This book covers the deadly fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York. On March 25, 1911. At the end of the work day, as people were getting ready to leave, a fire was discovered to have broken out on the 8th Floor of the Asche Building. (This building is still standing, and has since been renamed the Brown Building.) The fire consumed the 8th, 9th, and 10th floors of the building, where the factory was located. There were about 500 people employed with this company, though not all were present at the time of the fire. A lot of the employees were women, and a lot of those women were Jewish and Italian immigrants. The fire marshal determined the fire was caused by someone smoking inside the cutting room, and throwing a still lit cigarette into a bin of scrap fabric. (There is some speculation that it was deliberate for insurance purposes, as shirtwaists were going out of style. There is also speculation that it could have been caused by the hot motors of the sewing machines.)

There are some striking things that stood out to me. The first is that someone on the street pulled a fire alarm box to alert the fire department. I keep forgetting that fire boxes were a thing, because I was born in the 911 era and I take that for granted, I suppose. The owners of the building had many of the doors locked, so that workers could be herded through a small exit to be searched for stolen fabric scraps. I understand that people steal from work, but in hindsight that was such an unsafe and horrible thing to do. High rise building were a thing, but ladders on fire trucks couldn't reach higher than the 7th floor, which is not where the fire was. It seems like that would be a thing that fire departments and building owners would have thought about? The fact that the builders were allowed to throw up a cheap, rickety, tiny fire escape that was essentially useless instead of a third stairwell exit was gross.

123 women and girls and 23 men died in this fire. Many were suffocated. Many were burned, charred beyond recognition. Some died as a result of jumping out of the windows in an attempt to escape the flames. I cannot imagine having to make the decision to jump from 8-10 floors up or die in the flames. What a horrible way to die. Two of the girls were only 14 years old. Isaac Harris and Max Blanck, the owners of the company, were brought up on manslaughter charges, to no avail. (Eventually, they were held responsible in a civil suit.) In fact, they cashed in pretty big on the insurance payoff. (Later on, Max was arrested and fined for locking the doors during work hours at another company.) Other people should have been held responsible- the building owner, for one. The politicians who allowed stuff like this to go on because people slid money into their hands. The whole thing was just gross and could have been avoided, or at least cost way less lives.

Another thing this book covered was the working conditions for people, especially women, during this time. It talks about strikes and the creation of labor unions, which was very interesting to me. It also mentioned the conditions of the tenement buildings that these people often lived in, and that is a whole other disgusting issue. Overall, this was a very good book.