[2A] Bodies / General Analysis
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These photos are titled, according to the New Deal Network Gallery, "Triangle Fire", "Triangle Fire", and "Damaged Fire Escape." The first two are uninformative and the last is probably a mistake. Looking closely at their content, however, it seems possible to fit these photos into a rough chronology based on the known sequence of events on the afternoon of the fire.
The fire began at 4:30 pm on Saturday 25 March, 1911, on the 8th floor of the Triangle Building and quickly spread to the 9th and 10th; the lower floors were unaffected. Due to the lack of fire escapes and the employers' practise of locking doors from the outside, many women were trapped in the upper floors without any means of escape but the window. Despite the shouts of the crowd below not to jump, many girls made the choice to leap rather than be burnt. Poignant and horrifying eye-witness accounts tell of girls jumping arm in arm, and of a man and a women kissing one another before falling to their deaths. Five girls had already jumped before the firefighters arrived on the scene. The firefighters could do little anyway - their ladders did not reach as high as the 8th floor, their nets and blankets broke under the weight of the falling girls.
The first photo, "Triangle Fire", shows what are clearly the bodies of at least three women on the pavement. Their bodies are awkwardly positioned, as though they lie as they have fallen or have been hastily dragged to the side; towards the bottom of the photo is a pool of dark liquid, quite possibly blood - accounts recall that the streets were literally red with it. The scene is clearly horrifying, yet the men standing beside the bodies (one in uniform, a policeman or a firefighter) seem oblivious to the presence of the corpses that are practically under their feet - only one man, a few feet away, turns to look at the bodies. Instead the gazes of the men are turned upwards, probably towards the sight of more girls preparing to jump or at the futile efforts of the firefighters on their ladders.
In the next photo, "Triangle Fire", two officials are bent over two bodies on the ground, trying to turn or lift them. Other men, some in uniform and others not, stand by and watch. In all probability this was taken after the fire ended at 5pm, when bodies began to be transported to the morgue.
The third photo is titled "Damaged Fire Escape" - yet it probably does not show anything of the sort. The photo shows a textured ground surface identical to that seen in the previous two photos: the industrial glass pavements, I would argue, rather than a fire escape. The focus of the photo is the gaping hole in that pavement - it is known that the bodies of some girls or groups of girls crashed with enough force to break through the glass pavements and into the basements below. A photo of a similar pavement hole with policemen standing around it can be seen in the article The Murder of the Shirt Waist Makers in New York City, captioned as "Plunged Through Pavement." [Louis Duchez, 1911, p. 668] In all likelihood this photo was taken hours or days after the fire, when the bodies had been taken away, and shows a pavement rather than a fire escape.