Today in labor history Nov 26, 6 young women burn to death and 19 more die

[Omaha Steve]

November 26

Six young women burn to death and 19 more die when they leap from the fourth-story windows of a blazing factory in Newark, N.J. The floors and stairs were wooden; the only door from which the women could flee was locked - 1910

November 26, 1912 - Minnesota native Eric Sevareid, who became a leading broadcast journalist, was born. As a student at the University of Minnesota, he reported on the landmark 1934 Teamsters' strike.

[LostinVA]

1. What's the first event?

It sounds very similar to the Triangle Shirtwaist, just a much smaller death poll.

[Gormy Cuss]

2. The 1910 Newark fire

1910 Newark Factory Fire
by Mary Alden Hopkins
published April 1911 McClure's Magazine" Volume 36, Number 6

ON Saturday, November 26, 1910, between nine and ten in the morning, a Newark factory, standing at the corner of Orange and High streets, caught fire. The building was clear from other buildings on all four sides; there was a fire-engine across the street, and a truck and ladder around the corner. Yet six girls were burned to death, and nineteen died as a result of leaping to the pavement from the fourth-story windows.

In order to understand how this catastrophe was possible, it is necessary to know the history of the building. This history is significant because it is the history of thousands of buildings all over the country, which, erected for one purpose, have been altered to serve for another purpose in the least immediately expensive manner....

http://www.virtualnewarknj.com/histories/factoryfire01.htm