Fire Consumes 146 Young Women, 7 Remain Unidentified

On March 25th, in the year 1911 a fire consumed 3 floors of a New York sewing factory in a mere 30 minutes.  Even though fire rescue arrived within minutes, limited resources, elevators, and minimal fire escapes insured nothing could be done to keep scores of girls from leaping to their death to fall some 80 feet, attempting to escape the fire.

One onlooker describes the scene in utterly unimaginable phrases, "thud, dead, thud, dead, thud, dead, thud, dead...the first 10 shocking, but to look up and see scores more that too must somehow come down...the sound a body makes upon striking the concrete before becoming a pile of lifeless bone, flesh and clothes..."  Worse still is the fact that some of them didn't even make it to the ground, and were instead impaled upon the metal fence that surrounded the building.  All this because of cramped unsafe working conditions, and doors locked to keep union organizers out of the factory.

I only just learned of this event in a Human Rights class I am taking, and would like to begin a movement or process to possibly identify those 7 girls that yet remain unidentified.  This incident is more commonly known as the "Triangle Waist Factory Fire":

This event was the beginning of of labor standards we have today.  It would seem that enlightenment comes only from death and suffering.