Bostwick: These proceedings are in English, however. So please speak up if you find yourself unable to express your thoughts clearly in English, and we will summon the Yiddish interpreter. Now, please state your profession for the record.

Witness: I sew. Now, I am home with my baby, but before that I was a sleeve setter at the Triangle Waist Company. I worked there with my sister, she died from the fire.

Steuer: Your Honor.

Crain: Mr. Bostwick, please remind your witness to limit her answers.

Bostwick: How long did you work at the Triangle Waist Company?

Witness: I work there with my sister since the end of April in 1910, so almost a year we were working there is my answer to your question.

Bostwick: Where did you work at the Triangle Waist Company?

Witness: I worked on the ninth floor, with my sister, we sat next to each other, where the machines were all the new ones, the

Singers. Not like on eight, where they had also those Willcox machines, not so good in my opinion. Maybe if you are not so skilled you don’t know the difference.

Bostwick: Can you tell us where on the ninth floor your Singer sewing machine was situated?

Witness: I was in the middle of the second row of tables, with my sister, it was near a pillar. I faced away from the window behind me. That’s how we all sat, in those rows.

Bostwick: Please describe for us in your own words the events of March 25 of this year.

Witness: The day of the fire.

Bostwick: Yes, the day of the fire. Please describe only your own experience, not what happened to anyone else, if you don’t mind.

Witness: This is what happened. I am working at my machine, with only a few minutes left before the end of the day.

Bostwick: Do you recall the time when you first knew about the fire?

Witness: Just before the workday is finished, we are there, so it was fifteen minutes before five in the afternoon. Somebody rang the bell so some girls were leaving but some of us were taking just a minute more to finish up. I remember so clearly I can still see it, that I had only two left sleeves to finish in my work—my sister Pauline, I got to mention her here, Your Honor, she did the right sleeves and I did the left sleeves. It was the end of the week and we just got our pay packets, from our boss Mr. Jacobs, and I took them both, for my sister too, and I tucked them into my stocking, so she could keep working for those minutes to finish what she got to finish for the week.

Bostwick: Go on.

Witness: So I hear at that moment a big noise behind me, while I am still bending down with my stocking for the money, like nothing I ever hear in my life before, so I think, Is it an explosion? So I turn around, and everyone is turning around, and what do we see? Flames! The flames are coming up the window from underneath. And the windows, they’re breaking from the fire, so many got out from the eighth floor, all the bosses and the people in that office, on the tenth floor, they got out, but we are on the ninth floor—