Bonners Ferry herald. [volume] (Bonners Ferry, Idaho) 1904-current, 1911-04-01
In GREAT FIRE In FACTORY
DISTRICT OF new YORK
CITY SATURDAY.
Many of Them Jumped From Tenth
Story to Streets, While Others Were
Smothered or Burned to Death
Origin of Fire on Eighth Story a
Mystery-Las About an Hour.

Now lOihg hdIcu SOs-OhO CN
and forty-eght 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 Saturday after
noon in the worst disaster New York
has known since the ship General Slo-
cum was burned to the waters edge
off North Brother island in 1904.
One hundred and forty-one bodies
were removed from the ruins by mid
night and seven of the forty injured
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 10th
floors of 1O-story building at No. 23
Washington place, on the western
fringe of the downtown wholesale dis
trict Partners of the firm, Isaac Har-
ris and Max Blanck, escaped.
No Outside Fire Escape.
There was not an outside fire escape
on the building.
How the fire started perhaps never
will be known. A corner on the eighth
floor was its point of origin and only
the three upper floors were swept. On
the ninth floor so bodies were found,
GO more persons were crushed to death
by Jumping and more than 80 clogged
the elevator shafts. Loss to the prop
erty will not exceed 100000.
Pedestrians going home through
Washington place to Washington
square at 1850 clock were scattered
by the whizz of something rushing
through the air before them; there was
a horrible thud on the pavement anC
a body fattened on the hagstones
Wayfarers on the opposite side of the
street shaded their eyes against tn
setting sun and saw the windows O
the three upper floors of the building
black with girls crowding to the stills
Maddened Hundreds Behind.
"Don t jump" yelled the crowd, bu
the girls had no alternative. The pres
sure of the maddened hundreds benin
them and the urging of their own fear
were too strong. They began to ia
60 the sidewalk.
Four alarms were rung within
minutes Before the engines could r.
spond, before the nets could b
stretched or the ladders raised, fS
girls had fallen from the eighth an
ninth floors so heavily that the
crashed through the very streets
the vaults below.
In an hour the fire was out; in ha
an hour it had done it's worst-pro'
ably the death list was complete in
minutes.
The building stands tonight as
shell intact; the partitions of arch
tectural thing between floor and flo
are sound, and it is impossible for OF
who sees it to imagine how the fam
in so short a space Of time could ha'
wrought such havoc.
Seven hundred hands, 500 of the
women, were employed by the shin
waist company. They sat in rows
their whirring machines, the lowest b
low them piled with fimsy cloth, Il
floor Uttered with lint, the air itse
full of flying, infamamh'e dust.
Lungs Scared by Flames.
The first rush of flames was almo
an explosion, catching operators
their chairs, their lungs scared by
haling flames. Others rushed to t
elevator shafts after the cars had ma
their last trip. Still others were push
off the inadequate fire escape.
In such a horrible stream did t
bodies overflow from the windows tn
the fire nets stretched by the first CO.
pany to arrive were soon full. Twel
bodied weighted one net to the buri
ing point, but the bodies kept on tum
ling to the pavement through mesh
that could not sustain them.