Flashback: The Triangle Shirtwaist fire, New York City, 1911

[RRBum]

The nation learned of the horrible fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company through the eyewitness account of a United Press reporter who happened to be in Washington Square on March 25, 1911. He phoned in details while watching the tragedy unfold. At the other end of the telephone, young Roy Howard telegraphed Shepherd's story to the nation's newspapers. This document first published in the Milwaukee Journal, March 27, 1911.
Eyewitness at the Triangle
by William G. Shepherd

I was walking through Washington Square when a puff of smoke issuing from the factory building caught my eye. I reached the building before the alarm was turned in. I saw every feature of the tragedy visible from outside the building. I learned a new sound--a more horrible sound than description can picture. It was the thud of a speeding, living body on a stone sidewalk.

Thud—dead, thud—dead, thud—dead, thud—dead. Sixty-two thud—deads. I call them that, because the sound and the thought of death came to me each time, at the same instant. There was plenty of chance to watch them as they came down. The height was eighty feet.

The first ten thud—deads shocked me. I looked up—saw that there were scores of girls at the windows. The flames from the floor below were beating in their faces. Somehow I knew that they, too, must come down, and something within me—something that I didn't know was there—steeled me.

I even watched one girl falling. Waving her arms, trying to keep her body upright until the very instant she struck the sidewalk, she was trying to balance herself. Then came the thud--then a silent, unmoving pile of clothing and twisted, broken limbs.

As I reached the scene of the fire, a cloud of smoke hung over the building. . . . I looked up to the seventh floor. There was a living picture in each window—four screaming heads of girls waving their arms.

"Call the firemen," they screamed—scores of them. "Get a ladder," cried others. They were all as alive and whole and sound as were we who stood on the sidewalk. I couldn't help thinking of that. We cried to them not to jump. We heard the siren of a fire engine in the distance. The other sirens sounded from several directions.

"Here they come," we yelled. "Don't jump; stay there."

One girl climbed onto the window sash. Those behind her tried to hold her back. Then she dropped into space. I didn't notice whether those above watched her drop because I had turned away. Then came that first thud. I looked up, another girl was climbing onto the window sill; others were crowding behind her. She dropped. I watched her fall, and again the dreadful sound. Two windows away two girls were climbing onto the sill; they were fighting each other and crowding for air. Behind them I saw many screaming heads. They fell almost together, but I heard two distinct thuds. Then the flames burst out through the windows on the floor below them, and curled up into their faces.

The firemen began to raise a ladder. Others took out a life net and, while they were rushing to the sidewalk with it, two more girls shot down. The firemen held it under them; the bodies broke it; the grotesque simile of a dog jumping through a hoop struck me. Before they could move the net another girl's body flashed through it. The thuds were just as loud, it seemed, as if there had been no net there. It seemed to me that the thuds were so loud that they might have been heard all over the city.

I had counted ten. Then my dulled senses began to work automatically. I noticed things that it had not occurred to me before to notice. Little details that the first shock had blinded me to. I looked up to see whether those above watched those who fell. I noticed that they did; they watched them every inch of the way down and probably heard the roaring thuds that we heard.

As I looked up I saw a love affair in the midst of all the horror. A young man helped a girl to the window sill. Then he held her out, deliberately away from the building and let her drop. He seemed cool and calculating. He held out a second girl the same way and let her drop. Then he held out a third girl who did not resist. I noticed that. They were as unresisting as if her were helping them onto a streetcar instead of into eternity. Undoubtedly he saw that a terrible death awaited them in the flames, and his was only a terrible chivalry.

Then came the love amid the flames. He brought another girl to the window. Those of us who were looking saw her put her arms about him and kiss him. Then he held her out into space and dropped her. But quick as a flash he was on the window sill himself. His coat fluttered upward—the air filled his trouser legs. I could see that he wore tan shoes and hose. His hat remained on his head.

Thud—dead, thud—dead—together they went into eternity. I saw his face before they covered it. You could see in it that he was a real man. He had done his best.

We found out later that, in the room in which he stood, many girls were being burned to death by the flames and were screaming in an inferno of flame and heat. He chose the easiest way and was brave enough to even help the girl he loved to a quicker death, after she had given him a goodbye kiss. He leaped with an energy as if to arrive first in that mysterious land of eternity, but her thud—dead came first.

The firemen raised the longest ladder. It reached only to the sixth floor. I saw the last girl jump at it and miss it. And then the faces disappeared from the window. But now the crowd was enormous, though all this had occurred in less than seven minutes, the start of the fire and the thuds and deaths.

I heard screams around the corner and hurried there. What I had seen before was not so terrible as what had followed. Up in the [ninth] floor girls were burning to death before our very eyes. They were jammed in the windows. No one was lucky enough to be able to jump, it seemed. But, one by one, the jams broke. Down came the bodies in a shower, burning, smoking—flaming bodies, with disheveled hair trailing upward. They had fought each other to die by jumping instead of by fire.

The whole, sound, unharmed girls who had jumped on the other side of the building had tried to fall feet down. But these fire torches, suffering ones, fell inertly, only intent that death should come to them on the sidewalk instead of in the furnace behind them.

On the sidewalk lay heaps of broken bodies. A policeman later went about with tags, which he fastened with wires to the wrists of the dead girls, numbering each with a lead pencil, and I saw him fasten tag no. 54 to the wrist of a girl who wore an engagement ring. A fireman who came downstairs from the building told me that there were at least fifty bodies in the big room on the seventh floor. Another fireman told me that more girls had jumped down an air shaft in the rear of the building. I went back there, into the narrow court, and saw a heap of dead girls. . . .

The floods of water from the firemen's hose that ran into the gutter were actually stained red with blood. I looked upon the heap of dead bodies and I remembered these girls were the shirtwaist makers. I remembered their great strike of last year in which these same girls had demanded more sanitary conditions and more safety precautions in the shops. These dead bodies were the answer.

Leon Stein, ed., Out of the Sweatshop: The Struggle for Industrial Democracy (New York: Quadrangle/New Times Book Company, 1977), pp. 188-193.
The Kheel Center would like to thank Mrs. Miriam Stein and Barbara Ismail for granting permission to use selections from the late Leon Stein's book.



The building is still there in downtown Manhattan.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_Building_of_Science



It didn't fall straight down either.  Only Larry Silverstein's buildings do that.  With a  little help from the Mossad.

[sushigirl]

 A tragic story

View Triangle Factory Fire (Note that these names are Jewish.)

Lizzie Adler (24)
Anna Altman (16)
Annina Ardito (25)
Rose Bona Bassino (31)
Vincenza Benanti (22)
Yetta Berger (18)
Essie Bernstein (19)
Jacob Bernstein (35)
Morris Bernstein (19)
Gussie Bierman (22)
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Abraham Binevitz (30)
Rosie Brenman (23)
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Ida Brodsky (15)
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Laura Brunetti  (17)
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Josephine Carlisi (31)
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Mary (Gullo) Floresta (26)
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[RRBum]

Up until the labor strike that ended the year before almost all the Triangle employees were Jewish

"New York shirtwaist strike of 1909"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_shirtwaist_strike_of_1909



Funeral procession for the victims of the fire.

[sushigirl]

Makes sense, lots of poor Jewish immigrants landed in New York. Today they own Manhattan.

[RRBum]

This book, Jews Without Money, made a big impression on me.  It was the only book written by Michael Gold, a socialist. Jews without money were some of the kindest most sober decent hard working people in the world; but Jews with money and/or power, the worst people in the world, bar none. Why is that?


http://www.amazon.com/Hundred-Twenty-Million-Short-reprint/dp/0836940393/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpi_3

[sushigirl]

Why is that?

Power corrupts; money corrupts absolutely.

[RRBum]

Power corrupts; money corrupts absolutely.

But those dirty sons of bitches take the cake.  In Russia they went from being seemingly lovable schlubs on schtetls to bolshevik monsters mass murdering millions in the time it took to doff a yamulka.

Gold wrote about the horrible Jew landlords and how they treated their poor Jewish tennants.  Likewise the Jew bosses at the shirtwaist factories and the poor Jewish girls who worked there.

That Triangle fire took place 5 minutes before quitting time.  The girls were already in their wraps and about to go home. If it had taken place ten minutes later probably no one would have died.

The most haunting images of 911 - that is Larry Silverstein's "Jewish Lightning" caper - were the people jumping, and like the love story above, the man and woman who jumped holding hands.   

Did they investigate the possibility of the Triangle fire being a case of jewish lightning, too?  The Jew boss and his friends and relations escaped all right - and of course Larry Silverstein and his two kids didn't show up for work on 911, nor did approx. 4,000 of his landsmen.



rrb

[Nozog]

 The insurance comapany paid $75 dollars to each victim, and $400 dollars per victim to Max Blanck, the owner. Blanck made $60,000 dollars.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fire

http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/trianglefire/texts/transcripts/introduction.html

[Nozog]

This book, Jews Without Money, made a big impression on me.  It was the only book written by Michael Gold, a socialist. Jews without money were some of the kindest most sober decent hard working people in the world; but Jews with money and/or power, the worst people in the world, bar none. Why is that?


http://www.amazon.com/Hundred-Twenty-Million-Short-reprint/dp/0836940393/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpi_3

In today's world, the Jews with money are still willing to sacrifice Jews without money.   The 'bankster' Jews with HQ in London, want war with Iran, so they can control Iran's oil and Iran's money. Iran is not a nuclear threat---it's a big lie.

Everyone knows that an attack on Iran will wipe out the state of Israel, but the London trillionaire Jews don't care. Tim Rifat, a Rothschild watcher, believes Israelis are being set up for destruction by the Rothschilds.

http://www.savethemales.ca/000573.html

[Mel Gibstein]

Benjamin Kurtz

son of a wolf

Francesca Caputo ~ is she related to Neil?

[sushigirl]

But those dirty sons of bitches take the cake.  In Russia they went from being seemingly lovable schlubs on schtetls to bolshevik monsters mass murdering millions in the time it took to doff a yamulka.

I'm just reading about the butchering in Rostov, about young and at that time still devoted Commie Solzhenitsyn.

Gold wrote about the horrible Jew landlords and how they treated their poor Jewish tennants.  Likewise the Jew bosses at the shirtwaist factories and the poor Jewish girls who worked there.

There were, and probably still are many juju owned tenements in German cities today. Hey, thanks to the H/C myth and our dear leaders, Germany is the safest place to be, they are virtually untouchable.  

That Triangle fire took place 5 minutes before quitting time.  The girls were already in their wraps and about to go home. If it had taken place ten minutes later probably no one would have died.

Good timing! How convenient! Not just cheap, but free labor.

The most haunting images of 911 - that is Larry Silverstein's "Jewish Lightning" caper - were the people jumping, and like the love story above, the man and woman who jumped holding hands.

 

Watching some of this on sent shivers down our collective spines.

Did they investigate the possibility of the Triangle fire being a case of jewish lightning, too?  The Jew boss and his friends and relations escaped all right - and of course Larry Silverstein and his two kids didn't show up for work on 911, nor did approx. 4,000 of his landsmen.

rrb

No doubt they escaped miraculously.  Big insurance check(s) in both cases. Who owns most insurance companies?

[sushigirl]

The insurance comapany paid $75 dollars to each victim, and $400 dollars per victim to Max Blanck, the owner. Blanck made $60,000 dollars.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fire

http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/trianglefire/texts/transcripts/introduction.html

That figures, just as I thought.

[jacob gold]

$10 says the real list of dead is mostly iltalians and irish. And another $10 says the fire was started by a jew

[sushigirl]

$10 says the real list of dead is mostly iltalians and irish. And another $10 says the fire was started by a jew

And I says you could be right if the list of names was not the real one.

[RRBum]

And I say you could be right if the list of names was not the real one.

That list you posted above, Soosh, shows a lot of Jewish victims - but I got interested in this reading the NY Times (actually listening to it read on audio - available free at Libravox) lengthly series of articles on the tragedy.  The NY Times stated that most (or was it all?) of the Jewish employees were gone after the labor strike the year before.  Up until then they were almost all jewish.  They said that all the girls working there at the time of the fire were German, Irish, Italian, I forgot what else.  So is that list above fraudulent?

[RRBum]

The insurance comapany paid $75 dollars to each victim, and $400 dollars per victim to Max Blanck, the owner. Blanck made $60,000 dollars.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangle_Shirtwaist_Factory_fire

http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/trianglefire/texts/transcripts/introduction.html

And Silverstein made seven billion.  

So it probably WAS Jewish Lightning!

The NY Times reported that they were only able to identify some of the burned victims by the pay envelopes that they found in their possession.  So it must have been payday.  They were probably being paid by paycheck.  So Max Blanck didn't have to cover those paychecks.  Good timing, Max and Isaac.

[FLAT_HEADED_RUSSIAN]

I believe it is now the 'Brown' building which houses NYU's dept of chemistry right off of west Broadway

[RRBum]

Right.  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_Building_of_Science

[sushigirl]

That list you posted above, Soosh, shows a lot of Jewish victims - They said that all the girls were German, Irish, Italian, I forgot what else.  So is that list above fraudulent?

I should have guessed that. Just like that phony 9/11 whine.

[jacob gold]

Chances are the fire was deliberate  ........... but the code of the Juju is to protect each other ............... they go out of their way to create tyhe atmosphere of the brotherhood

No way a jew killed 50 jewesses