The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1911-03-27
Big Shirtwaist Factory Sudden
ly Found Ablaze.
Operatives Are Cut Off From
Means of Escape.
RAINS HUMAN BODIES
Scores of Women and Girls
Jump to Their Death.
Life Nets Break Beneath Weight
of Their Fall.

New York, March 27.-Eighty
bodies of the 140 victims of a fire in
the ten-story Loft building on Wash
ington place Saturday night have been
identified. Sixteen of the bodies were
men. There are twelve injured in the
hospital. District Attorney Whitman
started an official investigation to fix
the responsibility for the horror. No
arrests have been considered by the
district attorney of any person in con-
nection with the fire and rome will be
made until the facts disclosed in the
investigation give sufficient evidence
for taking this action.
The buiIdinA department was called
on for a report on the burned build
ing and every other department that
is in any way concerned also Will be
required to make a detailed report.
1t is now definitely known that the
fire started on the eighth floor of the
building, under cutting table in
scrap heap, and is thought to have
been started by a cigarette
Careful counting rates the female
victims, young and old. at approxi-
mately ten to every one male. Broadly
speaking. they were Jewish and ItaI-
ian, living either on the East side or in
small Italian quarters near the scene
of the fire.
They were killed in a fire which
swept the upper floors of factory
buSlding late Saturday afternoon at %
to % Washington place, East. on the
northwest corner of Green street.
Some of the girls were crushed to
death by the fall of ten stories to the
pavement below. some were smothered
by smoke and others were burned IN
the worst fire that New York has
known since the steamship General
Slocum was burned in 1904.
Two Blocks From Broadway.
In an incredibly short time, quiet
by-way of commerce. within two
blocks of Broadway and one block of
Washington square, was transformed
into a blackened canyon of death
Nearly all, If not all, of the victims
were e mployed by the Triangle Shirt
waist company on the eighth. ninth
and tenth floors of the tenSstory Loft
building which is ths western
fringe Of the downtown wholesale
clothing fur and millinery district
The partners of the firm, Isaac Har-
ris and Max Blanck. escaped un-
scathed from the Office on the tenth
floor carrying with them over an ad-
Joining roof Blanck'S two young
daughters and a governess. There
was not an outside fire escape on the
building.
found; sixty-three or more persons
were crushed to death by jumping and
more than thirty clogged the elevator
shafts The loss to property will not
exceed 100000.
Fall Clears the Street.
Pedestrians going home through
Washington place to Washington
square at 4:5O were scattered py tne
whizz of something rushing through
the air before them; there was a her
rible flop on the pavement and body
flattened on the flags.
Wayfarers on the opposite side of
the street shaded their eyes against
the setting sun and saw the windows
of the three upper floors OF the build
ing black with girls crowding to the
sills.
the crowd But the girls had no alter
native. The pressure of the mad
dened hundreds behind them and the
urging of their own fears were too
strong. They began to fall to the side
walk in a terrible rain OF hesn ana
blood.
-Four alarms were rung within fifteen
minutes. Before the engines could re-
spond, before the meta could be
stretched or the ladders raised, hVe
rrirIs had fallen from the eighth and
ninth floors so heavily that they broke
through the glass and iron roofs of the
subceIlars and crashed through the
very streets in the vaults below. In
an hour the fire was out; in half an
1,our if had done it's worst; probably
the death list was full in twenty min
Seven hundred hands, 500 of them wo-
men. were employed by the shirtwaist
company. They sat in rows at their
1vhirrine machines, the tables before
them piled with fiimsy cloth the floor
uttered with lint, the air itself full Of
living. inhammable dust
The frst rush of flame was almost
IN expIosion. Operators died in their
chairs, their lungs scared by lnhallng
Name. Others were crowded into the
elevator shafts after the cars had
made their last trip. Still others We're
nnshed of the inadequate interior fire
escape.
Fire Nets Are Broken.
Tn such q horrible stream did the
bodies overflow from the windows that
the fire nets stretched by the first COM
pany to arrive were soon gorged beyono
cauacfty Twelve bodies weighed one
NET to the bursting point, but the bodies
kept on tumbling to the pavement,
through meshes that could no longer
support them.
over the edge of a pile Of shirting on
the eighth floor, five minutes before
quitting time, hundreds were in line be-
fore the cashiers window.
In the Office buildings across Wash
ington place scores of men detained
beyond Office hours worked at their
desks. One of them saw a girl rush
to window and throw up the sash.
Behind her danced curtain of yellow
fame. She climbed to the sill stood
in black outline against the light, hesi-
tating, then. with a last touch of fu-
tile thrift, slipped her chatelaine bag
over her wrist and jumped.
Her body went whirling downward
through the woven wire glass of a
canopy to the tagging below. Her sis
ters who followed famed through the
air like rockets Their path could be
followed but hardly heard. It was IS