The Parma herald. (Parma, Idaho) 1903-1917, 1911-03-30
SWEATSHOP BURNS.
New York Shirt-Waist Factory Fur
Ii;hes Death Harvest.
Victims Nearly All Women and Girls,
Who Meet Death in Flames or
Leap to Pavement.

New York, March, 27.-One hun
and forty-eight persons, nine-tenths of
them girls from the East Side, were
crushed to death on the pavements,
smothered by smoke or burned to crisp
Saturday afternoon in the worst fire
known since the steamer Slocum was
burned to the waters edge off North
Brother island in 1904.
One hundred and forty-one bodies
have been removed from the ruins and
seven of the injured died in hospitals.
This, it is believed, completes the list
of dead, most of whom are uniden-
titled.
Grief crazed relatives besieged the
morgue as the bodies were laid out.
Nearly, if not all, of the victims were
employed by the Triangle Waist COM
pany on the eight, ninth and tenth
floors of 10-story loft building at %
Washington place, on the western
fringe of the downtown wholesale dis
trict.
Partners of firm, Isaac Harris and
Max Blanc, escaped, carrying with
them over an adjoining roof Blanck' s
two young daughters and governess.
There was not an outside fire escape
on the building.
How the fire started will probably
never 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, 60 or more persons were crushed
to death by jumping, more than &c
clogged the elevator shafts. Loss tc
property will not exceed 800, 900.
Pedestrians going home through
Washington place at A 80 O'Clock were
scattered by the whiz of something
rushing through the air before them
there was a horrible thud on the pave
ment and body fiattened on the flag
} stones. Wayfarers on the opposite
} side of the street shaded their eye!
} against the setting sun and saw the
windows of the three upper floors O.
the building black with girls crowdinl
1 to the stills.
S Don't jump" yelled the crowd
But the girls had no alternative. Tn
pressure of the maddened hundreds be
D hind them and the urging of their owl
d fears were too strong. They began t
s fall to the sidewalk.
e Four alarms were rung within l
r minutes. Before the engines coul
/ respond, before the nets could
}, stretched or the ladders raised, fv
d girls had fallen from the eighth ar
Q ninth floors so heavily that the
4, crashed through the very streets
It the vaults below. In an hour the fl
If was out; in 80 minutes it had done i
worst; probably the death list WI
Ie complete in 20 minutes.
d The building stands on a corn
q with exposures on two sides, but IL
10 only fire escape was in the interio
d opening on light and air shaft.
/, all there were seven exits-the sing
l. fire escape, two freight elevators ;
q the rear, two passenger elevators
y front and two stairways. All of the
I proved almost useless and practical
10 all who escaped either climbed to Il
ID roof and scrambled thence to the roo
of the building occupied by the Anne
lean Book company, adjoining, or fit
Ie in the first rush for safety before Il
y, crush and smoke grew too thick.
y The building stands now as a she
intact, the partitions of architectur
tiling between floor and floor a
"a sound, and it is impossible for OIL
n who sees it to imagine how the fam
m in so short a time could have wrong
IT such havoc.
=. Seven hundred hands, 500 of the
N women, were employed by the shi
10 waist company. They sat in rows
20 their whirring machines, the tabl
,e before them piled with himsy clot
,e the floor Uttered with lint, the air
Ar self full of flying, inhammable dust.
n