Identifying the victims of a 100-year-old tragedy

The final unidentified victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire—a 1911 tragedy that had a huge impact on the creation of American labor laws and building codes—have finally been matched with names. What's really interesting to me: The fact that the bodies weren't identified with DNA, or any other modern science, but through simple detective work.

That's because the mystery was more about consolidating and organizing information that already existed, than it was about identifying the bodies themselves. Even before they died, the workers at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory were largely anonymous, except to the people who knew them personally. So, while official historians didn't know the names of all the dead, those names were always out there, buried in articles from small, neighborhood newspapers and passed down in family histories.

No New York City agencies and no newspapers at the time produced a complete list of the dead, Mr. Hirsch said. The most thorough list -- 140 names -- was compiled by Mr. Von Drehle when he wrote his book, and that was largely based on names plucked from accounts in four contemporary newspapers.

The obscurity of their names is evidence of the times, when lives were lived quietly and people were forced by economic and familial circumstances to swiftly move on from tragedies -- with no Facebook or reality television cameras to record their every step and thought.

Mr. Hirsch, 50, an amateur genealogist and historian who was hired as a co-producer of the coming HBO documentary "Triangle: Remembering the Fire," undertook an exhaustive search lasting more than four years. He returned to the microfilms of mainstream daily newspapers overlooked by researchers before him and to ethnic publications that he asked to have translated, like the Yiddish-language Jewish Daily Forward and Il Giornale Italiano. He estimates that he consulted 32 different newspapers.

He looked for articles about people who, in the weeks after the fire, claimed that their relatives were still missing. He then matched what he discovered with census records, death and burial certificates, marriage licenses, and reports kept by unions and charities about funeral and "relief" payments made to the families of the dead. Lastly, he sought out the descendants of three of the unidentified to confirm that the names he found were still mourned as Triangle victims.

New York Times: Unnamed Triangle Shirtwaist Company Victims Identified

• [Anonymous]

  My mother made me, starting when i was 5 years old, tell her the way out from wherever we were, be it store, restaurant or any other place. It is a game I still play at 67 years of age. I automatically look for exits as I move into and through any building. Of course, blocked or chained exits would kill me, too. Yes, unions, not owners, are responsible for saving many lives. Unionize!

• [EMJ]

  Is there a caption for the photo?

• [Robert]

  They couldn’t just send the bones to the Jeffersonian? ;D

• [Anonymous]

  I called the SF Fire Marshall on the FoodsCo grocery store in the Mission. I walked in and noticed they had wired all emergency exits shut. They wired them shut because the local homeless were just walking out of the emergency exits holding all the liquor they could carry.

  The SFFD sent someone out with wire cutters *right then* and the doors remained unobstructed after that.

  My partner called the SFFD on the Whole Foods Market on Franklin because the floral folks filled the wide emergency exit stairs between the lower coffee shop/parking garage and the main floor with potted plants, leaving barely enough space for two people to pass. Those were removed the next day, too.

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    I’m pretty appalled when I go to the grocery store and they’ve set up a gigantic, flammable Xmas/Valentines/Halloween display right inside the front doors, conveniently blocking the fire aisle. But they keep doing it. Fire Marshals should recruit a bunch of citizen deputies who know the code well enough to call in violations.

    • [Donald Petersen]

      A buddy of mine is a fire marshal, and though he’s not out to cause unnecessary expense or inconvenience, recalcitrant business owners will be shut down if they refuse to conform. Generally it only takes one visit for the management to shape up, if the marshal’s doing his or her job. Nobody wants to cause a fire hazard, and fire marshals know when to employ the friendly reminder as opposed to the last-resort crackdown.

      Some of the codes are just obscure or esoteric enough that a non-professional (whether a shopping civilian or a grocery store assistant manager) wouldn’t be expected to know them, such as pipe diameters, the distance between sprinkler heads, or anything like that. But the obvious violations like blocked exits or missing extinguishers… there’s no excuse for those. And if the establishment is part of a chain, there will certainly be corporate pressure for the store to conform.

      If you see it, report it. It’s not like you’re ratting out your neighbors to The Man. It’s public safety, which benefits everyone, and costs surprisingly little.

• [Eark_the_Bunny]

  This incident was not the first time this had happened. I made a list of:

  MAJOR FIRES OR OTHER INCIDENTS WITH COMPROMISED EXITS THAT RESULTED IN DEATHS

  Iroquois Theater Fire
  Chicago, IL 1903
  602 deaths

  Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire
  New York City 1911
  146 deaths

  Coconut Grove Nightclub Fire
  Boston, MA 1942
  492 deaths

  Beverly Hills Supper Club Fire
  Northern Kentucky 1977
  165 deaths

  Hamlet chicken processing plant fire
  Hamlet, North Carolina 1991
  25 deaths

  Dongdu Building Fire
  Luoyang, Henan, China 2000
  311 deaths

  Binondo, Manila fire
  Binondo, Manila 2002
  7 deaths

  Argentinian ‘death trap’ club fire
  Buenos Aires, Argentina 2005
  175 deaths

  Paraguay supermarket fire
  Paraguay 2006
  374 deaths

  Mexico City Nightclub Police Raid
  Mexico 2008
  20 deaths

  Bangkok Nightclub New Years Eve Fire
  Thailand 2008
  64+ deaths

  These just the ones I found on the internet. Whenever I see a blocked fire exit at a store, I let them know about it. At least one store no longer wanted me as a customer when I pointed out a rather large forklift blocking a fire door. Business are very careless about this very important safety feature.

  • [Donald Petersen]

    Don’t forget The Station nightclub fire in 2003. Compromised exits there, too, resulting in 100 dead and 230 injured.

    • [Eark_the_Bunny]

      I have added it to my list.

      Station nightclub fire
      West Warwick, RI 2003
      100 deaths

• [Anonymous]

  As a student of history I have often been reminded of the Triangle fires in my most recent place of work. I worked in a call center located in a 42 story building. On one of the lower floors is a public cafeteria. Occasionally we would be notified and and asked to evacuate if there was a kitchen fire. More frequently we would receive bomb threats. At one point the person in charge announced that we were to stay at our desks until the bomb squad decided we should be evacuated. I tell you, it is not easy to sit at your desk and remain productive waiting for the all clear from the bomb squad or an explosion. While I can understand the bosses impatience, carrying on our duties should not take precedence over our safety.

• [Practical Archivist]

  I’ve always said being a historian is like being a detective…

• [sdmikev]

  100 years later. The only thing that has changed are the laws. And yet working people in 2011 will say out loud that businesses “have too many regulations”. They’re not sure what, just that they do.
  In the 90′s, when I still lived in the Bay Area, I was working for then Lucky Stores in one of their Silicon Valley locations (in total, I worked for the company for 16 years).
  Overall, they were a good place to work.
  However, at this particular location at this time, the person running the show was one supreme asshole. He had bale-wired the back emergency exit shut one holiday weekend. The next night around 11, two guys with guns came in and robbed the store (first robbery in like 30 years in Los Altos or something) and shot the bookkeeper – who survived.
  The guys working graveyard ran into the warehouse to call 911 and to try and get a couple people out. 1) the phone was coded and they could not get out EVEN FOR A 911 call. 2) the door was wired shut so they were stuck. The thieves were gone in a couple minutes, they took the money and bolted.
  I came into work the next day and see the girl who saw our bookkeeper shot and had money taken from the til working up front at the register. She was still shaking. I asked her why she was here, she said “Pat told me I had to finish the week, then I could take a couple days off.” Motherfucker.
  I got on the horn with our union rep and told him he had 15 minutes to get his ass down here and take care of her.
  From that day forward, I came into work every day hoping that this guy had died in a fiery wreck on the way in. Unfortunately that never happened.
  HOWEVER. A couple years later, his hot younger wife got knocked up by another dude (she worked for the same company AND the guy who banged her did). I swear, I laughed for a week. Pretty much non-stop.
  They got divorced and she took half his shit. That was the most awesome thing ever.

• [Mister Eppy]

  There is a horrible, wonderful radio piece This American Life did on the tragedy some years back. Accompanying the story was a reading of a newspaper description of the women jumping to their deaths rather than die in the fire. (the company had chained shut alternative exits).

  Interspersed in the details of the story was the onomatopoeic “Thud” as bodies continued to fall.

• [Rhonan]

  It was not all that many years ago that a chicken plant fire, with locked doors, brought the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire back to the news. Times may change some things, but workers still need unions, and they still need to remember that they have nothing in common with their bosses.

• [lux_aurumque]

  From the article:

  He located her granddaughter, Mrs. Hacker, in Arizona, who told him that the family had never been able to single out Ms. Lauletti’s body among the unidentified bodies, suggesting that she was probably buried at Evergreens. She also informed him that Ms. Lauletti had been an immigrant from Sicily and the mother of five children, four of whom were put in an orphanage after the fire.
  On his own, Mr. Hirsch found a 1912 report by the Red Cross that sought to protect the anonymity of the families receiving cash payments but whose details matched that of Ms. Lauletti. It also revealed that the mother of “Number 85,” as Ms. Lauletti had been identified, was “almost crazed with grief” and “did nothing but moan and weep for weeks.”

  Amazing…the grief touches me, even 100 years later.

• [Anonymous]

  Judging from the current war on labor this should be coming back to a workplace near you soon. Thanks Wisconsin!

• [Ugly Canuck]

  Never stay in if you can’t see the way out.

  • [Donald Petersen]

    Would you bankrupt Disney’s Haunted Mansion?

    (“Of course, there’s always my way out…!”)

    • [Ugly Canuck]

      I trust that Disney’s attractions conform to the relevant fire and building codes: but I have never been….are the exits not clearly marked?

      • [Donald Petersen]

        are the exits not clearly marked?

        Kind of an inside joke for those who have been to Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion. Most of the ride is underground, and once the queue finally leads you inside the building proper, you’re herded into a not-very-large octagonal room with dark paneling and portraits on the walls. A disembodied voice welcomes you in, and urges everyone to scootch in tight to make room for every one. Once the (disguised to match the woodwork) door is closed, the walls seem to stretch upward, as the “room” descends… it’s actually an elevator. The voice helpfully points out, in menacing sepulchral tones, “…And consider this dismaying observation: this chamber has no windows, and no doors… which offers you this chilling challenge: to find a way out! Of course, there’s always my way…” Upon which the lights go out, there’s a bloodcurdling scream, and by the strobe-light of a flash of lightning you can see a corpse hanging from the rafters high above you.

        But then the elevator doors open, and there are plenty of EXIT signs thereafter.

        Oh, uh… spoiler alert?

• [jjsaul]

  It’s depressing to think of how little time it took us, collectively, to block our cultural memory of this. Thanks for the painful reminder.