THE TRIANGLE SHIRTWAIST FACTORY FIRE

Episode 214 | Historical Events

In this History episode we focus on the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of March 25th, 1911 — 146 garment workers killed in eighteen minutes because the owners had locked the exit doors to prevent theft and keep out union organizers. Most of the dead were young immigrant women between thirteen and twenty-three years old. Sixty-two of them jumped rather than burn. The fire department's ladders didn't reach the ninth floor. The fire escape collapsed.

The owners, Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, were acquitted of manslaughter on the basis that they couldn't be proven to have known a specific door was locked. Their insurance paid them approximately $400 per death — more per person than the $75 civil settlements paid to twenty-three victims' families. Two years later they were caught locking doors at a new factory and fined $20. Frances Perkins watched from the street and spent the next thirty-four years building the regulatory framework designed to make it impossible the same way again.

This podcast features narration with a synthetic AI voice.

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