Out of the Ashes

Women Fight Back

The Triangle Factory fire in 1911 was the deadliest workplace disaster in NYC before 9-11. It was significant not because 146 workers died, but because it instigated reform. At the time workplace safety was barely regulated and rarely thought about . . . except, perhaps, by the workers themselves. Other workplace disasters had occurred in the past and would again in the future. So why was the Triangle different?

One reason was a woman named Clara Lemlich. In my novel, she appears as a feisty young woman who wanted to better the plight of the garment workers. Indeed she was. In my novel she is beaten by a gang of thugs and rescued by Cormac Mead. Indeed she was. (In truth, she was beaten but not rescued by Cormac or any other policeman.)

 Clara Lemlich, a skilled draper and member of International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union Local 25, encouraged interested shirtwaist makers to meet secretly with the union and the Women’s Trade Union League to discuss workers’ needs and the union’s goals. Despite the risks, many went on strike in September, 1909. In an attempt to satisfy some workers, Triangle owners Max Blanck and Isaac Harris formed the “Triangle Employees Benevolent Association” a company union, and installed relatives as officers. They also announced that any employee who supported ‘another union’ would be fired. Photographer: unknown, 1909 Photo courtesy the Kheel Center, Cornell University http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/trianglefire/primary/photosIllustrations/slideshow.html?image_id=842&sec_id=12#screen

Clara worked as a draper at Leiserson’s waist factory. She told stories of how workers were followed to the restroom and hustled back to work, lest they steal some fabrics. She relayed how workers were persistently shortchanged on their pay and sometimes even charged for the use of materials, such as thread. And, at the day’s end, they lined up a single unlocked door to be searched before they exited.

Clara had had enough. In 1906, along with several other women, she joined the ILGWU, the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union. Together they formed Local 25, to serve female waist makers and dressmakers. (A shirtwaist, by the way, is a blouse – See Clara wearing one in photo.) In many ways, they had to fend for themselves, for men in the unions did not take them seriously.

Clara was instrumental in organizing the female workers from shop to shop to strike for better working conditions. In THE TRIANGLE MURDERS, you get a glimpse of what one of the strikes was like with prostitutes and thugs hired to harass the garment workers. The second instrumental woman to bring conditions to the forefront was Frances Perkins. Check my next blog for more.

 

A Death Not Pretty

Burn . . . or Crash

One of the more gruesome aspects to my research was learning about “defenestration,” the act of throwing someone (or something) out the window. The term comes from two centuries-old incidents in Prague. The first in 1419 when seven town officials were thrown from the Town Hall, no doubt precipitating the Hussite War. The second in 1618, when two Imperial governors and their secretary were thrown from Prague Castle, sparking the Thirty Years War. The latter was referred to as the Defenestration of Prague.

Now, while there’s something appealing about throwing political officials out of the window, remember that when they hit the ground the results are quite grim.

Falling as a cause of death can be very effective. There are two ways a person can fall. A vertical “controlled” fall is when the person lands upright and feet-first. An “uncontrolled” fall is when some other part of the body hits the ground first ie: head or back. Not pretty.

The vertical fall is survivable up to about 100 feet, but an uncontrolled fall can be fatal at very short distances such as from a stepladder. With a controlled fall, the initial energy transmits through the feet and legs and spares vital organs. The uncontrolled fall, however, can cause massive internal and head injuries.

Unrecognizable bodies lay on the sidewalk along Greene Street, together with hoses, fire rescue nets, and part of a wagon. All were drenched by the tons of water used to contain and extinguish the fire. Photographer: Brown Brothers, March 25, 1911. Photo courtesy of Kheel Center, Cornell University, http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/trianglefire/

I use this “cause of death” in another book coming out in the future: THE COVENANT. Why? Maybe because it’s clean way to murder (no blood on your hands) and allows easy escape for the killer? There is the problem, however, of actually shoving someone who might be bigger and heavier than you out the window. But that’s a story for another blog.

 

Dead But Not Gone

Identifying the Dead

In February of 2011, a story appeared in the New York Times. With the hundredth anniversary of the Triangle fire a month away, eyes were focused on a stone monument in the Cemetery of the Evergreens on the border of Brooklyn and Queens. The monument was erected to the garment workers who died in the Triangle fire but were never identified.

Photos courtesy of the Kheel Center, Cornell University:

http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/trianglefire/

There is a bas-relief figure of a kneeling woman, head bowed, mourning for the victims so badly charred that relatives could not recognize them. Nearly a century later, the five women and one man, all buried in coffins under the Evergreens monument remained unknown, although relatives and descendants knew their loved ones had never returned from the shirtwaist factory.

Now, thanks to a man named Michael Hirsch, the remains have been identified. It wasn’t forensics that helps identify the bodies, but rather the exhaustive work of one very persistent, obsessive researcher. For more details, check New York Times article: “100 Years Later, the Roll of the Dead in a Factory Fire is Complete:”

 

No Escape

A Better Way to Die?

The Asch Building which housed the Triangle Factory (top three floors) was said to be fireproof. The deadly fire on March 25 was not its first. A series of fires starting in 1902 destroyed the contents of the factory. Triangle owners Max Blanck and Isaac Harris were well covered insurance-wise, however.

In the novel, The Triangle Murders, Fiona tracks down the earlier fires and puts her own life in danger.

The Asch Building (Photographer: unknown, March 25, 1911, Copyright: Kheel Center, Cornell University, http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/trianglefire/) It was also not the only unsafe building where so many young immigrant women worked six or seven days each week.

Once the fire broke out, it spread so quickly that there was little hope for escape. Even the one fire escape turned deadly.

The flimsy fire escape ladder descended close to the building forcing those fleeing to struggle through flames and past warped iron window shutters stuck open across their path. Sections of ladder which ended two stories above the ground, twisted and collapsed under the weight of workers trying to escape the fire killing many who had chosen it as their lifeline.  (Photographer: unknown, 1911, Copyright: Kheel Center, Cornell University, http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/trianglefire/)

Fiona, trapped, watched in horror as her friends fell to their deaths below as the ladder broke.

Tragically, although the fire engines arrived quickly, their ladders and hoses reached only to the sixth floor, some thirty feet too short. Their attempts at nets and tarpaulins below were futile. Jumpers tore right through them or suffered fatal bodily harm by the vicious landing.