~dayI was only twenty years old on March 25th, 1911.
The day of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire.
My name is Cecelia Walker and I lived on 29 Stanton St. in New York, New York.
Me, my mother, my father and my older brother Louis immigrated to America the year I turned sixteen after the political conflicts and famine drove us from Ireland. We lived in a very small and drafty three room apartment and paid rent to a stringy-haired, sour-faced woman with a prejudice against all the immigrants in her tenement.
My father had been employed at the livery down the street and my brother worked his fingers to the bone for hours on end in a sweatshop. He often brought his work home and sewed by candlelight just to bring in extra money for our family. My mother had found work almost immediately doing what she had done all her life back in Ireland, washing clothes. Once a week she would take the trolley uptown to her client's homes to fetch their laundry and one more time to return it to them freshly pressed and folded. Our little main room was all too often stretched corner to corner with twine laden with drying clothes. So many fine fabrics, all needing special care.
I laugh as I remember all too well when my father would come home on such a day and my mother would have a conniption worrying about him brushing against one of the items. She would send him straight out into the hall and down to the lavatory which we shared with all the other tenants, to scrub himself thouroughly with a bar of lye soap.
As for me, I had been employed at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory since I was seventeen. I started off as a lowly basic seamstress making barely a dollar an hour. Then I was promoted to finisher and finally an examiner being paid eight dollars an hour, a bit more than the average in those days, to check the work of others.
I truly disliked my job there though I had formed friendships with many of the girls. I worked nine to thirteen hour days with only a half and hour for lunch. Our time was spent hovering over heavy, dangerous machines operated by foot pedals, being paid by the piece not by the finished product. Injuries were not uncommon. The rooms themselves were dirty, poorly lit, and not well ventilated. The buildings trapped heat during the summer months and released it in the winter. We were not allowed to roll up our sleeves past our forearms and we were never allowed to even consider unbuttoning a single button on our blouses. Our backs ached and our swollen, reddened eyes throbbed, we must have looked so hideous.
Material was piled high in baskets and hanging from the ceiling all through the crowded aisles between the machines, leaving very little room to move even if we were allowed. Many of the doors were locked as a precaution as many of the foremen seemed to think that we would try to steal from them.
The bosses themselves were unbearably strict, not allowing any of the girls to speak with one another. I had to be careful because even one whispered sentence could be overheard by a watchful foreman or forelady and I could be fired instantly. They would even sneak up behind us and listen for any snatches of conversation. And when we went to use the lavatory, if we were there longer than deemed necessary we were threatened with half a day's pay or even worse, sent home for the day and received no pay at all. We were machines ourselves to them it seemed, we weren't recognized as human. We were easily replaceable.
I remember I didn't have that much of a life outside of the factory, by the time the whistle blew and I had walked home through the darkened streets, there was little left for a young woman to do. I do remember a particular friendship I formed with a Jewish boy who lived in the apartment directly down the hall from mine. He was painfully shy in the beginning and I barely remember two words that he spoke together during those first few months. It was mostly sideways glances at eachother as we passed in the hall and tentative smiles that wistfully wished for something more.
It was nearly a year before he finally got up the courage to ask me if he could walk me home from work at nights, since that was the only time he could see me. I remember even now how nervous he was as he stuttered helplessly in his foreign accent and broken English, shifting between raking his fingers through his hair and twisting them together in knots behind his back. I could tell he was blushing under his lightly tanned, olive colored skin and I remember feeling terribly embarrassed for him.
Smiling broadly I took his trembling hand boldly in my own and looked into his russet-colored eyes. I paused for a moment and then nodded. His features partially hidden in the dark shadows of the poorly lit hallway melted into a puddle of relief, his mouth tipping into a sweet smile as his eyes skittered away shyly and then slowly came back to my face. He was my first boyfriend. His name was Abraham Robinowitz.
It wasn't until days later and I was arriving at work that we made the hilarious discovery that he worked at the Triangle as well. I saw his familiar face behind a large bundle of material that he was struggling to lug onto the cargo elevator. I called his name and he glanced up sharply. Our eyes met and we grinned at eachother before the doors to the elevator closed between us.
Later that night after the whistle had blown and one by one all the employees wearily made their way to the exits I caught sight of him waiting outside, his hands folded nervously over his front and his eyes searching the stream of girls and women pouring out the door. I remember passing through the routine inspection ordered by the bosses to make sure we had stolen nothing from our floors and out into the cool night air. His expression lit up the moment he saw me and he immediately made his way to my side.
Taking my arm as was customary in those days we walked home together, and he began to open up to me. His shyness melted away and I was able to get to know his sensitive yet passionate personality. I remember we discussed our working conditions a great deal and many a time I would become startled by his vehement outbursts of feeling. He had a very eloquent way of wording things and I loved to simply hear him speak. When we grew weary of talking about work, anything and everything was open to discussion. Religion, family, our hopes and dreams, our past lives....we were completely comfortable with one another.
Niether of us were entirely sure of how our families would take us being together and so we kept it a secret, for a year and a half. Looking back I wish we had simply come forward and admitted our feelings for eachother. But it is too late for that now, far too late.
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