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As Triangle Fire Turns 100, List of Victims Is Complete
By
Garth Johnston
Published Feb 21, 2011
Modified Feb 22, 2011
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By
Garth Johnston
Published Feb 21, 2011
Modified Feb 22, 2011
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Next month marks the hundredth anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire and for the first time since the tragedy that ultimately killed 146 garment workers, all of the victims' names will be read outside the Greenwich Village building where the fire took place on March 25. The names of the last six workers, whose identities remained elusive for a hundred years, were recovered thanks to the hard work of one Michael Hirsch, an amateur genealogist and historian (and co-producer of an upcoming HBO doc on the fire), who combed through archives of at least 32 daily papers from the time, along with a whole slew of public records, and talked with a number of relatives to compile the complete list.
The fire—which had a profound influence on the way the city and country looked a building codes, labor laws and even politics—took place in the eighth, ninth and 10th floors of the Asch Building (now part of NYU) and burned so hot and quick on that fateful Saturday afternoon that hundreds of workers finishing their shirts were trapped in the building, forced to either burn inside or jump to their deaths. The 146 workers who died remain the fourth highest loss of life from an industrial accident in U.S. history. 71 more were seriously injured.
Because so many of the workers were poor and didn't have identifying objects on them, figuring out who exactly was in the fire and identifying their remains was a difficult task. So much so that in the end five bodies were buried unnamed under a monument in the Cemetery of the Evergreens in Queens. But thanks to the work of Hirsch the five (Josephine Cammarata, Dora Evans, Max Florin, Maria Giuseppa Lauletti, Concetta Prestifilippo and Fannie Rosen) will now be remembered with the workers they perished with.
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Triangle SHirtwaist Factory fire
Garth Johnston
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