Talk:Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire

section moved

(moved from the main article) "not to be mean but i still need more information about this event...."

• Seems ok to include it —Dogears (talk • contribs)

suggested reading

Suggested Reading:

David von Drehle's Triangle: The Fire that Changed America is a readable account.   -- Anna Kucsma 16:47, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

"All but one of the victims..."

There's a line several paragraphs in that reads:

All except one of the victims would be found dead on the ninth floor.

I've added a "citation needed" to this line, as I was under the impression that all those killed had been on the ninth floor. Then again, that doesn't mean that I'm not wrong, either. Furthermore, even if it does turn out that this statement is indeed correct, is should be rewritten. As it stands, it suggests that all (but one, of course) of the victims were found on the 9th floor; there is no wat this could be the case if, as was the case, peope jumped to their deaths from the ninth floor.

If anyone has a reference (most of my books are currently in storage), please add it and/or rewrite the sentance.  — AnnaKucsma   (Talk to me!) 15:11, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

This has since been modified to read:

All except one of the victims would be found dead inside the building. The survivor (Hayman Meshel) was found in the basement immersed in water up to his neck.

Which is not any better, really, than the previous version. The specifics of the exception (one Hayman Meshel, apparently) adds to the paragraph, but there still needs to be a reference. Probably a rewrite, too.  — AnnaKucsma   (Talk to me!) 18:43, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Several of the victims jumped from windows and died when they hit the pavement. These victims were not found dead in the building.66.10.94.35 (talk) 20:02, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Image dates

Two of the images in the article have weird dates in their details:

• Image:Triangle Factory fire 002.jpg claims to be from March 15, 1923; did the bodies really lie there for a few years?
• Image:Triangle Factory fire 004.jpg claims to be from March 25, 2006, but given the quality, more likely to be a contemporaneous image?

they also suck dick good. DMacks 02:04, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree thet Image:Triangle Factory fire 004.jpg almost certainly wasn't taken in 2006. Since the fire, the building was bought by NYU and turned into classrooms; given the damage, the picture probably would have been taken well before then. Furthermore, given the crowd formation, it was probably taken the day of the fire.  — AnnaKucsma   (Talk to me!) 13:32, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Both of those were the result of vandalism on commons. I have reverted the vandalism and the dates are now correct. --rogerd 16:38, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Missing images

The images are gone, without a trace? Things like Image:Triangle Factory fire 004.jpg used to exist, but now it's gone and not even an entry in its Deletion Log. DMacks 17:42, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Ahah, they were Commons images and deleted after discussion there. I think we could make a case for Fair Use of at least one of the images being acceptible as Wikipedia:Non-free content, per it being an iconic image of an historically important event that cannot be recreated. We don't know the full source info, but we know some of it and in particular we know the date (at worst to within a day or so) based on the content of the image (I can't believe that was such an apparent sticking-point in the Commons discussion). Maybe even could claim them as Wikipedia:Public domain, given they were clearly taken in 1911, and hence before 1923. Or is the problem that though the image might be PD, the chain of custody might not be (I don't know how copyright of an image is when it's published in a copyrighted collection)…do we need to find an "original" image and scan/photograph/etc it ourselves? DMacks 18:09, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Strange that they were talking about a lack of evidence that it was taken before 1923. If I remember the picture correctly, it clearly showed the aftermath of the fire, and people in c. 1911 dress. (I mean really, what did they do? Stage another fire?) Mere lack of external evidence doesn't mean there's no evidence at all.  — AnnaKucsma  Speak! 14:30, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Wages?

"Some of the women were as young as twelve or thirteen and worked fourteen-hour shifts during a 60-hour to 72-hour workweek, sewing clothes for a wage of $7.00 per week (approximately $150 per week in 2006 dollars), which was less than 10% of the average wage level at the time."

This sentence strikes me as odd somehow. If $7 per week back then is $150 per week in 2006 dollars, and if this was less than 10% of the average wage level, doesn't this imply that the average wage level was more than $70 per week back then, or $1500 per week in 2006 dollars? So the average wage level in 1911 was the equivalent of around $75,000 in today's dollars? That seems pretty unlikely to me. There is no source, but I have no real idea of what part of this makes no sense so I didn't fix anything... just thought I would raise the question here.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 12:05, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Since you brought this up, I started looking at this. I have found a citation for how much an average worker was paid at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. From Link to History Matters Interview

"My own wages when I got to the Triangle Shirtwaist Company was a dollar and a half a week. And by the time I left during the shirtwaist workers strike in 1909 I had worked myself up to six dollars....The operators, their average wage, as I recall - because two of my sisters worked there - they averaged around six, seven dollars a week. If you were very fast - because they worked piece work - if you were very fast and nothing happened to your machine, no breakage or anything, you could make around ten dollars a week. But most of them, as I remember - and I do remember them very well - they averaged about seven dollars a week. Now the collars are the skilled men in the trade. Twelve dollars was the maximum."

So now at least we can substantiate the wage information. The next thing that we need to do is find out how much this wage would be in adjusted dollars and how much the average wage level was at the time. Remember (talk) 14:10, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

According to this converter, which may or may not be correct, $7 in 1911 is worth $153.22 in 2007 when pegged against the Consumer Price Index. -Hit bull, win steak^(Moo!) 21:39, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

So now it seems that the $7 number is more or less reasonable, and the $150 in 2006 dollars is more or less reasonable. So this leaves the bit about "which was less than 10% of the average wage level at the time" as being questionable. What were average wage levels in 1911? (I think the question is a bit odd, wages for whom, but I guess the idea is to compare to overall earnings to illustrate that this was a relatively low-paying occupation).--Jimbo Wales (talk) 07:05, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Unrelated Reading

How is this link related?

"A Sabbath Rose" - The story of Rosie Goldstein, a young girl who had the courage to refuse to work on the Sabbath. By Goldy Rosenberg —Preceding unsigned comment added by Aprusso (talk • contribs) 00:35, 16 January 2009 (UTC)

The story is that she worked in the building and would have died in the fire if she had not missed worked that day.66.10.94.35 (talk) 19:50, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Death toll

Slow-motion long-term changing of death count, usually between 146 and 148. We have cited refs that count 141, 146, 148, and 159. Let's make an editorial decision here. 141 seems to be described as immediate or at-the-scene, whereas higher numbers include hospitalized victims. 146 is from various websites and written works, 148 is from a newspaper at the time. 148 is WP:V from WP:RS: Tribune newspaper report the next day. It seems likely that several would die shortly after the event or not yet be fully accounted, so erring with 148 rather than 146 makes sense to me. However, I do not know the actual original or most authoritative source of the 146 number to compare the date and authoritativeness of its report. The 159 is my count of the of names of deceased on a website that provides a cite (drawn from many sources) for each name listed, so this could be the ultimate tally, but I have not seen that value listed anywhere else, so I'd be more comfortable with the more WP:V 140somethings, assuming there's not just a circular or echo-chamber effect there. DMacks (talk) 04:10, 3 March 2009 (UTC)

At least nine references I have found put the death toll at 146. I've put five of them in the article. The Tribune, which wasn't a local paper and might have made a mistake, is basically the only source that says 148. So why are we using 148 again? --NellieBly (talk) 03:59, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

And now that I look at it, the Tribune number is blatantly completely unreliable. The article in question was published the day after the fire; many of the victims hadn't even died by that point, and the fire department hadn't even counted all the bodies! I'm removing the 148 reference completely: reliable sources including the FDNY, the Labor Department, two published books, the New York Times, the City of New York, two biographies of notable related individuals (Francis Perkins and Alfred Smith), and even the government of Canada (!) give the count as 146. The only benefit of the Tribune's account is to show that newspapers aren't always reliable. --NellieBly (talk) 18:45, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Building Plaque and geotag (request to a New Yorker or visitor)

When one enters the text "Greene Street and Washington Place, New York City, NY" into http://maps.google.com, the street view can give a person a close-up view of the building as it looks today. There appears to be a plaque on the building's corner, readable from the sidewalk on the first floor. Could someone in New York verify the plaque's existence and take a picture of it for this article? Also, a geo-tag of the building's Long/Lat coordinates would allow us to place a wiki article link on maps.google.com. Tsarevna (talk) 09:15, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

The address and Long/Lat coordinates are:

"23-29 Washington Place New York New York, NY, US

Postal Code: 10003 Latitude (N/S): 40.729811 Longitude (E/W): -73.995424"

There are two plaques. One is a

"Historical marker raised by: [New York Landmarks Preservation Foundation]"

and

"There is an adjoining marker from 1991 from the National Parks Service designating it as a national landmark."

The quotations above are from http://www.markeroni.com/catalog/display.php?code=NY_NHS_240 which specifies "It's okay to use our data for non-commercial purposes."

66.10.94.35 (talk) 20:00, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Largest industrial disaster?

"..was one of the largest industrial disaster in the history of the city of New York..".
Wasn't it the largest? was there a larger industrial disaster in NYC? Thanks Kvsh5 (talk) 16:36, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Copy editing

I've answered the call to copy edit this, but I've also taken the von Drehle book out of the library and I've added a number of citations from that. There are some things in the article, though, that seem to be just thrown in there with no reference to reliable sources (such as the suggestion of arson, which the evidence doesn't support - no matter how shady the owners appeared at the time, would they really burn down the place right when their own children were paying a scheduled visit?). I've also tried to cut down on calling the victims "women"; most of them were women but almost thirty were men, and they died in the same conditions as the women. Please give it a look and see what you think. --NellieBly (talk) 03:59, 20 December 2009 (UTC)