Triangle Shirtwaist Fire

NEW YORK, March 25, 1911 (UP) - I was walking through Washington Square when a puff of smoke issuing from the factory building caught my eye. I reached the building before the alarm was turned in. I saw every feature of the tragedy visible from outside the building. I learned a new sound - a horrible sound. It was the thud made by a speeding, living body on a stone walk.

New York, March 25, 1911 (UP) - The most remarkable rescue in the history of the New York fire department was made in the building just before 9 o'clock. A deputy chief while wading through the water in the cellar heard from groans coming from the sub-cellar in the neighborhood of the freight elevator. Hurriedly summoning a number of men with lanterns, he lowered himself into the water. There, submerged, with only his head above the water, but clinging with a death grip to the cable of the elevator, he found Hyman Meshel, 21, of 332 E. Fifteenth street. The youth was hurriedly carried into the street where an ambulance surgeon forced a stimulant down his throat and brought him back to consciousness.

NEW YORK, March 26, 1911 (UP) - One hundred and forty one bodies had been taken to the morgue at 12:45 this morning and there had been seven deaths in the hospitals. The number injured in the hospital at this hour was twenty-five.

NEW YORK, March 27, 1911 (UP) - What New York officials are saying about the Triangle Shirtwaist Co. fire:

NEW YORK, March 27, 1911 (UP) -- The total number of fatalities as a result of the fire has been placed at 142. Up to this morning all had identified but 53. Today nineteen more have been identified as follows:

NEW YORK, March 27, 1911 (UP) -- The counting and identifying of the dead in the Washington Square fire of Saturday evening, causing a death total that has now amounted to 143, still continued today as investigation to fix the blame for the holocaust and plans to prevent a repetition of it got under way.

NEW YORK, March 27, 1911 (UP) - Facing the fact that there are not less than 150 loft buildings in Manhattan alone which are veritable fire traps, and that a horror exceeding that of Saturday afternoon, which cost 142 lives, when the plant of the Triangle Waist Company was destroyed, is possible at any time, immediate planes to remedy this situation were set on foot to-day. At the same time the district attorney's and coroner's offices started an inquiry to place the blame for Saturday's holocaust.