Final Victims of the Triangle shirtwaist factory fire of 1911 identified.

[MattSh]

And so, for the first time, at the centennial commemoration of the fire on March 25 outside the building in Greenwich Village where the Triangle Waist Company occupied the eighth, ninth and 10th floors, the names of all 146 dead will finally be read.

The fire was a wrenching event in New York’s history, one that had a profound influence on building codes, labor laws, politics and the beginning of the New Deal two decades later.

Among the most anguishing aspects was the memory of the more than 50 young immigrant women and men who were forced to leap from the high floors to escape the inferno. However, many of the 146 victims — 129 women and 17 men — burned to death in the loft building, at Washington Place and Greene Street, and had no telltale jewelry or clothing to help identify them.

The day the six unidentified victims were buried was the culmination of the city’s outpouring of grief; hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers turned out in a driving rain for a symbolic funeral procession sponsored by labor unions and other organizations, while hundreds of thousands more watched from the sidewalks.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/21/nyregion/21triangle.html

[malaise]

1. Excellent post

Excellent timing. Maybe you should send this to Rachel, Ed et al since lack of safe workplaces was a big part of the rise of unions.

[MattSh]

2. Great idea!

Sent email to Rachel and Ed . Thanks for the suggestion.

Not sure who else would be good candidates, since I've been outside the US for a while.

[no_hypocrisy]

3. I attended the 90th Commemoration.

Maybe 30 people in front a building now part of NYU. The cobblestones are still in the street where their bodies hit and then were laid out. A wreath on the side of the building. The Workers Circle had a ceremony and flowers were laid on the sidewalk.

We remembered.

[cordelia]

4. Rec