"Women on the ninth floor pushed the elevator call button, but so did workers on the eighth. The cars rose to the eighth, filled and descended, over and over. On the ninth floor, panicked women pried open the outer elevator doors and threw themselves down the shafts. Passengers inside the cars could hear the percussive thud of bodies on top of the car, then the rattling of coins falling out of pockets and through the metal grating."
— A Times Mag description of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City, in which 146 people, mostly teen immigrant girls, were burned alive or jumped to their deaths. In the fire’s aftermath, young women lobbied—before they could even vote—for safe working conditions. (See the HBO doc on the subject).
