This episode of Swindled may contain graphic descriptions or audio recordings of disturbing events which may not be suitable for all audiences.

Listen to discretion is advised.

So, here's what I want you to hear.

It was March 25th, 1911. It's a Saturday.

And it's about 4.45 in the afternoon.

People walking through this very cart looked up and saw black smoke

and billowing into the sky.

A fire had started in that building.

And inside that building on the top three floors, deadly flames

left from a bend to the oily floors and from the floors to the walls sweeping across

workrooms and trapping the workers.

Fighting for their lives.

Women, girls really, some as young as 14, race to escape.

But the exit doors were locked.

It was a quarter hour until quitting time on March 25th, 1911, at the Triangle Waste Company

when a passerby saw smoke billowing from the factory.

The company occupied the top three floors of the 10th story ash building in the heart of Manhattan.

Triangle was the only occupant still at the office laid on a Saturday.

That was no surprise. It was an awful place to work.

The Triangle Waste Company manufactured shirt waste, a staple among pre-voting American women for over 100 years.

You would know a shirt waste if you saw one.

It's the puffy armed blouse-type thing that buttons in the front.

...