a couple of years, Max, Blank and Isaac Harris were wealthy men. The, I should explain, I guess, what a Shert, Waste is. If you remember Colonel C. and pictures of women dressed in the turn of the 20th century, they'll have this shirt that kind of looks like a blouse that's on top too.
And then they'll have a dress underneath it. That's what they made. They called it on shirt waste. And they were very popular from the late 1900s to the early 20th century.
Business grew quickly and within a couple of years, as I said, both Max and Isaac were wealthy men. They were a true American success story going from poor immigrants living in a crowded tenement to living in fine Fifth Avenue homes all in a matter of a few years. Growing quickly, they moved their business to the top three floors of a new ten-story building called the Ash Building in New York City. It's near Washington Square in New York City for all of our listeners in New York.
It's now, it's New York University's Brown Building right now. Yes, yes. It's a part of New York University now still stands. And I think it's a national landmark now, or at least a New York City landmark.
The factory, which consisted of row after row of electric sewing machines, so this is an apartment district, were located on the eighth, ninth, and ninth floors, while on the tenth floor were office building cells, administrative offices. And that's where Max and Isaac had their offices on the tenth floor. By 1911, the Triangle Shirtways Company was one of the largest blouse makers in New York City and employed 500 garment workers, mostly young women raging in the age of ten to fifty. This is before child labor laws, so they had a lot of kids working there.
Before the government got its nose all up in capitalism and let us work those little kids. Yeah, what's Brandi say about little fingers. Anyway, so great buttons or something. That's just heartless.
Anyway, at the time there was something like 40,000 garment workers in New York City. And all the working conditions at the Triangle Factory Company were dangerous. It was considered one of the more modern places at the time in the garment industry. Workers used electric sewing machines as opposed to some of the factories where they had the pedal machines.
So it was considered a good gig, I guess, at the time. And it had large windows where some of the smaller factories were just small, dark, cramped spaces using pedal sewing machines. So this one is at least a little bit more modern, where up the date. Now today we would consider it a sweatshop, but in this time it was one of the more progressive factories in town.
They specialize, as I said, in making shirtways with the popular women's blouse at the time. I like the shirt with puffy sleeves. You like puffy sleeves? Yeah.
You like a pirate shirt. You like a pirate shirt? Well, you know, I like to luke me some booty, Jim. I see.
The Triangle's shirtways company had made Max Blank and Isaac Harris rich, largely because they exploited their workers. Brandi would do that, of course. Yeah, she would. I would have been fair to my workers.
I know. You're a very bananasist. I would have been fairly wealthy to me. I would have shared the wealth with the workers.
I know. You're known for your generosity. You're approximately 500 people, mostly immigrant women from Russia, South or East Europe, worked in the Triangle shirtways company factory in the Ash building. As I said, the factory was on the 8th and 9th floors, the 10th floor being mostly administrative offices.
And as you mentioned, Colonel, the building is still staying on today. It's owned by New York University. The women there worked long hours, six days a week, in cramped quarters, and were pay load wages. Many of the workers were young.
Some, as I said earlier, as young as 10 years old. In 1909, many of the garment workers in New York City went on strike for higher pay, a shorter work week, and to be recognized. Anyone had safer work conditions. So they went on strike and it did not go well.
Eventually, they would get a slight pay increase in their hours. They were working 16, 18 hour days, six days a week, and they would bring in about two or three dollars a week. So, you know, just enough to really to survive. They went on strike in 1909 for better working conditions.
And they actually got some support from GP Morgan's daughter and Morgan. She was very active in the women's suffrage movement and she took up their calls. And because what happened when they went on strike the company, including this company, they hired prostitutes to go out on strike. And then the police would come and arrest the strikers.
But Ann Morgan, who was JP Morgan, of course wealthy banker, who I read, I read this, he was the Federal Reserve Bank. That's not because their answers were before the Federal Reserve Bank, but he had pretty much guaranteed the financial system in the United States. But anyway, his daughter became very sympathetic to their calls and eventually settled to strike. And they got better working conditions.
I'm sorry, they got better wages and their hours were decreased, but their union was not recognized. And so they didn't improve, their working conditions didn't improve in terms of safety. So, the basic condition still kind of sucked. The women were charged, they were charged for the electricity they used.
And if they made any mistakes, they were charged for those as well. Now, factory itself. They were a little entrepreneur, so we got charging for the cost now. As I said, most of the women were on the eighth and ninth floor of the factory.
And the owners kept one of them locked. And the other door was guarded by a security guard, who would check the women after each shift to make sure that they were not stealing any shirts or materials. So, they kept this one door locked because they wanted to be able to make sure no one could walk out with a shirt or with material or whatever. And they could only guard one door.
And this comes into play when this fire occurs. Women who missed work due to pregnancy or illness were immediately fired. Just first force workers to continue to go to work, even when they were not feeling well, which of course, you know, if they have some kind of virus or bug, they spread it to everybody. Yeah.
In addition to these unpleasant conditions, women were often subjected to repeated sexual harassment by their owners and floor foreman. In 1909, as I said earlier, there was this major strike, but it didn't really improve the conditions. But it was settled and they got a little better pay, a little better, you know, hours. They didn't have the work quite as many hours, but still the condition in the factories were not very safe.
So on Saturday, March 25, 1911, a fire started on the 8th floor. Workers had just ended at 4.30 that day. It was a Saturday. So they only worked eight hours on Saturday.
And it was a warm spring day. And most of the workers were getting their belongings together and getting their paycheck when one of the ladies noticed a small fire had started in a scrap bin. No one is sure even to this day what started to fire, but the fire marshal later would claim that he thought that a cigarette butt had possibly been tossed into this bin. Like they would keep scraps of, I guess, material, whatever they're cutting and sewing in this bin and someone tossed a cigarette in there.
Nearly everything in the room was flammable. Hundreds of pounds of cotton scraps, tissue paper, patterns, and wooden tables. So at the time of the fire, the only safety measures available to the workers, they kept buckets of water on the floor. They had 27 buckets of water on the floor and they had a fire escape, which would.
Which we'll talk about in a bit. It ends up collapsing. Most of the doors were locked and those were not locked only open inwardly and were effectively held shut by the onrush of workers trying to escape. Doesn't make a lot of sense.
No. Several other workers threw pels of water on the fire, but it quickly got out of control. Now this is on the eighth floor, right? So there's workers on the eighth, ninth, and tenth floor.
It breaks out on the eighth floor. Most of the women on the eighth floor were able to get out. And the people on the tenth floor where they had their offices and where the owners, Max and Isaac, were located. They were able to get to the roof and get on to a neighboring building and escape.
It's the women on the ninth floor that really got trapped. So the people on the eighth floor got out. The people on the tenth floor got warned and they got out. But for some reason, no one told the women on the ninth floor about this fire.
And the fire started to flow them. So as I said, people on the tenth floor got out, the executive offices got out. It's the women on the ninth floor that got caught. As the clothing materials fed the fire panicking suit and workers tried to escape anyway they could.
Everyone rushed to escape the fire. Some ran to the, they had four elevators. And this is back in the day where they had the elevator operators. And they had two elevator operators working that day because it was a Saturday.
And these guys are really courageous. They kept going up and down and taking people out. They got over a hundred people out before they just couldn't do it anymore. The fire was just too bad.
They could only carry 15 at a time but they were carrying like 30. They weren't only spare to carry like 15. So there wasn't time for too many trips up and down. These are old elevators.
Other women, and these are mostly women. There were some men killed. But other women ran to the fire escape and 20 women were able to escape on the fire escape. But 25 women died when the fire escape collapsed.
So that had to be pretty horrific. Like I said, many on the tenth floor were able to escape including the owners, Max and Isaac. They made it safely to the roof of a neighboring nearby building. So they made it out okay.
It's the women on the ninth floor that really had a problem. There was this elderly elevator operator and he risked his life. He made four flight trips and helped over a hundred people escape. The flames eventually became too much and the elevator stopped working.
At that point some of the women tried to hoist themselves down the elevator cable. But they couldn't hold on and they just fall. Eventually women were so desperate they just started jumping down the elevator shaft. So a pretty greasy.
All of those died. All the ones that jumped down the elevator died. That's to me. By this time, all the avenues of escape were blocked.
The elevators weren't available. The fire escaped. The fire was falling down. The doors were locked.
You were trapped in there. Many of the workers headed to the window to find the means of escape. It was a warm spring Saturday so the streets were full of onlookers. As the women started clinging to the window ledges, nine stories above.
At 445, the fire department was alerted to the fire. They rushed to the scene and raised their ladder but it only reached the sixth floor. That's nice. But even today a friend of mine told me if you're in a building and you're above the eleventh floor, they're very much taken due for you.
If you're one person, a class, a police into helicopter. But for large groups like that, the elevators are going to go. They raised the ladder. Now, to add this already bleak situation, the water streams from the hoses could only reach the seventh floor.
They're getting no relief. They can do nothing for them. Those on the window ledges started jumping to me. Although a few survive most jump to the death.
Some, they tried to grab the ladder. Some jump and try to grab the ladder. Two stories below. For the most part, they were bouncing off and plummeting to the death.
One 20-year-old actually survived it only to die in the hospital with wounds a couple of days later. Upon finding that they could not find it used the doors to escape and the fire burning at their clothes and hair, the girls at the Triangle Sherways Company. This group was mostly between 13 and 23. Jumped nine stories to the death.
You see it on 9-11. Once you get past the fourth floor, I believe it's fourth or fifth floor is when you reach maximum speed. It doesn't really matter. If you jump from, I'm pretty sure it's a storm.
This is a warm spring Saturday. If you imagine the crowds that were just standing around watching these women just jumping to their death. Well, one guy, the first one to jump was a man. Another one was a young woman at the window before they both jumped to the death.
Bystanders looked on in horror as one girl after another jumped to the death. Why don't you motherfucker catch somebody? Shit. It doesn't break their fall or something.
Yeah, probably kick yourself too. Yeah, but they could get those blankets. They did. What happened with the blankets was these girls jumped in unison.
They were all in these blankets and they couldn't hold them. They were ripping these blankets and the straight-ups. The firements were holding. So after each girl jumped to me, a horrific bud could be heard as the body hit the concrete sidewalk.
Sometimes girls jumped three or four at a time and the onlookers watched in horror's body after body felt to the earth. The bodies of these teenage girls is just lying in the streets. Now the blankets that will be rescued is ripped at the weight because of the speed and multiple bodies. Some of the girls tried to jump to the ladders but they couldn't reach the ninth floor.
None of them ever did reach the ladders. The fire escaped in the rear of the building collapsed and trapped even more employees. Now the fire was put out in half an hour but that was not soon enough. 19 bodies were charred against the lock doors.
25 bodies were found huddled in the cloak room. They would have died of smoke inhalation. Of the victims whose ages were known, the oldest victim was Praben Prabadenza Pano at 43. Youngest were 14-year-old Cape Leon and Sarah Maltese.
Most out of burns isphyxiation, blunt impact injuries or a combination of the three to me. Now here. After this, the 546 were dead. The bodies were taken to a covered pier on 26th Street near the East River and laid out in a long row with the heads of victims propped up so they could be identified by relatives.
There's photos of them. Just Google. Yeah, trying to go away. Yeah, this fire.
You'll see photos. They just line these girls up and down the street and they prop their heads up so that they could be identified by relatives. Now the nearby Bellevue morgue was overrun with bodies and makeshift morgue was set up on the adjoining Pieron the East River. Thousands of people lined up to identify the bodies of loved ones and after a week all but seven were identified.
Fire causes death of 146 garment workers, 123 women, 23 men who died from the fire. Most of the victims were recent Italian and Jewish immigrants aged 14-23. Now funeral procession was held on March 28, 1911 for the victims of the fire. 100,000 New Yorkers lined up to procession route.
Yeah, people were angry at this. Remember, they just had this strike. The big strike. No publicized strike.
And they were striking for better working conditions. Well, they wanted someone to blame Timmy and they charged Isaac and Max the two owners with one count of manslaughter. The manslaughter charge was a result of the owners ordering that one of the doors be kept locked to prevent theft. One of the bodies was found slumped against the locked door leading investigators to believe that this woman would have survived if not for the locked door, which was in violation of a city ordinance.
So there was a code that was violating the code? Yeah. Of course, investigators knew too well that it was likely all lives would have been saved that the doors had been unlocked. The investigation found that the locks were intended to be locked during working hours based on the findings from the fire.
The defense stressed that the prosecution failed to prove that, prove that the owners knew that. The jury acquitted the men of first and second degree manslaughter, but they were found liable of wrongful death during a subsequent civil suit and plaintiff's award a compensation in the amount of $75 per deceased victim. But of course, the insurance company paid Harris $60,000, more than the reported losses or about $400 per casualty. Jesus.
Two years later, Max Blank was once again arrested for locking the door in his factory. He especially put a, she caught this on fire and thrown him out the window. Exactly. He was fined $20.
The fire in large number of deaths exposed to hazardous conditions and fire dangers that was unique to these high rise factories. Shortly after the triangle fire, the New York City passed an ordinary large number of fire safety and building codes and created very stiff penalties. That's stiff. I occasionally will give somebody a stiff penalty.
Okay. I will occasionally give somebody a stiff penalty for non-compliance. I mean, that's what they did. Mentorship.
Many, many people don't look at it as a penalty. They look at as a reward for compliance. They all want to be in one man's trash. Yeah, exactly.
Other cities soon followed New York's example. The triangle short ways fire would change the regulation by government of business. But really did it. I mean, really.
Yeah, really did it. Before the fire government, the government stayed mostly away from business feeling it had no power to legislate it. Legislated. After the fire government could not avoid instituting laws to protect the workers.
Once a New York legislature enacted safety laws, other states and U.S. followed, workers also began to look toward unions to voice their concerns over safety and pay. Samuel Gompers of the AFL had won a lot of trust and admiration by sitting in on the factory commission of 1911. Yeah.
So this is really a highly publicized. Yeah. It created a debate about what role government should play in regulating businesses. That they had pretty much ignored.
Although, in that case, there was a rule. There were some regulations. Yeah. The funding is $75 a person.
So an investigation found that one of the main reasons the death toll was so high was that the workers would have provided an avenue of escape, but they were kept locked to prevent workers from stealing from the company. At the Triangle Sherways factory, some of the doors were locked when the girls would try to escape through the locked doors of the fire consumed them. But even the doors were not locked with no use to the workers. The doors in the Triangle Sherways factory opened only inward.
Yeah. We talked about that in the theater fire. Yeah. People with the momentum or the forest just crushed them.
Right. So when the girls tried to escape through the doors, the girls in front could not open doors because all the girls pushing from behind. If they'd opened outward, Donald and Russell girls would have opened the door. Now, later regulations required factories to make all doors open outward in factories.
New regulations would also require all doors to remain unlock during business hours in accordance with new regulations. New laws now require sprinkler system, which must be installed if the company employs more than 25 people above ground level. The girls at the Triangle Sherways company had only 27 buckets of water to save themselves. Yeah.
And really, who's going to sit there and fight them? You know what I mean? Yeah. You're going to want to get out of here.
How you going to do with 27 buckets of water anyway? Yeah. And then we'll do some work places among those regulations and implement it so that people out during a fire. Multiple fire exits on block fire doors and clear pathways.
Firefighting equipment also must be maintained in the building. Fire sprinklers for hire floors and portable fire extinguishers. Education for employees is a must. All employees are to be trained on the proper use of fire extinguishers as well as escape routes and fire drills.
Emergency evacuation plans are also required in writing and posted. Written fire prevention plans must also be available to me. Now, all areas that are fired or they contain equipment or chemicals that could start fires must be maintained and controlled at all times. The United States Department of Labor classified this set of standards as the Occupational Safety and Health Administration Standards.
Oh, show to me. Yeah, they played a key role in the law of these fire regulations that we take for granted today. Today, the ash building where the fire occurred has been designated as a historical national landmark and a New York City landmark. 146 people died.
You know, to me, but really, I mean, think about it, how much has changed. I mean, we've written more regulations, but at the end of the day, when there's a big tragedy, Beverly Hills Fire, I mean, it always comes down. These tragedies almost always come down to somebody trying to make more money in cut corners. And nobody ever goes to jail for it?
No, no. And that is so true. I mean, that's, and even today, I mean, if it's something like that occurred, there would probably be no ramifications in terms of the owners of the building or whatever. I mean, they'd be fine, but, you know, that becomes a part of the cost of doing business.
Yeah, well, I mean, and the most, the most well known to me, case is the Pinto. Exactly. You know, the Pinto's, they decided, well, it was better. It was more cost effective to pay up the victims who were blowing up than to recall the cars.
Yeah. And that was similar to the McDonald's case with the coffee. Yeah. Yeah.
People, people don't understand that case. And they don't understand it. I don't understand it. It's always used by the tort reform reform to say in how ridiculous that that suit was with the woman who got burned by the coffee.
But McDonald's had been on put on notice numbers of times, time and time and time again. Yeah. Yeah. We're at a higher.
They were dangerous. They were really high in terms of the temperatures that they were kept. And they, as you said, they were put on notice numerous times. Yeah.
It just wasn't, it was a cost benefit analysis to them to go in and change all their equipment or just continue to do what they've been doing. And pay off somebody. But if I can point that at us, you know, as a ridiculous. Yeah.
As a, what it really is about is the one time that a company got their ass handed to them for doing the wrong thing. Yeah. Yeah. If you haven't looked into that case, I would encourage you to do so because it's often given as an example of flipperless lawsuit.
And it was anything but that. I mean, that that was a very deliberate decision by McDonald's that they made. Yeah. And it was, like you said, it was based upon a cost benefit analysis.
Yeah. It cost too much to go in and change all the equipment they have to make the coffee at a reasonable temperature that wasn't dangerous. Yeah. But all right.
So your final thoughts, Colonel? It's just something we see, you know, not so horrifically, but time and time again. I mean, you have these miners. They have all kinds of things that just happen.
And nobody is. You've got a lot of people in a crowded space. There's always an opportunity for something tragic to happen on that. Yeah.
And as you said, even today, if you're in a high rise or something, you're pretty much on your own. Yeah. If something like that. I mean, there's people in 9-11, they were, they were helpless.
Yeah. There was nothing anybody could do for them. So. All right.
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