Watertown leader. [volume] (Watertown, Jefferson County, Wis.) 1909-1911, 1911-03-31
I4I MEET DEATH IN
NEW YORK BLAZE
PANIC STRICKEN VICTIMS LEAP
GOTHAM SKYSCRAPER.
FACTORY WORKERS VICTIMS
Fire Starts in Shirtwaist Factory on
Seventh Floor, Driving Employees
to Upper Stories, Where Many
Take Fatal Plunge to Pavement

New York,-One hundred and for
ty-one souls-nine-tenths of them
girls from the east side-were crush
ed to death on the pavement, smooth
cred by smoke or shriveled to crisp
in the worst fire New York has known
since the steamship Gen. Slocum was
burned to the waters edge off North
Brothers island in 1904.
Nearly all, if not all, of the vic
tins were employed by the Triangle
Shirtwaist company on the eighth,
ninth and tenth floors of a ten story
loft building at % Washington place
A revised count shows 141 dead,
with twelve women and girls at
deaths door in the hospitals. One
hundred and fifty, all told, will per-
haps conservatively cover the casual
ties when those whose horrible hurts
and burns seem fatal shall have
joined their fellow workers now in
pine collins at the morgue
How the fire started will perhaps
never be known. A corner on the
seventh floor was the origin and the
three upper floors only were swept.
On the ninth floor fifty bodies were
found, siXty-three or more persons
were crushed to death by jumping
and more than thirty clogged the ele-
Vator shafts. The loss to property
will not exceed 100000.
Four alarms were rung within fiji
teen minutes. Before the engines
could respond, 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 subcellars and crashed
through the very streets into the
vaults below. In an hour the fire
was out. In half an hour it had done
it's work. Probably the death list was
full in twenty minutes.
Seven hundred hands, 500 Of them
women, were employed by the shirt
waist company. They sat in rows at
their whirring machines, the tables
before them piled with fimsy cloth,
the floor Uttered with lint, the air
itself full of flying inflammable dust.
The first rush of fame was almost
an explosion. Operators died in their
chairs, their lungs scared by inhaling
fame Others were crowded into the
elevator shafts after the cars had
made their last trip. Still others
were pushed off the inadequate inter-
Tor fire escape.
cuch CT m did bp
bodies overflow from the windows
that the fire nets, stretched by the
first company to arrive, were soon
gorged beyond capacity. Twelve bod
les weighted one net to the bursting
point, but the bodies kept on tumb-
ling to the pavement, through meshes
that could not longer support them.
One incident that brought great,
rolling cry Of dread from the watch
ing throng happened when the blaze
was at it's height. Against the lurid
background of leaping flames young
man and girl appeared together at
window on the eighth floor. The
man was holding the girl firmly by
the hand. The man was seen to fold
the girl to his breast and press a kiss
upon her lips. She jumped to her
death, upon the pavement below and
he followed an instant later.
Disposal of the dead was one of the
problems that confronted the authori
ties at once The bodies were ar
ranged in long rows on the sidewalk
outside the building and the two big
searchlights of the fire department
were called into play to light the fire
men in their search for the dead in
the upper stories.