[question] I don’t know how my ribs got broken in the commotion. I never knew that, but it doesn’t matter. What difference does it make now? I lived. Maybe with the pushing by the Washington Place door that opened the wrong way, I am sure you will want to ask me about that. That’s what everybody always asks about.

[question] I was just knowing that I was having a baby then. Just before the fire I am thinking this must be happening to me, because of the way I am feeling every morning. Have you ever had a baby? [reply from interviewer] So you don’t know what it is like. I felt sick some of those days when I was there out in the country in the beginning. They took care of me, with a doctor who told them to give me eggs and meat every day, and there was so much milk, as much as you wanted to drink. All the girls gained weight. Some of the girls, they were so young they could still grow and they got a little taller and their clothes didn’t fit good anymore, from all the good food and fresh air, so they got nice new clothes. I was given a very nice dress that would fit me over the baby. I felt the baby kick while I was there. That first time, I thought I had bad digestion. I didn’t know anything, nobody ever told me.

[question] I don’t want to talk about Sam knowing about the baby. That’s private information. We were going to be married right away. Everyone knew we were engaged. There was that cake we never had a bite to taste, because of the fire.

[question] I was in mourning for my sister also. This is a bad time in my life I don’t want to think about so much. It was a very bad time. We’re done for now. Leave me, please. Thank you for the poppy-seed cake you brought to me but that is all I have to say.

[note: Esther Gottesfeld became emotional and terminated the interview at this point, although she did agree to a future interview when this researcher hopes to discover further relevant information concerning the trial and some of the discrepancies in her testimony. rz]

Eight

AP wire, September 19, New York—The last living survivor of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire died earlier this month on September 7 in New York City at the age of 106. Esther Aeurbach Gottesfeld, who was seventeen at the time of the notorious fire on March 25, 1911, worked on the ninth floor of the sweatshop and survived the fire that took the lives of 146 garment workers, most of them women, by finding her way through the flames up to the roof of the building. Her twin sister Pauline died in the fire, as did her fiancé Samuel Gottesfeld, the father of her then unborn child, Isaac, thought to be the youngest survivor of the fire, who was born six months after the fire and who predeceased her in 1961. (Esther Auerbach took the name Gottesfeld in 1911.) A resident of the West Village Jewish Home for many years, Ms. Gottesfeld was known to be an invaluable resource for scholars and historians of the fire, which is considered by many historians to have been the inspiration for improved worker safety regulations as well as changes in the New York City fire code. Her granddaughter, Rebecca Gottesfeld of New Haven, survives her. Funeral services were private.