Milford chronicle., 1911-03-31

street, in New York, cost the lives o
143 employees of the Triangle Shirt
waist factory, which occupied the
three upper floors of the building
Nearly all the dead are girls.
How the fire started will perhaps
never be known. A corner on the
eighth floor was its point Of origin
and the three upper floors only were
swept. On the ninth floor fifty bodies
we're found; siXty-three or more per
sons were crushed to death by jump
ing, and more than thirty clogged the
elevator shafts. The loss to property
will not exceed 100000.
First Danger Sign Hideous.
Pedestrians going home through
Washington place to Washington
square were scattered by the whiz of
something rushing through the air be-
fore them-there was a horrible plop
on the pavement and a body fattened
On the flags
Wayf&rers 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 cTowding to the
sills.
Don't jump! Don't jump" yelled
the crowd. but the girls had no alter
native. The pressure Of the maddened
hundI eds behind them and the urging
Of their own fears were too strong
They began to fall to the sidewalk in
q terrible rain of flesh and blood.
Four alarms were rung within fifteen
minutes. Before the engines could re-
spOnd and before the nets could be
stretched or the ladders raised, five
girls had fallen from the eighth and
ninth floors so heavily that they broke
through the glass and iron roofs of
the sub-cellars and crashed through
the very streets into the vaults below.
In an hour the fire was out; in half
an hour it had done its worst; prob
ably the death list was full in twenty
minutes
Firemen who had begun to wade
through he water in the bas ment
before it 'ad beer pumped out felt
arOu I'd in the wat& under a hole in
the sidewalk vault lights of Greene
street, hole made by falling bodies,
many times, but discovered nothing
beneath the surface of the water. One
Of the firemen happened to look up
ward while passing the spot and so
found two bodies of young women,
beneath which he and his companion
had walked many times. The two dead
girls were lying on lattice of steam
pipes about four feet below the hole
in the vault lights. The girls bodies
had broken the concrete and glass
vault lights of the pavement and had
fallen through the sidewalk hole to
the steam pipes.
Twelve hours later firemen working
in the cellar of the building came
across a body at the foot of the shaft /
Of the two freight elevators on the
north side of the building. 1t was so
badly burned and mutilated that the
it was the body of a man or that of /
a woman.
Find Fragments of Bodies.
Charles Aichman, Of fire patrol No. |
12, found part of an arm and shoulder
near the north end of the cutting
room of the eighth floor, where the
fire started beneath pile Of west plas-
ter and bits of warped sewing ma
chimes Shortly after this a hand was
found on the window ledge of the
fifth floor, evidently broken from the
wrist of falling body. Two charred
arms and a burned foot were found on
the ninth floor
The windows of the burned floors
begin so close to the floor that the
sills are iu1t few inches below the
knees of one standing by the window.
1t was evident that many girls, there
fore, whether they wanted to jump OF
not, must have been showed out of
Ihe windows by the press behind
hem.
Max Blanck, one of the proprietors
)f the Triangle company, said it was
against orders to smoke in their lofts.
rhe reporters while clambering over
he debris on the eighth floor where
he fire started, saw amidst the half
)urAed pOcketboOks, shoes and other
tits of clothing, a scorched cigarette
)ox. In another part of the building
we're a number of half-smoked cigar
,ttes lying on the floor
Chief Croker said he believed the
Ire was caused by a smoker who
Ossed either a match OF a lighted
cigarette on the floor among the piles
4 infiamable fimsy stuff used in the
of waists and lingerie.
When the body found at the foot
I the freight elevator shaft had been
ent to the mOrgue there was a row !
I fifteen pine collins stretched along ]
be south side Of the covered pier and J
ixty-nine along the north side, each
a body which in most cases l
'as unrecOgnizable.
The relatives or close friends who
'ere looking for their dead at the
ier morgue began to come to the !
Ter an hour or two after the arrival I
I the first body. With few exceptions /
hose who arrived from the late fore t
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