Why Bad People Get Away With Bad Deeds

The door to escape was locked. When the fire broke out in the Triangle Factory, March 25, 1911, scores of factory workers, mostly women and girls, rushed to the Washington Place exit door. What followed was bedlam of the highest order.

In the end 146 workers jumped to their death or were asphyxiated by smoke and eventually burned to death in the inferno. Several weeks later, in a sealed grand jury room, witness after witness testified to the fact that the door to escape was locked. The law said that factory doors should not be locked during business hours, but the position of a heavy, rectangular bolt proved the door had, indeed, been locked. Why? To keep the workers from stealing, slipping out with a shirtwaist (ladies blouse at the time) beneath their coat, or a scrap of fabric, a spool of thread.

“Fire fighters from Ladder Company 20 arrived at the Triangle Waist Company minutes after the alarm was sounded and sprayed water at the burning Asch Building hoping that the dampening mist, too weak to put out the fire by the time it reached the top floors, would cool the panicked workers who had been forced to window ledges by extreme heat, smoke, flames and blocked exits.” Photographer: Brown Brothers, March 25, 1911 Kheel Center image identifier5780pb39f20aahttp://www.ilr.cornell.edu/trianglefire/primary/photosIllustrations/slideshow.html?image_id=745&sec_id=3#screen

So who would pay for all these lives?

The Triangle owners, Isaac Harris and Max Blanck were already busy at work in their new factory. The grand jury indicted them. They would stand trial. But would they be held accountable?

After hiring an influential attorney, Blanck and Harris were released on $25,000 bail. Trial began December 4, 1911, nine months after the fire. Witnesses for both sides were called. Many survivors testified. The trial went on for a little over three weeks.

Late on December 27, after deliberating for less than two hours, the jury returned a verdict. Not guilty. The crowd roared in disbelief. How could this be? These rich men were responsible for the deaths of so many. Where was justice in all this?

Life is not fair. Death is not fair. Who can we blame? The rich for buying their way out of jams? The poor for not fighting back? If we look back at these events now, over a hundred years later, we see that actually a great deal of good resulted. Certainly not for the dead or the families of the dead, but for future generations. New laws were created that took safety, working conditions, and child welfare into account. (See my earlier blogs on this.)

Must it take a tragedy to change things for the better? Maybe. Even then with new legislation in place, we know that history repeats itself. In Bangladesh recently, fires similar to the Triangle killed many workers. Bad people will somehow manage to get away with doing bad things.

History is bursting with examples of this, giving writers a perfect starting point for creating villains. The essence of a good story is based on a universal truth — the premise of good vs. evil. Today, modern science can unravel the old mysteries, uncover the old bad guys (and good guys) and lay to rest untruths perpetuated about them. My books reflect my fascination with this theme: historical mysteries solved by modern technology.