9: When the American Dream Goes Up in Flames: The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire
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This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Most of you listening right now are probably multitasking. Yep, while you're listening to me talk, you're probably also driving, cleaning, exercising, or maybe even grocery shopping. But if you're not in some kind of moving vehicle, there's something else you could be doing right now. Getting an auto quote from Progressive Insurance.

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What are your self-care non-negotiables? The things you know make you feel better, even when it's impossible to make time for them. Like that workout you try to squeeze in between kids' activities, work, and everything else you have going on, and before you know it, it gets pushed to tomorrow.

Sound familiar? But it's the moments when you feel like you have no time for yourself when those non-negotiables are more important than ever. Those are the things that keep you strong, healthy, motivated, and prepared to take on everything life demands of you. So why not make therapy one of them?

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Hi friends, just popping in here really quick because for the first time in Dark History history, I have an update for you about a previous episode we talked about. Oh my gosh, yes we do. Remember the Rosewood Massacre episode? Remember? Yeah, okay, great. Well, when we left off, the White House, the last surviving structure from the massacre, was in need of some serious help.

Recently, the Real Rosewood Foundation got the right house and they have big plans for it. The Real Rosewood Foundation wants to relocate the house to a new city where the descendants from many of the massacre survivors still live. The house will be the focal point of a living history museum to teach people about the massacre, but moving and fixing up an old house is expensive and they need our help.

So we can click the link below to donate, select the museum fund, and their goal is to raise $500,000 so they can pretty much move this house and turn it into a museum. Incredible. I will be matching donations. So if we all donate what we can, it would be truly powerful. Honestly, anything and everything helps. If you can donate, it's greatly appreciated. But honestly, your support and awareness helps tremendously as well. So let's get back to the story.

Hi friends, it's me again. I showed up. Hi. Hi. I hope you're having a wonderful day today. My name is Bailey Sarian and this is the Dark History Podcast. Welcome. How are you? I hope you're doing well. If you're interested in, um, I was gonna say true crime, but this is not about true crime. This is about friggin' history, let me tell you. And if you're a curious cat like myself, then let's go on a journey and, like, learn something new.

Shall we? If you're listening on the podcast, you need to come over to my YouTube and just come check out my hair really quick because I look, look, look, it looks really cute. Look, look, I look like Medusa or a sun. I haven't decided yet. Either way, it's cute. So come check it out and then you can go back to the podcast. Anyway, so hey, it's really hot, you know, it's really hot outside.

And I was thinking about that and I was like, could you imagine living in like the 1900s or something and it just being hot? Like, which I'd be sweating. Okay, I'm always sweating. It's like 60 degrees in the studio right now, but I'm sweating. Anyways, I like being cold is what I'm getting at and I don't like sweating.

So what I was thinking the other day, I was laying in bed and I was like, okay, what did women wear in like the 1900s in the middle of summer? You know, like could you imagine having to wear long sleeves, big ass dress? What if you're bloated? Ugh, like what did they even do? They wore like 18 layers of clothes back then and they must have like really stunk real bad. So naturally, because I'm a very curious person, I was like, what did they do to stay cool? What'd they wear?

So I'm Googling, right? What did women wear in the 1900s? And then it led me to this thing called the shirt waist. And I was like, what is that? What is that? Does it go around your waist? Is it a shirt that goes around the waist? Nay nay. Turns out it's just a blouse. Yeah, I know. Not that exciting. It's a blouse. But here's the thing.

You know how Google works, okay? It doesn't just show me a normal shirtwaist. At this point, the Google algorithm, it knows me so well and it knows that I'm only there to look for murder stories, which I mean, it's not wrong, okay? So it shows me an article about something called triangle shirtwaist fire. And I was like, hold your horses. What? What is this? Shirtwaist fire? What's that?

What if I told you working conditions at this place were so bad it was normal for your boss to lock you inside because he didn't trust you? What if I also told you that your boss didn't even care if there was a fire on the other side of that locked door because money is more important to him than your life?

Well, this, my friends, is the true story of a blouse that lives at the intersection of corporate greed, fashion, and fire. Let me open my dark history book. Okay, babe, here I go. I'm opening it because the Gilded Age, 1900. That's when this whole story started. Now, it's called the Gilded Age because...

Quote, unquote, gilding was basically just adding gold to something. And like writers from the turn of the century thought it was a funny way to talk about how things were changing in the world. I don't really get it, but I mean, it was a thing. So gilded age.

Now, America was moving from more farm-based lifestyles into a more industrial style of living where somebody could get rich and like not just have to inherit money, which was the main way people were making money in the first place by inheriting it.

Lucky, you know. Now, this time in America, it's all about pulling up your bootstraps and making a name for yourself. America was having a moment around the late 1800s. We were out of the Civil War. There were new industries popping up. Clothing, cars, metals, coal, cotton, oil, etc. You get it.

Factories were becoming a popular way to build things and there were all sorts of industries that were booming and growing at like a very rapid pace. New York had just opened the Ellis Island Immigration Center and there were thousands of people immigrating from all over the world into the city every single day. These people, they needed jobs and lucky for them, the industries were booming.

So new waves of immigrant groups, including French and Italian, were coming into New York City to escape persecution in their home countries. So they were willing to work

work for cheap and they were willing to work really long hours. The fashion icons of the area in New York, they were moving northward towards Fifth Avenue and Central Park. Because the upper classes were moving north, Greenwich Village became like mainly commercialized. There were large factories being built starting in the 1900s, one later becoming the home of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory.

Ooh, this is a side note, but I tried to figure out where they came with like triangle shirtwaist company and I couldn't find an answer. I just wanted to know where the triangle came from. Like, was there a triangle? There's no triangle involved. I don't know.

Anyways, moving on. Greenwich Village today, it's like this cool, nice neighborhood no one can afford to live in. Trendy restaurants. There's always like a bar behind a telephone booth. But back then, it was mainly the factory area, industrial. The way these factories would work, once you found some people who you liked, they would recommend people they knew. And the next thing you know, you had like an all Italian or Russian workforce.

And it ended up being like little pockets of immigrants working at these companies all over the city. Lots of immigrants were coming to America in hopes to find success, happiness, and, you know, just have a new start. Among these immigrants were two men named Isaac Harris and Max Blanc. Can I just tell you something? This is a complete side note. Can I confess to you that I thought Isaac was Isaac-ic?

for all of my life until yesterday. I thought it was Isaac. It's Isaac. I'm telling you kids, dream big. Even if you can't say words, you can accomplish things in life. I'm hosting a podcast and I can't even speak English properly. Oh, come on. Dream big, kids. Okay, back to the story. Isaac, not Isaac. Isaac, you're welcome.

Isaac was born in Russia in 1865 and then I guess like not long after him Max was born but like nobody really knows when he was born. He was born in Russia and like that's fine that's all we need to know he was born you know. And when they were both in their 20s they would immigrate to America. Great you know. At this time they didn't know each other and they wouldn't meet until their late 20s. Great okay.

So both of them were part of a huge wave of Russian and Jewish immigrants at the turn of the century looking to make a name for themselves. The easiest place to get a job was working in a factory, right? It's among many other immigrants.

These factories were considered horrible and honestly dangerous to work in. The working conditions were horrible. It was close quarters. It wasn't well ventilated and the hours were long as hell. Factories is honestly like a generous label. They're basically sweatshops.

But many immigrants were struggling to get by in their new country. And the companies were making so much money off the labor that they had no incentive to ever change it. I mean, why would they? It was just the way things were done. Plus, they were immigrants. And this is not what I'm saying, but it's their thought process. No one really cared about immigrants. I'm not saying that, you know. It's just how business was done back then. You get it.

Americans thought of these workers and sweatshops as dirty, dangerous, and filled with like odd foreigners who spoke strange languages. Eye roll. But Max and Isaac would claw their way to the top, defining what we know as the American Dream.

So these two, Max and Isaac, they built themselves up by working in the clothing industry. Now many considered them penniless before they became full-blown entrepreneurs. Max and Isaac, they put their noggins together and teamed up to start their own company, the Triangle Waist Company. Again, I don't know what the triangle's about, but Triangle Waist Company. Later known as the Triangle Shirt Waist Company.

Anyway, they decide to specialize in making what is called the shirtwaist. And you're probably wondering, well, what is a shirtwaist? Again, it's a blouse, but it's a type of clothing for women styled after menswear. Hmm.

At this time, women were wearing super constrictive, uncomfortable clothing. And when the shirt waste was introduced to the market, it was like a way more comfortable, realistic piece of clothing to wear that they could easily take off and wash. Because before, it was a dress. So you'd have to take off the whole dress and like wash it. Now they could just remove their shirt.

It was iconic. It was groundbreaking. Anyway, the clothing was also pretty cheap. It was around $3 a piece. Now, Max and Isaac, they didn't invent the shirtwaist, okay? But they took this design and they just ran with it. They decided to put their money together, invest in their own company where they could focus on producing shirtwaist to sell to the public.

So, in 1902, the men moved their business to the ninth floor of the brand new Ash Building in Greenwich Village, New York. This was a brand new building. It was brand spanking new. Not only that, it was much bigger than most of the sweatshops in the garment district. This building was 10 stories tall, and they would boast that the exterior was fireproof.

because it was all brick and metal, so it made it fireproof. The interior though, you know where like the people are, where they're working at, it was totally fire friendly. It was made up of wooden trim, wooden floors, wooden everything.

Isaac and Max knew Italian and Jewish immigrants needed work when they came to the United States. That being said, they hired all immigrants to help run their business. Now, most of them were women, and some were even as young as 14 years old. I think that's a little much, but okay. Isaac and Max, they opened up their new business, right? Yay!

So they took over the ninth floor and they brought in 260 sewing machine operators. Isaac designed the layout of the sewing floor in a way like where the workers couldn't talk to one another. Less talky, more worky. So picture this. There are 16 rows of long ass tables, okay? On each of these long tables were 15 machines side by side, super cramped.

There was only room for one person to pass by at a time. In other words, it was a tight-ass space, okay? The layout prioritized work over people. So the sewing machine operators, they sat on wooden chairs, at wooden tables, with well-oiled machines and tons of fabric around them. You may see where this is going.

Well, as luck would have it, Isaac and Max's shirtwaist company took off and it made them super rich. I mean, super rich. Money, money, money. Okay, it was raining money for them.

They were living the dream. Both of them would arrive to work in chauffeured cars. Mind you, cars were literally brand new to America. The only people who had cars were the rich. So they were like making a statement. Like, we have arrived. Everybody bow down.

They had money and they were not afraid to flaunt it. The two decided to expand their business and in 1908, they took over the top three floors of the Ash Building. So they have the 8th, 9th, and 10th floor. Great. So more than 1,000 shirtwaists were produced per day and the company made their first million dollars that year. Great. The business was super successful. The men were given the nickname Shirtwaist Kings. Woo! You know? So...

They became hometown heroes, embodying the American dream. They gave a lot of people hope, like, hey, I can make it big too. I mean, they did it, I can do it. Think about it. I mean, these guys with thick accents, they pull up in a Ford Model T, which was just invented. It was big. People were like, oh my God, shirt waist kings, you're just like us. But with all their success,

Came something a little darker. Yeah, I mean, this is called Dark History. Hi, welcome.

But before we get into the funky shit that went down, we're going to have to take a little ad break. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Most of you listening right now are probably multitasking. Yep, while you're listening to me talk, you're probably also driving, cleaning, exercising, or maybe even grocery shopping. But if you're not in some kind of moving vehicle, there's something else you could be doing right now. Getting an auto quote from Progressive Insurance.

It's easy and you can save money by doing it from your phone. Drivers who save by switching to Progressive save nearly $750 on average. And auto customers qualify for an average of seven discounts. Discounts for having multiple vehicles on your policy, being a homeowner and more.

So just like your favorite podcast, Progressive will be with you 24-7, 365 days a year, so you're protected no matter what. Multitask right now. Quote your car insurance at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive.

Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. National average 12-month savings of $744 by new customer surveyed who saved with Progressive between June 2022 and May 2023. Potential savings will vary. Discounts not available in all states and situations. This is an ad by BetterHelp. What are your self-care non-negotiables? The things you know make you feel better even when it's impossible to make time for them.

Like that workout you try to squeeze in between kids' activities, work, and everything else you have going on, and before you know it, it gets pushed to tomorrow. Sound familiar? But it's the moments when you feel like you have no time for yourself when those non-negotiables are more important than ever. Those are the things that keep you strong, healthy, motivated, and prepared to take on everything life demands of you. So why not make therapy one of them?

BetterHelp Online Therapy makes it easy to get started with affordable phone, video, or live chat sessions you can do from anywhere, and the option to message your therapist between sessions if anything comes up. Never skip therapy day with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash darkhistory today to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash darkhistory.

Max was super paranoid about theft. I don't know. And he wanted to like make sure he kept his profit up and people weren't stealing within the company. So what he did was he hired a guy who would stand at the door and they would check the woman's bags every single night as they left to make sure they weren't stealing any clothing. You know, Max even made sure that one of the exit doors in the building on the ninth floor was locked.

That way, no one could sneak out the door with some of the goods. In 1909, a building inspector came through to make sure that the boys were running their business correctly and taking care of their employees. Well, the inspector wrote to the shirtwaist company with their fire concerns because there were some. There was crowding on the top three floors. There were no fire drills. The locked doors were concerning and these things needed to be addressed.

The inspector though, he never heard back or if like any of the updates had happened. The opinion of many factory owners regarding these factories were, quote, let him burn. There are a lot of cattle anyway, end quote. So I think it's safe to say they didn't really care. Also, the building itself was 135 feet high with wooden trim, wooden window frames and floors, which was legal at this time.

it was said that any building taller than 150 feet couldn't have wooden trim, wooden windowsills, or floors. Now, this was the law at the time, and fire codes were way different in the early 1900s than they are now. But since the law didn't prevent it yet, this building was largely wooden. People were working on flammable fabric with machines soaked in oil, where wood was surrounded by wood, surrounded by...

fabric lubed up with sweet, sweet oil. Plus, get this, there was no launches yet that required sprinklers to be in factory buildings, so cool, super cool.

It wasn't a safe place. And everyone who worked there knew it. They knew it wasn't a safe place. It wasn't a secret or a surprise, but that's just the way it was. So the workers within the shirtwaist company, they started to catch on and they were like, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute, everybody.

I think we're being taken advantage of here. So the women within the factory decide to go on strike in November of 1909. It wasn't just the women working in the shirtwaist, whatever it's called. It was also 20,000 women from a bunch of different garment factories from all over the city. So they worked together and are like, hey,

Let's go on strike and demand we get better pay. Reasonable hours because I got this laundry list of shit to do back home and like I can't be working all the time, you know. And not only that, they wanted a safer workplace. Now they even had a badass name. These women protesters were called the Uprising of the 20,000.

They demanded a 20% raise and a 52 hour work week, and they wanted extra pay for any overtime they worked. I mean, it sounds fair, right? As far as a safer workplace goes, the workers just wanted to be able to escape safely in case a fire broke out. Remember that one guy, Max? This shithead over here, he locked the door so no one would steal. And the women were like, "Eh, I don't think that's a great idea."

Fires were common in garment factories all over the city. So I think asking for a little safety, again, not asking too much, right? They did have one fire escape, but it was kind of janky. I mean, the ladder, it didn't extend all the way to the street. So like once you got down to the second floor, you just had to jump from the second floor to the street. Sounds super safe, right? Eye roll.

So the workers, they just wanted to have peace of mind if anything did indeed happen, like that they could get out. Most of the workers stayed on picket lines outside the factory up until the following year. Now, Isaac and Max, they were offended at this strike and they saw it as a personal attack. They were garment workers themselves at one time and they seemed to pull up their bootstraps and become super rich. So what did they do?

They ended up hiring some goons, basically a private police force, aka some muscle to go after the strikers, beat them up and scare them until they pretty much gave up. But in the end, the strike was a huge success. I mean...

Kind of. After Max and Isaac's profits were hit hard, they decided, okay, let's just make peace with these workers and agree to, you know, less hours, higher pay. They didn't care at this point. They needed to start making money again. Now, what they didn't agree to was one major part of their demands, which was giving the workers a safer workplace. Hmm.

They wanted to do the bare minimum to get them to shut up, which was just giving them more money. And, well, what do you think happened next? They're holding me hostage and making me do an ad break right now. Please, I'm blinking twice. Help, Morse code with my eyelashes.

This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Most of you listening right now are probably multitasking. Yep, while you're listening to me talk, you're probably also driving, cleaning, exercising, or maybe even grocery shopping. But if you're not in some kind of moving vehicle, there's something else you could be doing right now. Getting an auto quote from Progressive Insurance.

It's easy and you can save money by doing it from your phone. Drivers who save by switching to Progressive save nearly $750 on average. And auto customers qualify for an average of seven discounts. Discounts for having multiple vehicles on your policy, being a homeowner and more.

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Your cash back really adds up. Saturday, March 25th, 1911. It's around 4.40 p.m. People are ending their work day, ready to clock out. It was the end of the work week and many, well probably all of them, were looking forward to their one day off because it's Saturday and the end of the work week was Saturday. They only got Sundays off.

Anyways, the end of work bell was rung by a guy named Joseph Wexler, who was the goon who searched all the workers' pockets before they left. Well, he was on the eighth floor. And not long after on the eighth floor, someone smelled something burning and noticed flames coming from beneath one of the tables. Boo! Boo!

So one person went to go grab some water. Okay, and they're like, fire, you know? But now, fire was spreading to the rags near and on the table. Whether these were rags to wipe the oily machines or just scraps of clothing, it didn't really matter. This place had so many types of wood and cloth that the fire just spread quickly, passionately.

patterns of clothing were hanging around the room on an overhead wire that was, that's where they would put like their clothing after a day of work. Now all of that was catching on fire. So the hanging patterns caught on fire, burning pieces were falling onto the table and clothing on the table caught on fire. Bitch, fire, fire, fire, fire, fire, fire.

From there, it was just a chain reaction. The smoke grew thick, and if they could, the people would make a run for it. But many were kind of stuck within their work area.

Remember what we said about the ninth floor and like the tight ass spaces? Well, the eighth floor, luckily for them, it wasn't as bad and there were a lot less workers. And bonus, the doors weren't locked, okay? So it wasn't good, but they were lucky enough to get out. Now, one of the elevator operators left the elevator door open as he came in with a bucket of water, okay?

and he's hoping to put out the flames. But when he left the elevator door open, the wind from the draft fueled the flame. People were starting to panic. I mean, yeah, they would. The main way to communicate with the workers on the ninth and 10th floor was by sending a telegraph message.

A telegraph message is kind of like Morse code. They would have to like beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, you know, their message across, beep, beep. So an attempt was made to contact the ninth and 10th floor that there was a freaking fire and they needed to get out like ASAP. And if the telegraph didn't go through, well, they tried to reach them by phone. But at this time, going through phone took longer than the beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, okay? So yeah.

Now, whether they tried to call the 9th floor on the phone is a bit controversial. Some say they did indeed try to call the 9th floor and nobody answered. But some survivors said that no one was trying to call. No one was trying to call them. What we do know for sure is that they definitely called the 10th floor and I guess they just didn't get through to the people on the 9th.

The 10th floor was the top floor of this building. So people were able to escape and like go on the roof, right?

And since the eighth floor was where the fire took place, there was less people working there and it wasn't as crammed, they had enough time to get out. And plus their exits were not locked. So they were able to make their escape. When we think about the story of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, most of the tragedy occurred on the ninth floor where the only way out was the elevator, the fire escape that didn't even freaking touch the floor or just one door.

Remember, there was another door, but it was locked because Bozo thought the employees were gonna steal from him. Many on the ninth floor were trying to get onto the elevator because that was their main hope in getting out. But unfortunately, the elevator, it couldn't hold everyone, and many were already in there who got there first.

The workers on the ninth floor didn't see this coming because the 10th floor got the warning on the telephone. But on the ninth floor, if they were even called at all, they couldn't hear the telephone warning because of the loud machines, the loud work environment. I mean, it was just freaking loud, okay? One sewing machine is loud. Now imagine 250 of them running at the same time. And again, maybe no one even tried to call them.

Either way, they were kind of left to take care of themselves. One of the ninth floor survivors, her name was Rose. She would later say that they freaking never had a chance. She said the fire was everywhere and the flames were coming in through the windows. The only stairway door was locked because God forbid someone stole a $3 shirt, you know? And there was a panicked crowd blocking the elevators.

Some of the workers were even jumping on the table to get off the hot floor. Others tried to hide in, like, the dressing rooms. And many of the workers were trapped in their work aisles by wicker baskets used to hold fabric. And if you're stuck in a fire, you do not want to be trapped next to wicker. It's flammable as this is where it gets fucked.

The site's staircase was blocked by fire and it became so hot inside that some workers fainted from the heat. Now imagine hundreds of workers in a small building trying to find their way out. Everyone is panicking. All the exits are blocked. I mean, what are you supposed to do?

Some decided to like try and get up to the roof and escape on the rooftop. Others decided to like kick out windows and yell for help to the onlookers down below. But down there, they knew what was happening, but there was literally nothing they could do. For many, the decision became jump or burn.

At that moment, some people heard a huge kaboom and we're not really sure what it was, but there was a barrel of oil that was used for the sewing machines that was likely the source of the explosion because it was missing after that. So assumptions were made.

That just fueled the whole damn fire and increased the panic of the people trapped inside. Now, everyone, again, is trying to escape, and there are really only three ways that they can get out. The elevator, the fire escape, or the stairs. You've probably seen the signs in the buildings where they say, like, in case of an emergency, take the stairs.

And yeah, that's because elevators are super slow and not meant to take the people up quickly. But I also think it has to do with electricity. Either way, the problem with the stairs was that the door was pull only. Okay, now this might not sound that traumatic. If you've ever walked into a 7-Eleven and you tried to push on a door that clearly says pull, you know, that awkward moment, it doesn't tend to work when you push and it's a pull. Yeah.

So, get this, if you have a mob of 200 people running from a fire, pushing to get to the exit, it's impossible to pull a door open when everyone's shoving you against the door. Do you get what I'm saying? Anyways, so what I'm getting at is the stairs quickly became not an option.

Now, back then, there were elevator operators who stood in the elevator all day and took people up and down. And the one in this building said he had taken about eight trips during the fire. Now, the first few were to the eighth and to the tenth floors, but the rest were to the ninth floor. On his first trip to the ninth floor, he was greeted with just this mob of workers desperate to get on.

He crammed as many as he could and he took them down and he kept doing this, you know, up and down, up and down. And by his third trip, people were standing on the windowsills getting ready to jump out. And by his last trip, he was in such a rush that he forgot to close the gate to the elevator because back then elevators had a manual gate you had to like pull shut. Because the gate was left open, wind was coming in from the elevator shaft, which was just adding...

Again, more fuel to the fire. And also, people were jumping from the ninth floor on top of the elevator as it went down, basically breaking it, leaving the elevator unusable.

As for the fire escape, like I mentioned earlier, it didn't even go all the way to the ground. So people were taking the fire escape down and then from there, they would have to go back into the building and take the stairs to get down like to the floor and get out safely. And people were doing this until the fire escape collapsed from the weight of everyone trying to use it at once.

17-year-old Katie Weiner even grabbed the cable from the elevator door and rode it down, landing on the heads of her fellow workers. She said her friend saved her life by making sure she landed safely. The same couldn't be said for her sister, Rosie, who sadly died in the fire.

So yeah, it was pretty grim and there weren't enough escape options and the ones that were available just quickly fell apart. It was obviously total chaos, okay? The building itself, it wasn't meant to handle this level of an emergency and the people weren't prepared to deal with it either.

But let's take a look at it from a different angle because things were happening from the street too. People tried to help. The fire department came. There was a lot going on on the streets. So let's rewind when the fire was just starting out at around 4.40 p.m. So many were gathering outside when people heard the building alarms going off.

A patrolman who happened to be in the area ran into the building only to find narrow staircases and locked doors. He was able to open one of the doors on the sixth floor where he just found a room of terrified women behind it. He remembered the heat being absolutely unbearable. A police officer in the area remembered seeing dozens of girls hanging from the ledges and others jumping from the windows with their dresses on fire.

firefighters showed up to the scene and set up life nets where like those stuck in the building could jump out out of the window and they could be caught on the street in one of these nets. Unfortunately, the life nets, they weren't even strong enough to hold those who were coming down. Some of them completely broke through. Sorry.

and climbing the building wasn't an option for the firefighters either. Their ladders only reached to the sixth floor, and they couldn't put out a fire that was like three stories above them.

Some people witnessed victims stuck on the ninth floor, kissing before they fell to their death. A local newspaper reporter remembered these same girls from just a year before during their strike, demanding better working conditions and more safety precautions in the shops. And now, there he was looking at those same girls' bodies, dead. We don't really know how the fire started, honestly. They think it could have been a cigarette, but...

but it doesn't really matter, okay? The place was ready to burst into flames at any moment. The issue wasn't with one person. It was a structural issue and the workers fricking knew it, okay? Which brings us back to those shitty bosses. Oh, we didn't forget about you, Max and Isaac. What were they doing during all of this? Where the hell were they? Max and Isaac were inside the building when the fire started, but they were on the 10th floor.

Lucky them. They were in their offices when they were informed that there was a fire, okay? So they rushed to the roof and people in the building next door saw that they needed help 'cause they see smoke and flames and like people on the roof.

So the people in the building next door, they laid the ladders across like a bridge from one roof to another to help Max and Isaac get across. Now they escaped to safety while most of their workers were freaking back in the building still struggling to get out. You assholes. Oh man.

The fire was controlled in about 18 minutes and was completely over in 30 minutes. But I'm sure those 18 minutes felt like hours to those who were stuck inside. Those who were unharmed went home in complete shock and were horrified about their traumatic experience and what they just saw. Many were playing the awful encounter over and over in their heads, suffering from some serious PTSD.

I mean, they didn't have a name for it back then, but that's what it was and what we know it as. After the fire was contained, emergency officials had to figure out what to do about the bodies, okay? So coffins were called, but they needed more than 100, and the local morgue, they didn't have enough. The pier nearby was turned into a temporary morgue until they could move the bodies to the local morgue or stay there until they could be identified by the families.

Now this area on the pier, it would later become known as Misery Lane. Days later, the city stood in solidarity with the workers who died in the fire, and over 100,000 people would hold a vigil march in memory of the fallen. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Most of you listening right now are probably multitasking.

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Oh, we're back. So the good news is that after the fire, Isaac and Max were met with harsh punishments and were locked up forever. Laws were changed and everything was great. Just kidding, because this is dark history. It's not light history. You know, one could hope though, you know? But get this. So almost immediately after the fire, Max and Isaac realized that this whole fire situation was,

It didn't look good for them or their reputation. Instead of being upset or like mourning the loss of their workers and just caring that people died, yeah? They only seemed to care about their business and how this whole thing looked for them and only them. Welcome to America.

So they thought to themselves, how can we fix this? How can we start making money again? You know? So they decided to run advertisements in the New York Times defending themselves, saying that they had done everything they could and that they swear they were following the fire codes. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know?

They were just trying to reestablish their greatness as the shirtwaist kings. I freaking roll. Luckily, the general public saw right through them and there was a huge outrage over their little PR stunt. Many were demanding that they be held responsible for all of the deaths and the fire because the whole thing could have been prevented, you know? Both Max and Isaac were indicted on seven counts of manslaughter.

Why just seven and why just manslaughter? Girl, I don't know. Because white men, I guess, and profits, I really don't know. But the main evidence brought forth in the trial surrounded the locked door on the ninth floor, even though there were a bunch of other problems. Now this is what they seem to focus on the most, the locked door. Basically, the idea was that if the door wasn't locked, 146 lives could have been saved.

Three weeks after the trial, the jury acquitted both of them. The jury went on to say that the prosecutor had not properly proved that either of the men knew about the locked door, even though Max locked it. Okay. For good reason. Again, the public was outraged, but there wasn't much else that people could do. I mean, the jury made their call. Bullshit.

Not long after the trial, the men moved the company into a new location and it wasn't even far from the old building. And in 1913, get this, this is great. Max was taken to court again for having an unsafe working conditions in the new and improved Shirtwaist Company building. Now the main charge was, get this, over the fact that one of the exits was locked. Not just normally locked though.

Nay, nay. It was locked with a chain. Very Lisa Frank of him. Oh, what? Do you know about Lisa Frank working conditions? Girl, that's a story. That's a story. Anywho. So he obviously didn't learn a damn thing. And guess what? He was fined just $20. $20 freaking dollars. Not only that, the judge apologized to Max for having to fine him at all. He just, he felt so bad. It gets worse though.

There were also civil lawsuits filed against Max for the people who died, and the victim's family won some money, which was like $75 for each person that died. And that's only if the families could even afford to sue, which many of them couldn't.

So this is like, you know, big slap in the face. But for Max and Isaac, they were happy because they had insurance and they were able to collect $445 in insurance money for each worker that died.

So they actually profited off of these deaths. The labor movement was outraged and people were calling for change, but nobody knew who to point the finger at to fix things. In Manhattan, there were over 50,000 buildings, but there were only 47 building inspectors for the whole city.

Now, I think it's pretty obvious to us that 47 building inspectors can't get to all of these places and make sure to address any concerns. Many of the buildings in the city didn't even have fire escapes, and most of the doors in the factories were a pull, not a push.

Also, there should be fire drills, but this wasn't required by law, nor did anybody know who to ask to get this law set in place. The labor movement ended up becoming more energized after the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire, which led to New York and other progressive states establishing new standards and rules for the workplace.

Now, three months after the fire, the Factory Investigating Commission was formed in New York, and they helped create new laws on fire safety, factory inspections, sanitation, and employment rules in the workplace.

Unfortunately, it took about 25 years for the federal government to follow suit. Two years after the fire and the Ash Building, they finally got around to fixing up all those things that needed to be fixed, like putting in sprinklers. They also started doing fire drills, and doors had to remain unlocked. You probably see a lot of these signs in buildings, and sadly, a lot of them came as a result of this tragedy.

Even though Max and Isaac got to live their lives as sleazy bosses, there was some positive change to come out of this. The Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition was formed in 2008 and was formed to encourage and set up nationwide activities commemorating the 100 year anniversary of the fire. The coalition launched an effort to create a permanent public art memorial for the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire at the site of the 1911 fire in Lower Manhattan.

On December 22nd, 2015, the governor of New York announced that like a bunch of money was going to be put towards building a memorial around the building, as well as a list of names of the victims and telling the story of the fire. And this memorial is being built right now as we speak.

and it's set for a grand opening next year in 2022. When it opens, it will be the first labor memorial in Manhattan, and the story of the fire will be told on it in English, Italian, and Yiddish, the languages of the workers. Now today, the former Ash Building is part of NYU, where students to this day claim to see ghosts of the victims and some ghosts kissing and leaping to their deaths from the windows.

Some people say that they hear screams at odd times of the night. Others hear footsteps running down the stairs and doorknobs jiggling by themselves. Now, this is a story we've heard before with different results. Someone in power just wants more power and more money and they do not care who they have to step on to get there.

Now these people would have stayed working in those shitty conditions for God knows how long until someone at some factory burned down the whole place and died. The real question here is why is it so hard to do the right thing? Especially when people were saying it from the start.

And Max and Isaac started at the bottom. I mean, they should have known, or worse, they did know that their actions were awful. But you know, they're rich, so fuck us, right? LOL.

When the Triangle Shirtwaist factory workers went on strike, they were willing to put their own safety on the line in pursuit of a better life and happiness in a new country where they didn't even speak the language. And just a couple hours earlier, the building was full of life and people, and now it was reduced to just a shell of itself with nothing inside but ashes. But it is called the Ash Building, so it is very fitting that it was dark.

If you remember, the outside was fireproof. And to this day, the outside is still there. So way to go, I guess. The outside was protected. But the part where like the people were at, the part that like mattered, yeah, that was a death trap.

And as for the shirtwaist, its own legacy won't be the fact that it was revolutionary for women's clothing. Because now, I mean, if you Google it, you can't go anywhere without finding details about the fire. I mean, who's Googling shirtwaist though besides me at two in the morning?

"Well, you might be now." The changes that came after the fire were because of this tragedy, but the factory workers had voiced concerns for these changes while they were protesting, and they had the power while they were protesting. It's not their fault that their owners were shitty cheapskates, but I guess the point I'm trying to make here is don't be afraid to keep going. Keep protesting. Get everything you ask for and prioritize your health.

Stand up for what is right. I mean, don't let anyone take advantage of you. Meanwhile, your boss, yeah, your boss is probably a shithead. What? I mean, the boss is kind of always a shithead. That's the moral of the story here. So go out in the street and protest because we ain't gonna take this shit any longer. We're not gonna take it. No, the rest of the soul. Me close the book cause I'm done.

Wasn't that cute? I just made that up right now. I should do karaoke. Anyways, I want to know your guys' thoughts. Let's continue this conversation over on social media by using the hashtag dark history. Have you heard of this story before? I would love to know. I never heard of it. That's why I'm talking about it. I found it fascinating. Tragic, but fascinating. I'm pretty morbid. I needed to stop. Anyways.

Join me over on my YouTube where you can watch these episodes on Thursday after the podcast airs and also catch my murder mystery makeup, which drops on Mondays. Thank you for hanging out with me today. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day. You make good choices and I'll be talking to you next week. Bye.

Dark History is an Audioboom original. This podcast is executive produced by me, Bailey Sarian, Chelsea Durgan from Slash Management, and Fanny Baudry from Wheelhouse DNA.

Producer, Lexi Kiven, Daryl Christon, and Spencer Strasmore. Research provided by Tisha Dunstan and Jed Bookout. Writers, Jed Bookout, Michael Oberst, Joey Scavuzzo, and me, Bailey Sarian. A big thank you to our historical consultants, Edwidge Gunta, co-editor of "The Fourth Coming of Talking to the Girls: Intimate and Political Essays on the Triangle Fire."

Marianne Trasiotti and the Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition. And I'm your host, Princess of the Dark or whatever, Bailey Sarian.