(hopeful gentle music) (birds chirping) - [Gabra] On a bright Sunday in August of 1911, a lively crowd of worshipers gathered at Carmel Grove, the popular Methodist retreat nestled in the hills six miles west of Binghamton.

Founded as a small revival camp in the 1870s, Carmel Grove had grown into a sprawling 12 and a half acre spiritual resort.

A three-story hotel, private cottages, a covered auditorium, and an army of workers now greeted the camp's guests.

The locals had majestically dubbed the retreat "The White City of the Woods".

Carmel Grove had become the preferred summer residence for some of Binghamton's business elite.

Including the camp's largest benefactor, and the region's most successful garment manufacturer, Binghamton Clothing Company Founder, Reed B. Freeman.

That Sunday Freeman, as he often did, had invited a handful of his company's workers to enjoy the day strolling the Grove's wooded trails, and listening to the choral concert in the camp's pavilion.

(gentle music) As the sun began to set, everyone gathered in the auditorium.

The night's featured speaker was Reverend Louis Banks, a well-traveled and charismatic evangelist from the Midwest.

Under the flickering glow of the camp's torches, Banks began with a reading from Matthew, then plunged, full-bodied, into a sermon featuring his favorite subject; "The Devil".

The reverend proceeded to run through a long list of history's most tragic and deadly events, from the Black Plague to the American Civil War; all of which Banks proclaimed were the work of Satan.

Seated near the front of the auditorium were Reed Freeman, and the ladies from his Clothing Company who, in two years' time, would endure their own human tragedy; the most deadly workplace disaster in Binghamton's history.

An event which, more than 100 years later, remains shrouded in mystery.

- [Banks] Brothers and sisters.

- [Gabra] As Reverend Banks neared the end of his sermon that moonlit night at Carmel Grove, he offered the crowd a warning that, for the workers of Freeman's doomed Clothing Company, would prove to be eerily clairvoyant.

"Beware the man, who comes disguised in grace.

For he is the wolf of folklore, the father of lies, who claims the throne of martyrdom for vanity and bravado.

But, I assure you, that hidden within his cloak of good nature are the flames of the devil."

- [Announcer] Underwriting support for this film was provided by; Judy Siggins and Bill Isbell, Linda Biemer, Chester and Joanne Niziolek, UHS, and a grant from The Women's Fund of the Community Foundation for South Central New York, and by viewers like you.

Thank You.

(bell chiming) - [Gabra] On Tuesday morning, July 22nd, 1913, Binghamton's downtown was alive with activity.

The sounds of industry and the hum of life filled the air.

The drone of factory whistles could be heard echoing throughout the valley.

The streets, shops, and factories all buzzed with a voltaic intensity.

Workers jumped off streetcars, while others made their way on foot or by bicycle to jobs at the blossoming array of stores and businesses throughout the city's busy business district.

All morning long the bump and rattle of heavy, wood-framed windows sliding open, could be heard up and down Court Street.

It was hot.

At 8:00 a.m., the thermometer on the roof of the Press Building already read 87 degrees.

Record high temperatures had been set, and then broken, throughout July, and the summer was barely half over.

At 65 Court Street, homemade chocolates at The Sugar Bowl Boutique were already melting.

Two floors above, a comely subject at the Edgar Rose Portrait Studio contemplated a similar fate, under the photographer's steamy gas lamps.

(gentle guitar music) Even the constant breeze that blew across the Chenango River that morning couldn't ease the heat steadily rising on the factory floors of the Binghamton Clothing Company at 18 Wall Street.

Workers had already opened nearly every window and door in the building in a desperate attempt to cool their workstations.

Many of the women and girls working on the building's fourth floor had already tossed aside their floor-length skirts and dresses, opting to work in dingy shop coats and light aprons.

Modesty and fashion was secondary to comfort in the early hours of a long shift.

Besides, the ladies also knew that Nellie Connor would keep any potential peeping Tom off the factory's sewing floor.

Miss Connor, as she was addressed by the girls, was the factory's forelady and, with over 30 years with the company, also a trusted maternal figure to the women of the Clothing Company.

Some as young as 15, new to America, and carrying with them, few words of English.

The Binghamton Clothing Company made clothes for the working man.

Leggings, pants, and overalls, and a full line of duck, leather, and Mackinaw lined rain and hunting coats.

Business was good.

Since early spring the plant had been overwhelmed with orders from the west coast, along with many of the other factories that now silhouetted the hills of New York's Southern Tier.

Factories that included, much to the Clothing Company's benefit, an industrial behemoth.

The Endicott-Johnson Shoe Company.

In 1913, George F. Johnson was still building the manufacturing empire that would shape the region's industrial identity for the remainder of the century.

Employing, at the time, over 12,000 workers across 13 plants, Johnson's industrial juggernaut was churning out over 18,000 pairs of shoes a day.

Over the next decade, his company would double in size, and triple its daily shoe production.

Johnson would then set out to mold the valley into his vision of an industrial democracy.

Fortunately for the Binghamton Clothing Company, shoemaking was dirty work.

Especially in the tanneries, where animal hides were trimmed, soaked, fleshed, dehaired, pickled, dried, and finally buffed into shoe leather, using a dizzying array of tools and toxic chemicals.

Johnson, a shoemaker himself since childhood, knew the tanning process, respected his men and admittedly feared the wrath of the wives and mothers who washed the tanners' clothes.

Johnson had a standing, direct sale contract, with the Binghamton Clothing Company.

Special trolley cars ferried overalls and shop coats to Johnson's shoe plants every month.

The E-J contract alone afforded Clothing Company president, Reed B. Freeman, the ability to maintain multiple production lines of cutters, pressors, and seamstresses.

Luckily, for Freeman, finding workers wasn't a problem.

Binghamton was the fastest-growing city in the state.

15,000 people alone had moved to the city since the last census was taken just three years before.

(gentle instrumental music) In 1913, Binghamton was an ideal place to settle down and plan a future.

New neighborhoods, streets, and parks were sprouting up in every corner of the city.

The Security Mutual and Press Buildings now towered over the growing downtown where it seemed new storefronts emerged every day.

On Chenango Street, The Stone Opera House was one of 10 theaters in the city now offering moving picture shows.

Around the corner on Exchange Street, the public library, built just a decade before, was already reporting the need for additional desks and chairs for quiet reading and intellectual study.

There were now 45 churches in town, four newspapers, 19 florists, 14 bakeries, and 71 saloons, which were steadily frequented by the 109 lawyers practicing in the city.

Of particular interest to Reed Freeman, were the 209 dressmakers listed in the city's directory.

Along with his commitment to fill Johnson's shoe factory contract, Freeman was making plans to expand his catalog, and begin manufacturing men's business attire, and possibly lady's social wear.

Access to a talented pool of tailors and seamstresses was a priority.

It was a lesson Freeman had learned when he first arrived in Binghamton nearly 50 years earlier.

(gentle music) Reed Freeman's grandparents had forged their way through the upstate wilderness, west from Albany, by ox, cart, and carriage in the years following the American Revolution.

They settled at the northern rim of Broome County, in the village of Lisle.

Lisle would briefly become the county's population center before a flood in the 1830s drove many residents to higher ground.

Despite the exodus, when Reed was born in 1847, the village remained an important center of trade.

Reed's father Albert was a successful lumberman and the village's justice of the peace.

Reed came of age in a town at the summit of the industrial revolution.

With an abundance of textile, saw, and grist mills, Lisle was a manufacturing and shopping mecca.

Every weekend craftsmen would bring their wares to the Yorkshire shopping district north of the village.

That's where young Reed, fascinated by the delicate mixture of design and practicality, developed an interest for the garment trade.

His mother Sarah had been an expert loom operator, before marriage, six young boys, and a family farm kidnapped her free time.

But Sarah found time to show Reed how to sew and blend thread.

He practiced stitching leather and muslin by hand, in a candle lite loft in his family's barn.

In 1864, Freeman rode to Binghamton with intent to enlist in the Union Army during the Civil War.

Several months shy of 17, he was turned away.

Later, while walking along Court Street, he spotted a seamstress using the new Isaac Singer pedal-powered sewing machine through the window of the Harry Lyon clothing store.

Freeman was inspired, he later wrote, "By the device that could fashion 100 perfect stitches a minute."

(gentle music) After finishing school Reed moved to Binghamton and took a sales job in Harry Lyons' store.

Dozens of new merchants and traders had moved to Binghamton during the war to leverage the railroad supply line and the growing labor pool.

Across the city, there were furniture makers, ironworks, carriage builders, blacksmiths, lumber dealers, and hundreds of independent skilled craftsmen.

Freeman saw a market ripe for a practical brand of American workwear.

From a small rented apartment at 7 Sand Street, in the heart of downtown, Reed designed and made a heavy-duty workman's overall with a detachable bib.

Most overall manufactures of the era treated the bib as a permanent extension of the trousers.

His design allowed men to remove the soot and grease-covered bib after their long shift.

He hung posters promoting his creation where he knew workers were most likely to see them.

On the walls of the city's 71 saloons.

Freeman sold a lot of overalls.

Abel Bennett, a wealthy landowner, philanthropist, and Binghamton's first mayor took notice of Freeman's entrepreneurship and offered him a job at his clothing store on Washington Street.

Bennett also provided Freeman space and equipment to manufacture his overalls in his store's basement.

Under Bennett, an avuncular and gifted mentor, Freeman's skill and confidence as a salesman and marketer flourished.

Bennett helped smooth out some of Freeman's rougher edges, helping fine tune his sales skills for success in a city just beginning to discover its Parlor City character.

Freeman idolized the charismatic Bennett, but he was even more smitten by a pretty dressmaker named Lizzie Fisher who had moved to the city from Ontario Canada.

After a brief courtship the couple married in 1869.

Lizzie, three years older, helped Reed put order to his fledgling overall enterprise.

With her dressmaker's eye for efficiency and acute bookkeeping skills, profits steadily grew.

Freeman's homelife filled up quickly too.

Lizzie gave birth to sons Louis and Harry in rapid succession.

In the 1880 census, Freeman also listed Lizzie's father, brother, and sister as also living in the tiny Sand Street apartment.

Which somewhat explains why by the next census Reed had built and moved his wife and boys to their own home at 10 Pine Street.

In 1883, Reed moved his overall company to the Republican Building on Henry Street and brought on more workers.

One of his first hires was a petite young seamstress, the daughter of Irish immigrants.

Her name was Ellen Teresa Connor.

Everyone called her Nellie.

(gentle instrumental music) Black 47, that's how history remembers the year Nellie Conner's family left Ireland.

1847, contained the darkest days of the Great Famine that would eventually kill over a million people and drive millions more from their homes and country.

Nellie's parents, John and Mary O'Connor lived in Dunmanway, a small village outside the city of Cork in the south of Ireland.

Dunmanway was hit hard by the blight that destroyed the potato crop, led to mass starvation, and robbed landowners the source of their livelihood.

By 1847, 70% of Dunmanway's residents had lost their homes.

John and Mary gathered their four young children, dropped the O from their surname, and fled.

After two long weeks at sea and a grueling journey upstate, the Connor family settled on an empty patch of land in Conklin.

In the mid-19th century, more than half of Ireland's population, over 2 million people, would land in New York's harbor.

The Germans would come in equal numbers.

Many would settle in the city.

But others, seeking land, would journey further upstate, to the valley of rolling hills, where the trees were plenty and the skies were increasingly filled with clouds from the smokestacks of progress and opportunity.

The Immigrants who arrived would work the Chenango Canal and help build the railroads.

They would organize and build the city's churches and schools.

Others would make food, clothing, and furniture, in the ways of their ancestors, opening shops and restaurants, creating the original framework of Court Street and Binghamton's downtown.

All steadily weaving a tapestry of cultures and traditions which would build a thriving mercantile community, combining the best of the old world with the possibilities of the new.

Nellie Connor was born on her family's new farm in Kirkwood on July 8th, 1855.

Nellie would have few memories of her mother.

Mary Connor died in 1860 shortly after giving birth to a ninth child.

Nellie was just five years old.

By the time she walked into Freeman's upstart overall factory looking for work, Connor had taught herself to sew and make her own clothes.

But her superpower was embroidery, with abilities Freeman once gloated, that rivaled Athena, the Greek Goddess of legend who introduced needlecraft to mortals.

Freeman put Nellie to work, stitching detailed monograms into custom overalls for factory owners and their managers.

Connor quickly became Freeman's most trusted employee.

As his business grew, Freeman leaned on her to train and guide the firm's new seamstresses.

Young girls from dozens of faraway countries, finding their way in a new land and around a new language.

Frightened and vulnerable, it was Nellie Connor, herself familiar with navigating life without a mother, who looked out for them all.

Often digging into her own purse to help a worker short of lunch money, or paying visits to the younger girls living alone, making certain they had a nice room, in a safe neighborhood.

At the turn of the century, looking out for the physical safety of workers wasn't exactly on most factory owners' priority list, especially in the United States.

American manufacturers had the highest accident rate of any country in the industrialized world.

In 1901, there were an astonishing 35,000 job-related deaths in the US.

An additional 500,000 workers were injured.

It was an age of capitalism and profits at all costs.

American industrialists had developed manufacturing methods that were both highly productive and very dangerous.

While the railroad and mining industries were often the worst offenders, it was remarkably common for workers in many other industries to suffer fatal or physically devastating injuries operating ruthlessly efficient machinery.

There were few labor laws, few safety regulations, and little government oversight.

For factory owners, accidents were cheap.

Family members rarely received compensation for a loved one's death.

And when they did, the average award was less than half a year's pay.

Often owners blamed worker incompetence for their death, though training was generally short to non-existent, with shop safety officers who would be described in modern terms as sketchy at best.

However, the mechanisms of industry weren't the only hazards workers faced.

All too often the most deadly ingredient for disaster was the workplace itself.

Accounts of railyard and factory accidents filled the morning newspapers.

Progressives and union leaders had been pressing the need for labor reform with regard to pay levels, child labor, and working conditions for over two decades with only marginal success.

Strikes, often leading to violence, had become a dark reality in many American cities.

Binghamton had experienced labor uprisings of its own, including a walkout by workers in the cigar industry in 1890 that lasted for 15 weeks, often teetering on the verge of rioting.

Reed Freeman's Overall Company was hit also.

In 1899, when he changed his manufacturing process to piece work, 150 seamstresses walked off the job in protest.

An arbitrator's settlement ended the strike but the experience rattled Freeman.

The Overall Company strike was indicative of the times.

The United States was a nation equally committed to both capitalism and the rights of individuals.

The tug of war to balance the desires of industry and the rights of workers had led to personal, and sometimes violent, moments of industrial warfare.

A conflict where even well-intentioned owners became swept up in the battle over profits, safety, and the rights of workers.

Ultimately, two tragic, and highly publicized workplace disasters, would finally awaken the American conscience.

On December 6th, 1907, an electrical spark ignited coal dust and methane gas, triggering a massive explosion at a coal mine in Monongah, West Virginia.

250 men and boys were killed instantly in the blast.

Trapped in the mine's collapse, another 112 would die from suffocation over the next week.

Only five miners would be rescued.

Five years later on March 25th, 1911, 146 workers, mostly women, were killed, caught in a fast-moving fire on the upper floors of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York's Greenwich Village.

Many, plunging nine stories to their death in front of horrified onlookers and helpless firefighters unable to reach them.

Locked doors and inadequate escape routes created a textbook example of a sweatshop-death trap.

Both the Monongah mining disaster and the Triangle Fire dramatically illustrated the inherent dangers of factory life in industrialized America.

Reed Freeman read the graphic accounts of the Triangle Fire but later admitted to underestimating the risks to his own employees, and the vulnerabilities of the new building, his company now occupied.

In 1893, Freeman had moved his firm to its final location in the newly built Clock Building at 18 Wall Street.

The four-story factory building was originally designed to house the Binghamton Tobacco works, owned by Lyman Clock.

Freeman's overall factory leased space on each floor.

Over the next few years, Clock's cigar business gradually declined, and Freeman's company prospered.

By 1903, the overall factory had taken over the entire building.

In 1910, with over 125 employees, and a swell of orders from across the country, Freeman decided to incorporate, renaming his firm; the Binghamton Clothing Company.

A four-story brick-sided facility, of simple design and functionality, the Clock Building had been built with singular purpose, to house many people, working large scale mass production.

The ground floor housed the company's business offices, the shipping department, and a sales showroom.

Two open staircases in the front and center of the plant led to the building's second-floor where the marking and cutting departments worked.

A single open staircase continued to the plant's 3rd floor, where 20 people worked the pressing and folding tables, and the button machines.

One last single flight of stairs led to the fourth floor where Nellie Connor supervised the 78 women and two men who worked the company's multiple banks of sewing machines.

A freight elevator near the center of the building was primarily used for hauling material.

A single fire escape was mounted on the back of the building.

Typical of the era, the fire escape had a narrow six-foot balcony with steep stairways to the next level.

The escape's stair treads were two one-inch round iron rods placed three inches apart.

Access to the street could only be achieved by unlatching and lowering an iron ladder to the ground below.

When constructed, the Clock Building had no fire alarm or sprinkler system, nor fire hoses, or a fire extinguisher.

(upbeat music) After the Triangle Fire in 1911, New York State created a Factory Investigating Commission.

Its primary objective was to recommend ways to improve the protection of workers.

Over two years, the commission conducted nearly 60 public hearings around the state and heard from over 500 witnesses, including workers, union leaders, and safety experts.

The commission's staff visited nearly 4,000 workplaces in every county in the state, including several of George F. Johnson's shoe factories in the Binghamton area.

The investigators listed an array of recommendations addressing fire safety, building construction, machine guarding, and more.

By the early months of 1913, 17 different bills, suggested by the Commission, were working their way through the state legislature.

Many addressed issues similar to the safety voids inside the Clock Building where Freeman's Clothing Company now operated.

But at the peak of the Commission's influence, their strongest supporter, Governor William Sulzer, became embroiled in political turmoil that would inevitably lead to his impeachment and removal from office.

As the drama around Sulzer played out, business leaders used the opening to denounce the new labor codes as impractical, unfair, and costly.

Using their influence to introduce bills that would weaken the proposed safety laws.

By the summer of 1913, much of the efforts to improve factory safety remained trapped in Albany gridlock.

(upbeat music) On November 23rd, 1912, Frank Nash, a fire inspector for the Department of Labor, conducted a tour of Freeman's Clothing Company.

Under existing state law, despite the lack of a fire extinguisher, water hoses or fire alarm, Nash had no choice but to give the Clothing Company a clean report.

Under his authority, the only change he could require was the addition of steps near the windows leading to the fire escape.

Though his hands were tied, Nash knew someone who could force changes and placed a call to the City of Binghamton's Fire Marshall, James Eldredge.

After the Triangle Fire, dozens of American cities had passed local laws to help strengthen factory safety, Binghamton was one of them.

Following Nash's tip, on January 18th, 1913, Fire Marshall Eldridge conducted a tour of the Clothing Company, and under city law, insisted Freeman make two major changes.

Elderage noted that all of the factory's doors opened inward, like the doors in the doomed Triangle Factory.

Elderage ordered them altered to swing outward.

In addition, because the Clothing Company had more than 25 workers, he ordered Freeman to install a fire alarm, with warning bells on every floor.

Eldredge's authority ended at requiring Freeman to add fire extinguishers or hoses.

The only fire fighting tools Eldredge reported were present in the building were six buckets of water on every floor.

Elderege gave Freeman six months to change the doors and add the fire alarm.

Freeman turned the matter over to the company's General Manager, Sidney Dimmock.

Along with Nellie Connor, Sidney Dimmock was the Clothing Company's other irreplaceable asset.

With Reed Freeman on the road much of the time, the responsibility for the factory's technical operations fell on Dimmocks's shoulders.

A talented, self-taught electrician, Dimmock was tasked with keeping all the building's machinery running.

By 1913, it was an inventory that included over 200 pieces of equipment.

After 18 years with the company, Dimmock took it all in stride.

Afable and charming, Dimmock possessed a self-deprecating sense of humor that the women of the factory found endearing.

One Italian seamstress, Mary Zecco, who spoke little English, affectionately called Dimmock, Sciocca Sidney, which Nellie Connor took great delight in telling him meant the seamstress found him, adorably silly, youthful and athletic, Dimmock rode his bike to work from his Newton Avenue home every morning, parking it under a storage shelf near the freight elevator on the ground floor before heading up to Nellie Conner's office to go over the day's schedule.

She always had a cup of coffee waiting for him.

Sidney and Nellie had become close friends over the years.

Nellie often sat with Dimmock's three young boys on the nights he took his wife Hattie to their favorite spot, Casino Park in Endicott.

Together, they kept the Clothing Factory running on track.

Freeman knew it, and paid them well.

He also laid much at their feet.

After the Fire Marshalls visit, Freeman was blunt, telling Dimmock; "You are the one in charge of this, I want you to go ahead, get your wires, buy your bells, and get the alarm put in as quick as you can."

By May of 1913, Dimmock had re-hinged every door in the factory and installed the fire alarm system.

On June 22nd, they held the first fire drill.

Standing on a table in front of the entire staff, Dimmock read through the drills procedures.

At the first bell, everyone was to stop working and stand at their stations.

At a second bell, they were to walk fast, but orderly, out the front door.

On the street during the first drill, several of the women were teased for their dingy work aprons by some of the men in surrounding shops.

A malevolent stare from Nellie Connor stopped the taunting but the experience stung the younger girls.

On July 7th, a second fire drill was held.

Reed Freeman and Fire Marshall Eldredge were both present and timed the drill.

The entire company made it out of the factory in two minutes and 40 seconds.

Freeman and Eldredge were pleased.

An additional fire drill was held on Monday, July 14th.

Not once, during any of the fire drills, was the building's fire escape tested.

By July 22nd, 1913, as testimony would later reveal, nobody, not Reed Freeman, Inspector Nash, Fire Marshall Eldredge, nor any worker at the Binghamton Clothing Company, had ever tested exiting the factory by fire escape.

(sewing machines clunking) By 10:00 a.m. on July 22nd, 1913, as the temperature outside reached 90 degrees, all 111 workers were at their stations inside the Binghamton Clothing Company.

All five banks of sewing machines were in full production.

With every window opened, the sound of the company's thunderous operations could be heard on the streets below, and in the shops and garages along Water street behind the Clothing Company's building.

Even the clerks and cashiers at the Post Office 80 feet away could hear the persistent drone of the factory's stitching machines.

(gentle instrumental music) The fourth-floor sewing room of the Binghamton Clothing Company largely reflected America in the early years of the 20th Century.

80 workers, from a universe of backgrounds, all with their own intimate, personal journeys.

The women were as old as 72 and as young as 15.

They weren't all close, some barely knew each other's names.

Many spoke only a few words of English and understood even less.

They often identified each other as, "This Italian woman, that Slovak lady, or this little Jewish girl."

But there was also comradery.

A togetherness that shared experience and close-quartered combat with fabric and thread nurtured and grew.

They offered spare needles with a smile or sympathetic nods of understanding for slow and broken machines.

On summer days, they shared the breeze near an open window, or a knitted shawl when winter's draft crept up the open stairways.

And they overheard the dreams.

Bits and pieces that floated down like the cotton dust, finding its way through the hum of machinery.

Stories of hope, family, and the future.

Dreams like Mary Sullivan who, after 20 years with the Company, had finally saved enough to buy a house of her own.

At 15, Bessie Ray was the factory's youngest worker; forced to quit school to earn money for her family, Bessie hoped to return, graduate, and work with animals.

Cassie Fulmer kept a photo of her daughter, Marguerite, by her machine.

Marguerite was a talented honor student and cellist at Binghamton High School, Cassie wanted her daughter to be the first girl in the family to go to college.

One woman's dream was recent and very scary.

Juliana Lakey had worked in the factory for 14 years.

Spirited and jovial, she was a favorite of many of the girls on the sewing floor.

But that morning she had been noticeably quiet, with visible anxiety.

"I went to bed the night before," she later revealed, "And dreamed that there was a great rushing, roaring wind, and smoke, terrible, awful black, coming out of the factory, and we were all cornered in with one another, and then I woke up.

I had never had a nightmare like it before."

One person who wasn't in the building that morning was Reed Freeman.

He had spent the evening at his private cottage at Carmel Grove.

The retreat had become a personal refuge for him over the last 15 years.

Like the girls in the sewing room, Reed had dreams too, he also knew how quickly those dreams could be shattered.

16 years earlier, in 1897, just as his company was reaching dominance in the market, Reed was dealt a devastating blow.

His wife Lizzie, while visiting relatives in Scranton, became lightheaded, with a terrible headache.

Her son Harry was able to get her home, but by the next morning, she was unresponsive.

Lizzie died late that night with Reed at her bedside.

Sorrow consumed him.

For weeks, late into the evening, he was seen sitting alone on the porch of his Pine Street home loudly weeping.

It was weeks before he finally returned to the factory.

Only through the efforts of Nellie Connor and Sidney Dimmock had the Clothing Company been saved from closing its doors.

Reed had always found comfort in religion.

But in the years after Lizzie's death, he dampened his grief by wrapping himself tightly in his faith.

He spent long evenings at Centenary Methodist Church, walking home from service down Court Street, bible in hand.

He also began giving generously to the retreat at Carmel Grove.

Helping grow the camp's facilities and strengthening the ministry program.

He had a private cottage built for himself, and one for each of his sons and their families.

Eventually, he owned five cabins at the Grove which he took great pleasure in sharing with friends and workers from the factory.

One afternoon, Freeman took notice of the choir's young pianist, Alice Reed, she was 23, Freeman was 52.

Despite the fact that Alice was seven years younger than Freeman's oldest son, he asked for a date.

Charmed by the six foot four, dashingly successful industrialist, Alice accepted.

The two began a courtship.

Alice's father wasn't happy.

The age difference between Freeman and his daughter wasn't just a, "Gap," he told the couple.

"It was a cavern."

Nevertheless, Reed and Alice married in 1900.

Alice assumed the front office role at the factory that Lizzie had held.

Freeman's new young wife was met with a fair dose of skepticism by the company's old-timers, including Nellie Connor, who had lost a dear friend with Lizzie's death.

But by all accounts, Alice quickly won the staff's trust with her intuitive office smarts and an obvious devotion to Reed.

Like the other women of the factory, Alice had a dream too.

She wanted to be a mother.

Reed, however, made it clear he had no intentions of becoming a father again.

Then fate intervened.

In 1907, a visiting minister and his wife, staying at Carmel Grove, became seriously ill.

The couple left a two-year-old orphan they had guardianship over with the Freeman's while they recovered.

While in their care, little Olive quickly melted the big industrialist's heart, and the Freeman's filed to adopt Olive in Broome County Court.

But when the minister, now recovered, learned the Freeman's were wealthy, he kidnapped Olive and held her hostage in a cabin near Oquaga Lake in Deposit until Freeman paid a ransom.

Reed never hesitated, and Olive was officially adopted by the Freeman's in 1908.

Decades later, it would be Olive Freeman's family scrapbook that would help unlock the 24 mystery behind the tragic events of that Tuesday in July of 1913.

By noon on July 22nd, the floor of the factory's sewing room was covered with piles of discarded material.

A slight mist of fabric dust hung in the air.

The girls were tired and hot, looking forward to the lunch break when the entire plant shut down for an hour.

17 year old Ruth Crotty, who had just joined her sisters Edna and Lucy at the factory the week before, was especially excited about the break.

Her sisters were taking her on a walk across the Court Street Bridge, and up Front Street toward Riverside Drive, where new mansions seemed to appear every day.

Ruth's sisters spoke often about the Greek Revival and Limestone homes that lined both Front and Riverside.

The sisters talked of wearing high heels with evening gowns to parties in spacious, elegantly decorated dining rooms.

The extravagances of the Gilded Age seemed a million miles away from their realities of factories, needles, and noise.

(whistle ringing) When the noon whistle finally rang, many of the girls went to the factory's third-floor cloakroom to gather lunch bags and purses, exiting the factory out the front door on Wall Street facing the River.

In 1913, there were no flood walls to block their path to trees and shade on the grassy banks of the Chenango, where they enjoyed the break and the breeze, watching the boats and fishermen out on the water.

Sidney Dimmock decided it was too hot for a bike ride home and joined Nellie Connor and several other women at a small picnic table on the grassing commons between the factory and the Post Office.

Mary Smith, a seamstress on the fourth floor, ran home to meet her roommate and check on their cat which had delivered kittens in one of Mary's hats the night before.

Mary considered skipping her afternoon shift to shop for a new hat, but decided to go back to the factory and shop instead on her way home.

The factory's engineer, John Schermerhorn, who worked in the building's basement, finished bundling the scraps tossed down the building's fabric chute.

It was Schermerhorn's job to collect and sort the scraps, stuffing larger pieces in canvas bags, and burning the smaller bits in the company's furnace.

The discarded fabric that littered the sewing room, however, would still be there when the girls returned from lunch.

That material wasn't scheduled to be collected until later that afternoon.

Schermerhorn then ate lunch with shipping clerk Amber Fuller.

The men were lifelong friends and work brothers.

A few years earlier, Schermerhorn had fainted from the heat of the company's boiler.

Fuller discovered and revived his friend.

Schermerhorn then showed Fuller where he had hidden $75 dollars in an old shoe in the company's basement, asking Fuller to make sure the money got to Schermerhorn's daughter if anything ever happened to him.

Fuller promised.

At 1:00, the back to work whistle sounded.

By 1:30, 100 and 11 workers were clocked in for the afternoon shift that was scheduled to end at 5:00 p.m.. At that same time, Reed Freeman and his wife arrived home from Carmel Grove.

Freeman changed and keeping with habit, grabbed a broom to sweep the leaves and grass from the sidewalk in front of his house.

He kissed his girls goodbye and began the 10-minute walk to the factory.

Alice would follow after getting Olive settled with the Nanny.

Freeman stopped at the First National Bank near Exchange Street, then crossed over toward the Courthouse where a weather kiosk mounted on the lawn read 93 degrees.

A constant breeze from the west, noticeably stronger than earlier, was a welcome relief.

Freeman made a last stop at the Binghamton Florist at 66 Court Street to pick up an arrangement of Carnations and Hollyhock for his wife's office desk.

He arrived at the Clothing Company at 2:15.

He could feel the vast machinery of his factory rumbling from the floors above his first-floor office.

Despite the heat, Freeman had worn a coat with his suit on his walk to the plant.

Nellie Connor happened to be in the office when he arrived and he asked her to hang his jacket on a special coat hanger they used for custom-tailoring.

Jacket in hand, Nellie took the elevator to the fourth floor.

Freeman's wife Alice arrived at 2:20 and greeted the company's bookkeeper T.E.

Lawrence.

Reed met with the firm's stenographers in the front office.

60 feet away, in the shipping room, a clerk named Jared Orr arrived with a load of finished and packaged coats to be sent out.

Shipping clerk Amber Fuller took the stairs down to the basement to collect boxes, then boarded the elevator to return to the first-floor shipping room.

It was 2:28 p.m., Tuesday, July 22nd, 1913.

As the doors opened, Sales Clerk Rueben Hall, panicked and obviously frightened, immediately confronted Fuller at the elevator screaming, "We are on fire!"

Fuller turned to the stairs and saw a small fire on a shelf mounted seven feet above the steps to the basement, the same stairs he had walked down moments before.

The fire was contained to one small corner of the shelf.

Fuller yelled, "Fire!"

and drew the attention of Reed Freeman in the front office.

Fuller and Hall then reached for water buckets on a stand near the stairs.

Reed Freeman arrived at the stairs as Fuller and Hall were attempting to throw water up at the fire above their heads.

"I was certain," Freeman later testified that the water buckets would extinguish the fire, "It didn't look very big."

Fuller and Hall's attempt missed the flames.

Freeman was then suddenly hit with a splash of water from above.

At that same moment, the four men working in the second floor cutting room had spotted smoke rising up the stairs.

Cutting room foreman Albert Decker, thinking fast but unfamiliar with the operation of fire alarms, pressed and held the alarm button, triggering a single bell pulse, unlike the double pulse the company had been trained to react to.

The other cutters, Earl Johnson, Frank Freeman, and James Fuller each grabbed fire buckets and threw water down toward the smoke and flames beneath them, splashing Reed Freeman below.

The cutter's attempt missed the fire also.

In the days to follow, it would be discovered that mounted within reach of the cutters, purchased and forgotten years before, was the company's lone fire extinguisher.

It had never been used or tested and had gone undetected during three separate fire inspections.

The fire quickly spread to the rest of the material on the shelf and began to ignite the wooden steps and railing leading to the second floor.

Beginning to cut off a major route of escape from the floors above.

Amber Fuller yelled to engineer Schermerhorn in the factory's basement, "John we are on fire, get out now."

Schermerhorn started up the steps, then stopped, backtracking again to the basement.

Fuller later testified, "I knew he was going back for the money.

The last I saw of him was on the bottom steps of the basement."

(glasses crunching) A wood-framed glass transom above the stairs suddenly collapsed onto the steps, cutting off the exit from the basement.

Freeman yelled for his wife to call the fire department.

Her first attempt to reach an operator failed, she reached for another phone.

Meanwhile, Reed began moving raincoats hanging near the stairway to keep the fire from spreading, but it was too late, it was already out of control.

Kindled by the strong breeze blowing through dozens of open windows, feeding itself on fabric cuttings, and fiber dust, the fire found a rich source of fuel in floors waxed in paraffin and the network of wood beams and rafters that spanned the entire building.

The inferno quickly seeped into the veins of the factory.

Within moments, relentlessly seeking a conduit for cooler air to heat and breathe, the flames shot up the elevator shaft and the fabric chute, waiting to release, like a bomb eager to detonate.

On the third floor, fixing a broken sewing machine, Sidney Dimmock heard the alarm and saw smoke rising from the stairs.

Working next to him Joanna Casey asked Dimmock if it was a drill, "Sid just grabbed my arm," Casey later testified, and said, "Get out now!"

Then without hesitation, Dimmock ran to the fourth floor.

The scene in the sewing room was confusion and disbelief.

Some workers remained standing behind their machines waiting, as instructed, for a second alarm.

"We thought it was a false alarm and no one rushed," Ruth Crotty later testified.

"We all laughed and took our time and walked out slowly, then the fellow that fixes the machines came up the stairs clapping his hands telling us to hurry."

Nellie Connor was cleaning a stain off a jacket when the alarm rang, she then saw Sidney Dimmock arrive at the top of the stairs.

"I think when Nellie saw Sid's face," seamstress Mary Hogan later testified, "She knew we were all in bad trouble."

Nellie joined Sidney at the stairs, urging the girls to hurry.

Smoke began to drift into the room through the fabric chute.

A group of girls hurried down the stairs and made it to the street.

Others stopped to grab purses and shoes.

Some, remembering the teasing during the drills, stopped to change.

A second group started down, but Juliana Lakey, whose nightmare had become real, briefly fainted on the steps, slowing the escape.

At that moment, flames burst through the floorboards near the third-floor stairs blocking the only path down to the second floor, workers scattered to find another way out.

Many would later recall seeing Sidney Dimmock guiding workers and helping carry several women to open paths through the smoke and flames.

Nellie Connor never left her post on the fourth floor, calmly telling her girls they'd be okay, urging them to hurry, guiding their arms, and tossing chairs away from ailes.

Ruth Crotty and her sisters became separated in the confusion.

"Lucy went out when the fire first started," Ruth testified later.

"I went down one flight but the smoke and flames drove us all backup.

There was nowhere to go."

She watched a group frantically pressing the button for the elevator, when the door opened an explosion of flames enveloped the women, setting their cotton dresses and hair on fire.

Ruth screamed, ran to a window overlooking the field by the post office, and jumped.

50 workers were at that moment, trapped on the third and fourth floors with dwindling options.

As the smoke and flames grew thicker, a group headed to the back of the factory, and their last hope, the building's fire escape.

The time was 2:34.

At the Central Fire Station on Chenango Street, Dispatcher Andrew Bolles' phone rang.

"Fire!

Fire, fire!"

Alice Freeman's voice screamed, "Is this the Fire station?

The Freeman Overall Factory is on fire!

Hurry, hurry!

Hurry!"

Bolles pulled the lever to release the horses.

Reed Freeman, unaware of the horror unfolding on the floors above, helped Alice throw documents in the company safe before both fleeing out the front door.

As they crossed the porch a burning object slammed to the ground just missing Alice.

"I didn't know what it was at first," Reed later told investigators.

It was the body of Ella White.

She'd jumped from the fourth floor, hitting the sidewalk head first.

Reed heard a scream and looked over his shoulder in time to see the burning body of Ida Prentice pass through a window awning and crash onto the front steps.

Alice Freeman just steps ahead of her husband, looked to a fourth-floor window as Cassie Fulmer, her white dress and hair in flames, tightly grasping the cross around her neck, leaped into the air, falling 60 feet to the pavement below.

Across the field at the Post Office, cashiers Ed French and Charles Martin saw the flames and smoke pouring from the Clothing Company.

They both jumped out a window and ran toward the factory just as Ruth Crotty slammed to the ground.

"Four or five more bodies came falling," Martin later recalled.

"We took off our coats to use as nets but realized it wouldn't work, so we started dragging the women toward our building, the heat from the fire singed my hair and shirt."

Young Ruth Crotty had severe burns and a broken spine.

Her sister Edna had also jumped.

Fracturing her skull, and breaking both legs.

But they were both alive.

More bystanders ran to help, Simon O'Neil raced from his harness shop to the factory's fire escape which had become a scene of confusion and terror.

"There was a lady on the first section with flames all around her."

He later testified, "I looked up higher and saw four or five more women all surrounded by fire, screaming for help.

Panicked and unsure how to navigate the ladders and steps in their long dresses, and completely unprotected from the flames pouring from the open windows, the women were burned alive in front of helpless onlookers."

Mary Smith, who had plans to buy a new hat on her walk home, was last seen trapped and surrounded by flames on the fire escape's fourth-floor balcony.

(somber music) Down on Court Street, Kate Brady, one of the first to escape the factory, noticed Nellie Connor's handbag fly out a fourth-floor window, "I told the girls Nellie is staying too long."

Nellie Connor never emerged, nor did Sidney Dimmock.

(somber music) The final moments of those trapped inside the burning factory are unimaginable.

Witnesses later testified the color of the fire streaming from the windows fluctuated from red to orange, indicating temperatures above 1,000 degrees.

Post Office cashier Ed French told investigators, "The thing that struck me more forcibly than anything was the last yell of the people upstairs.

They all yelled at the same time and seemed to die right there.

No more jumped.

That was the end of it.

One last general human wail, then silence."

(somber music) The heat from the fire became so intense the roof of the Post Office 80 feet away began to burn.

Behind the factory, the windows of McKellar's Drug Store, and the Link Piano Company shattered.

(somber music) Firefighters from truck station number two on Water Street behind the Clothing Company arrived within five minutes of the alarm.

Daniel Ryan, a 23 year veteran of the department told investigators, "By the time we arrived, it was too late.

The horses wouldn't go near the building, our blankets and jumping nets on the truck caught fire.

I could feel my face and ears and the top of my head burning.

My partner yelled, 'Get us out of here before we all burn to death.'"

Binghamton City Fire Chief Charles Hogg, in emotional testimony, told investigators.

"In 20 years I have never witnessed such devastation in such a short amount of time.

We were unable to do anything to help."

Hogg later admitted to seeing hardened firefighters openly weeping for the girls trapped inside.

(somber music) (building blocks falling) At 2:43, the roof of the factory collapsed within minutes, as onlookers gasped and cried, the walls of the factory crumbled to the ground.

It had only been 18 minutes since the fire was first discovered.

(somber music) The city shut down.

Every store and business closed.

The City Hospital was overwhelmed with the burned and broken bodies of the women who had jumped.

Firemen and volunteers combed the smoldering ruins through the night.

Bystanders collected personal belongings sprawled on the sidewalks; pictures, hats, rosaries, Nellie Conner's handbag.

The next day family members and friends searched to identify loved ones.

John Schermehorn's daughter Grace recognized her father's pocket watch.

Cassie Fulmer's daughter Margarete, her mother's silver cross.

Hattie Dimmock, her husband's wedding ring.

Of 32 bodies, only 10 could be identified.

21 workers were listed as missing.

One set of body parts would never be accounted for.

Nellie Connor was among those unidentified.

The Binghamton fire dominated the front pages of newspapers across America Wednesday morning.

Reporters rushed to Binghamton to look for stories of victims, and possible villains.

When short on facts, writers made up their own, the more tragic and dramatic the better, publishers printed it anyway.

Mary Boyle O'Reilly, a well-known progressive journalist, visited Binghamton and penned a touchingly sentimental account of Nellie Conner's heroic last moment.

The story was widely reprinted, providing labor activists a new martyr in their battle for workers' rights.

"For 30 years Nellie Connor acted as forewomen in the Binghamton Clothing Company."

O'Reilly wrote, "Balancing the rights of 100 needle workers with the best interest of the firm.

Now 10 of the rescued sewers, dying in Binghamton's City Hospital, weep not for themselves but for their lost forelady."

(somber music) A fog of sadness hung over the city.

Relatives and friends, people from every walk of life wandered somberly past the rubble of the factory for days.

Many cried, some left flowers or ribbons.

The city embraced the victims as their own.

At a time when most families had loved ones who worked in factories like the Clothing Company, the grim realities of the tragedy were devastatingly personal.

A quickly arranged relief fund for the victims' families raised the modern-day equivalent of a quarter of a million dollars in just four days.

George F. Johnson donated half the amount raised.

Nellie Connor and Sidney Dimmock were nominated for the Carnegie Hero Medal which, if awarded, would provide financial support for their loved ones.

Reed Freeman's home on Pine Street was described as a bleak center of despair and sadness.

"I've lost everything," Freeman told a reporter, "But I would give it all up again to get just one of those girls back."

Freeman was repeatedly asked if he knew how the fire started.

"Some of our men were addicted to the smoking habit," he told reporters, believing a tossed cigarette butt most likely started the fire.

In those days, jurisdiction over the investigation fell to the county coroner.

On July 23rd, the day after the fire, with the ruins of the factory still smoldering, Broome County Coroner Ralph Seymour launched a formal, and very public inquest.

36-year-old District Attorney Frederick Meagher would co-chair the investigation.

Meagher told reporters; "I give my word that any and all individuals responsible for this appalling tragedy will be brought to justice."

Over the first two days of testimony, as dozens of Clothing Company employees and witnesses were called to testify, the picture emerged.

A windswept blaze, compounded by a slow reaction to the alarm and few routes of escape cost lives.

But no definitive evidence brought forth explained what, or who started the fire.

By late Friday afternoon, under increasing pressure from local officials and reporters to assign blame, District Attorney Frederick Meagher targeted his frustrations on the investigation's next witness, Reed B. Freeman.

Freeman's shattered sorrow immediately after the fire had faded.

When he took the stand at three o'clock that afternoon, a self-assured defiance emerged and was evident to everyone in the packed courtroom.

When advised of his rights to refuse to testify he waved the notion off, "I will answer any question with pleasure."

Meagher, who had watched from Court Street when the factory collapsed and saw the charred bodies lined up on the sidewalk was in no mood to let the Clothing Company's owner and, in his mind, the person ultimately responsible for the welfare of his workers off the hook.

(Judge bangs the gavel) - [Judge] Order in the court.

- [Meagher] Mr. Freeman, are you familiar with the apparatus known as the automatic sprinkler?

- [Freeman] No, sir.

- [Meagher] Had you ever heard that they would be of value in safeguarding the lives of employees in factories?

- [Freeman] I should judge so.

- [Meagher] Had you ever made any investigation to ascertain whether or not it would be advisable to install chemical fire extinguishers in the factory?

- [Freeman] We thought fire pails was a better thing for us to have in the factory and then people would know how to use them better.

- [Meagher] Had you ever passed it over in your mind whether or not it might be better to have a fire hose in the factory for the safety of the employees?

- [Freeman] No, sir I do not think so.

- [Meagher] Had you ever passed it over in your mind whether or not the fire escape in the rear of your building was adequate for the protection of your employees?

- [Freeman] No, I do not know as I ever took it into consideration, more than the fact that we had one that was approved by the state, and I thought they were the authority on those things.

- [Meagher] Did you ever consider the advisability of improving the fire escape which you had?

- [Freeman] No, sir.

We left this all to the inspector and the man who owned the building.

We were tenants of the building.

- [Meagher] Did you consider your duty ended with that?

- [Freeman] We believed we had a risk unequaled in the city, being isolated away from other buildings and with windows towards the Post Office, having occupied the building for 20 years without a smell of smoke and nothing to create a fire.

- [Meagher] Did you ever hear of the Triangle Fire in New York?

- [Freeman] Yes, sir!

- [Meagher] Did you read the statement at the time that had the factory had automatic sprinklers every life would have been saved?

- [Freeman] No.

I do remember reading that people were burned because the doors opened in and, when we were advised I went out at my own expense and had our doors made to open out.

The front door alone cost me $10.

- [Gabra] Freeman's comment about the cost of the front door visibly angered the District Attorney.

He momentarily stood and began to approach the witness chair before stopping himself.

He poured a glass of water and sat back down.

A young lawyer named James Cornell, observing from the back of the courtroom, would later write, "The emotionally charged encounter between the two men in the late hours of a long and sad week was one of the most dramatically gripping courtroom exchanges the city had ever seen."

Meagher resumed his questioning with greater intensity.

- [Meagher] After you read the account of the Triangle disaster, did you consider whether or not it might be advisable to put a fire hose in the building?

- [Freeman] I did not.

- [Meagher] As a matter of fact if a fire hose had been in the building last Tuesday that fire could have been put out?

- [Freeman] If we had a fire company there, they could have put it out!

- [Meagher] You had men on the floor?

- Freeman] Yes, sir.

- [Meagher] If you had had a fire hose on your floor that afternoon could you have not turned it on the fire and put it out yourself?

- [Freeman] Perhaps I could.

That little word, if, means a lot!

- [Meagher] When was the fire alarm installed in your factory?

- [Freeman] I don't remember when, I would say three months ago, I don't recall.

Mr. Dimmock was in charge of those things.

- [Meagher] Prior to the installation of the fire system, what safeguards did your factory have for the protection of its employees?

- [Freeman] I told you we had the water pails and the fire escape.

- [Meagher] Had you ever been out on the fire escape yourself?

- [Freeman] Do not think I had.

- [Meagher] Did the fire escape seem to be sufficient For 80 girls in case of fire to get down safely to the ground?

- [Freeman] It was approved by the state fire marshal.

- [Meagher] Did you escort the fire marshal on any visit?

- [Freeman] No, as I have said before, I assigned Mr. Dimmock to this work.

He had full charge of the factory in every way shape or manner.

Under Miss Nellie Connor as forelady, and as he was competent to carry out these things I trusted to him the full responsibility of factory safety and always felt sure that the work would be done right.

- [Meagher] You understand that Mr. Dimmock and Miss Connor both perished in the fire, sir?

- [Freeman] I do know that, sir.

(somber music) - [Gabra] At that moment, Coroner Seymour, sitting to Frederick Meagher's left, put his hand on the district attorney's arm to halt his questioning.

Freeman sat with his head bowed, his eyes filling with tears.

"It seemed then," a courtroom observer later wrote, "That the elderly gentleman's spirit had shattered."

(somber music) As the late afternoon sunlight spilled into the court chambers, Freeman gathered his composure and finished his testimony.

At 6:15, after more than three hours of questioning, he was dismissed.

He rose from the witness chair, approached Seymour and Frederick's table, shook their hands and thanked them, then walked from the courtroom in silence.

(somber music) On Sunday afternoon, under a thick blanket of threatening clouds, 35,000 people lined the streets of Binghamton as flatbed trolley cars slowly crept through the city's downtown, winding its way toward the working-class neighborhoods in the city's first ward.

People from across the region had come to honor the 21 unidentified victims of the Clothing Company Fire.

(somber music) The cortege silently wound its way along the Maple and Elm lined streets that led to the large iron gates at the entrance of Spring Forest Cemetery.

A band formed of Italian immigrants followed the long procession of mourners quietly playing Handel's "Dead March".

The Binghamton Press described the scene at the cemetery as the mourners neared the grave site.

- [Reporter] The Roadway was flanked on both sides by thousands of people, and as every man in the procession took his hat from his head and laid it across his breast, the men and boys on the flanks did likewise.

The women and girls bowed their heads and hardly a word was spoken as the silent march was made up the hillside.

The burial plot is ideally located on an elevation overlooking a small pond.

The graves are dug in a dial formation, each grave situated lengthwise from the center, equal distance from each other, making a compass formation with 21 points.

(thunder rumbling) As thunder rumbled in the distance, the agony and anguish at the grave site overflowed, several women and children fainted during the service and were carried to nearby homes.

One woman, whose daughter was among the dead, sobbing uncontrollably, tried to leap into the hole where she believed her daughter's body would soon lie.

Reverend Frank Beldon of the Main Street Baptist Church stepped forward and addressed the grieving family members.

- [Beldon] My Brothers and Sisters there is one day which is impressed upon our memories as no other day in the history of Binghamton, that is July 22nd, 1913.

We come here with our hearts shaken with an emotion we have never before felt.

Do not think that your own are being put into nameless graves and do not think that your dear ones will be forgotten.

Our hearts throb for every aching heart among you; we weep with you, we sorrow with you.

(rain pitter-patters) - [Gabra] As drops began to fall undertaker Charles Dibble urged the crowd to disperse, the coffins he said would not be lowered until sundown.

One of the last to leave the cemetery was 19 year old Mary Quinlivan, who had shared an apartment with seamstress Mary Smith.

In her hands was her roommate's silken hat which had cradled their cat's newborn kittens.

She placed the hat on one of the 21 coffins and walked home in the rain.

(rain pitter-patters) The Coroner Inquest concluded two weeks after the funeral.

No criminal indictments were ever made.

A carelessly tossed cigarette became the accepted theory for the fire's origin, despite the fact that not a single witness testified to having seen anyone smoking in or around the building the day of the fire.

State fire investigators added controversy by concluding the fire most likely started in the building's basement, and not the storage shelf where witnesses said it was first spotted.

Both investigations, however, laid the ultimate blame for the tragedy squarely on the shoulders of elected officials for their inability to pass factory safety laws a full two years after the Triangle Fire.

But the public outcry after the Binghamton fire broke the legislative logjam, and prompted a reorganization of the States Department of Labor, establishing an industrial board that would create and enforce safety regulations affecting the health and welfare of workers.

Within 10 years, the number of work-related deaths in New York state dropped dramatically.

Other states followed.

By 1995 workplace fatalities in America had decreased over 90% from the beginning of the century.

A week after the fire, on July 29th, The Binghamton Press published an interview with Reed Freeman, "I see no obstacles," he told the reporter, "To keep us from resuming operation as soon as practical.

We have orders we plan to fill."

The Clothing Company never reopened.

The greetings Freeman received on the streets had changed.

The cheerful hellos had been replaced with awkward silence or glances of suspicion or pity.

After Olive ran home one day crying because a classmate called her father a killer, Freeman knew the shadow of the fire would forever cloud his future in the city.

He accepted a job as a garment salesman in Manhattan.

Alice and Olive stayed behind at the Pine Street home.

Two years after the fire, the Carnegie Heroes committee denied Nellie Connor and Sidney Dimmock the bravery medals and scholarship money.

The committee's strict eligibility criteria was cited for their decision.

In 1916, after a long delay, a monument was finally erected at the grave site in Spring Forest Cemetery.

At the dedication ceremony, the names of the fire victims were again read while 21 wreaths were placed encircling the stone monolith.

Over the years, newspapers marked the anniversary of the fire, recalling the heroics of Nellie Connor and Sidney Dimmock and other stories of workers who had escaped death.

In 1920, when Reed Freeman died, the tragic entry of the Clothing Company fire was a somber blemish on an obituary that, otherwise, recounted a remarkably successful professional and philanthropic life.

By the time of her adopted father's death, Olive had already taken over care of the Freeman Family scrapbook.

A collection of photos and newspaper clippings started in earlier, happier times.

Through her high school and college years, Olive added stories about the fire and clippings of her mother's considerable community and volunteer work.

Olive, eventually, lost track of the scrapbook when a husband and kids came along.

In the early 1960s, Olive's daughter Marcia discovered the dusty scrapbook in her mother's attic.

Flipping through, she landed on the 1913 article about her grandfather's hope to reopen his business.

On the same page, a different item caught Marcia's eye.

The story of another fire hero, Jared Orr, who reportedly rushed with Sidney Dimmock to the fourth floor and saved workers before having to jump himself.

"Orr's heroics have been overlooked," the story read, "And he deserves recognition."

No source for the claim was given.

"The article was particularly intriguing," Marcia would later write, "Because Jared Orr's name had been passed down through the Freeman Family over the years as having been the person responsible for the fire."

20 years later Marcia Stevens and her husband Malcolm would embark on a 10-year research journey culminating with the book "FIRE", published by the Broome County Historical Society in 1988.

The book, now out of print, chronicled the Clothing Company's origins and the circumstances surrounding the fire.

The couple interviewed former Binghamton Fire Marshal, Roy Roby, who was a young firefighter in 1913.

Roby revealed knowledge of Jared Orr being questioned by Binghamton Police the night of the fire.

Though no records exist to confirm Roby's statement.

The Stevens investigation into the fire's was ultimately hampered by their inability to locate a copy of the inquest report compiled by Coroner Ralph Seymour.

Marcia and Malcolm Stevens passed away in the early 2000s.

The Freeman family scrapbook has also been lost.

But, in 2018, while cataloging material in an off-site storage facility, Elizabeth Hansen and Valerie Falzarano, associates with the Broome County Clerk's office, discovered a document wrapped in unmarked packaging material.

Inside was the only extant copy of the 600-page coroner's report lost and forgotten over 100 years ago.

The inquest report, containing complete transcripts of questions and testimony from Clothing Company employees, firefighters, and witnesses, offers a revealing window into the minds of investigators in the hours immediately following the tragedy.

Adding context and color to a bizarre and disturbing portrait of Clothing Company employee, Jared Orr.

The July 29th, 1913, "Hero" article of Jared Orr was not the first time he had appeared in local newspapers, and it would not be the last.

Born in Hornell, in 1888, Jared Orr had already been arrested five times by local police for intoxication, burglary, and petit larceny before he was 19.

He first showed up in Binghamton papers on November 25th, 1911 under the alias Jerry Scanlon.

Orr and a friend, John Maloney, had badly beaten and robbed a young musician named Clinton Smith on Hawley Street.

Orr told police he had helped avert a murder by keeping Maloney from smashing Smith's head with a brick.

Orr's role in the assault, the story states, "Was mostly passive due to a bandaged arm from an accident where Orr claimed he had lost three fingers on his right hand."

His injuries were a lie.

The first of many factitious medical disorders Jared Orr would manufacture over his lifetime.

Orr plead guilty.

At his sentencing on January 12, 1912, the court's Judge Sewell, showed mercy.

"The crime you committed would justify a sentence of 20 years in State Prison," Sewell told Orr, "It is a pity a young man of your age should engage in such a thing," Sewell sentenced Orr to the Elmira Reformatory with no set timeline.

He would serve only 15 months for the assault.

Orr was released on April 20th, 1913.

Two weeks later, he was working in the packing room of the Binghamton Clothing Company.

On July 7, two weeks before the fire, in a small ceremony at city court, Orr married a pretty dressmaker named Laura Williams.

They settled in an apartment on Walnut Street.

Williams wasn't employed by the Clothing Company, but it's likely she traveled in similar circles with the factory's seamstresses.

Orr, handsome and flirtatious, was reportedly a social favorite of the younger ladies of the factory.

The packing room, where Orr now worked, was on the factory's third floor.

Near the changing room where workers stored their handbags and purses.

The third floor was where Sidney Dimmock, who guarded the factory, like Nellie Connor guarded the girls, also worked.

The inquest transcript reveals investigators recognized a possible motivation for the fire was an intended theft of the changing room, where multiple workers confirmed, during testimony, they routinely left money.

Providing speculation the fire was a diversionary tactic, one gone horribly wrong.

The only time the changing room would have been left open and unguarded was during the recently initiated fire drills.

Drills which commenced just weeks after Jared Orr was employed in the third floor packing room.

On the day of the fire, Shipping Clerk Amber Fuller testified to accepting a bundle of coats from Jared Orr at 2:25, three minutes before the fire was first spotted.

Placing Orr in vicinity of the fire's origins.

Fuller testified he left the area immediately to collect boxes in the basement.

Investigators repeatedly asked Fuller if anyone else had come down to the shipping room before the fire.

His answer was consistent.

"Nobody, only Mr.

Orr."

In his own testimony, Orr states he rushed to the fourth floor with Sidney Dimmock, staying until all workers were out, then jumped from the top level's fire escape hitting a wire on the way down, walking away only slightly bruised.

Every other employee known to have jumped the 60 feet from the factory's fourth floor were either dead or in City Hospital with cracked skulls, broken legs, or spines.

The inquest report also reveals, not a single employee, when asked if they saw Jared Orr accompany Sidney Dimmock to the fourth floor or assist other workers, confirm his presence.

The Elmira Gazette, the day after the fire, ran a story in which Orr claimed to be the last out of the building, but re-entered after hearing women were still inside.

He goes on to tell the paper all his clothes were burned from his body losing $300, the modern-day equivalent of around $8,000, that Orr claimed to have saved on a $22 a week job in the two and half months since his release from prison.

Throughout the inquest report, multiple entries show Coroner Seymour and District Attorney Meagher's considerable interest in witnesses' knowledge of the whereabouts of Jared Orr during the fire.

Why any suspicion failed to elevate to further investigation is unclear.

On August 16th, two weeks after the fire, an Elmira Gazette story reported that Orr was indeed injured from his fire fall.

Needing to be placed in a plaster body cast due to a curved spine.

This made Orr eligible to receive relief funds raised for those injured in the fire.

Four months later, On December 8th, the Binghamton Press reported Orr was fitted for another body cast, the fear was, he would never walk again.

The very next day, December 9th, a Binghamton Press headline reported that Orr was involved in a hold-up with former partner in crime John Maloney.

Orr and Maloney, both intoxicated at the time, assaulted and stole $27 from railroad engineer Charles Delph on Wall street.

They were later picked up by the police near the Chenango Street Viaduct urinating on a passing train.

A month later, carried into court by deputies because of his supposed injuries, Orr was once again shown pity by Judge Sewell who suspended his sentence, releasing him into the care of his mother in Hornell.

Again, Orr was reportedly in such a wretched state that he was feared near death.

(flame whooshing) On June 24th, 1915, fire destroyed the Casino Hotel at Delaware Water Gap in Pennsylvania.

50 workers and guests barely escaped the blaze.

Six months later, Jared Orr was charged by Pennsylvania police for starting the Casino fire.

Orr had been fired from a job in the resort's cafe for dishonesty and set the casino on fire for revenge.

No leniency was shown by the Pennsylvania judge who sentenced him to six years in the State Penitentiary.

But Jared Orr's trail of crime and destruction was not close to being over.

In November of 1922, just months after his release in Pennsylvania, Orr was convicted of Robbery and sent to Auburn Prison.

(rain pitter-patters) Five years later, on a rainy Sunday night, Jared Orr broke into the Steele Pharmacy on Main Street in Hornell, filled a large knapsack with vials of morphine and money from the cash register, and on his way out, set the building on fire.

State troopers picked Orr up the next day for public intoxication, found the stolen drugs and money on him, and sent him to the Steuben County Jail.

In those days reporters frequently visited police stations and jails looking for stories.

At some point, Orr told a reporter he had won the Carnegie Hero Medal for saving dozens of women in the Binghamton Clothing Company Fire.

The same medal that had been denied Nellie Connor and Sidney Dimmock.

No facts were checked, the story was printed, picked up on the news wires, and within days appeared in papers across the Northeast.

The truth finally emerged but not before "Jared Orr, Fire Hero" was once again read by thousands.

Whether that prompted court sympathy is unknown, but On May 16, while awaiting trial, Orr was transferred to the Steuben County Hospital.

Doctors told reporters Orr had suffered pulmonary hemorrhages and was not expected to live out the week.

He did.

On June 2nd, a judge ruled that Orr be sent to the Pleasant Valley Sanitarium in Bath where additional doctors promised authorities and the local papers he was not faking his illness.

"Orr was in the final throes of tuberculosis," they insisted, and "Death was at hand."

The following week, slipping past multiple doctors and police guards, Orr escaped from the sanitarium.

After a few days, following a tip from a local farmer, Orr was found, healthy and alive, hiding in a cornfield in Hornell.

On July 7th, Orr plead guilty to the Hornell Pharmacy arson and burglary and was sentenced to 10 years at Auburn prison.

In December of 1927, Orr was transferred to the maximum-security prison at Dannemora for, as prison records reflect, "Continued malicious incendiary activities."

Remarkably, in June of 1934, after over 20 years of nearly ceaseless criminal activity, Orr was released on parole.

Which he proceeded to violate the next year when he attempted to burglarize the Jones Drug Store in Hornell.

At a parole hearing at the Auburn prison in 1935, Orr was asked why the Steuben County Sheriff referred to him as "Nothing but trouble", he replied, "On the account, I have been worthless for a long time."

Orr's attempt at sympathy failed.

He was denied parole.

Ultimately released from prison in 1938, Orr's criminal trial goes cold.

Though 1940 census records show Orr was then an inmate at the Home for Indigent Men and Women in Philadelphia.

Jared Orr died on March 1st, 1960, from a heart attack.

He was 72 years old.

Orr had lived 47 years longer than multiple doctors had predicted, and 47 years longer than 31 workers of the Binghamton Clothing Company.

(wind whistling) (birds chirping) More than 100 years later, the Binghamton Clothing Company Fire remains the most costly human tragedy in Binghamton's history.

A stone monument near the site of the fire lists the names of the lives taken that hot July afternoon.

The burial plot at Spring Forest Cemetery continues to be one of the most frequently visited memorial sites in the city.

On the second floor of the city's public library, stored amongst the county's archive of photos of the fire, are photocopied images of many of victims that were originally published in newspapers in the days after the fire.

Pictures, like memories, fade over time.

Grainy, halftone images fall far short of honoring lives once lived in full color.

(somber music) "Even the Devil's Fire," a German proverb pledges, "Cannot turn to ashes, the memories we insist to cherish".

(sorrowful instrumental music) - [Announcer] Underwriting support for this film was provided by; Judy Siggins and bill Isbell, Linda Biemer, Chester and Joanne Niziolek, UHS, and a grant from the Women's Fund of the Community Foundation for South Central New York, and by viewers like you.

Thank you.