Siciliana.it >> The Maltese Family and the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire Memorial

FROM THE ASHES OF A TRAGEDY: The Road to Women's Rights and International Women's Day

Perhaps not everyone knows that the origin of the March 8th holiday in Italy known as "La Festa Delle Donne",or, "Women’s Day" arose from the ashes of a fire at the beginning of the 20th Century. Known as the "Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire", it was one of the largest industrial disasters ever to occur in the City of New York, and one in which 146 people, most of them women of Italian and Jewish descent, perished. New York State former Senator Serphin Maltese is an important current day figure in the history and remembrance of the event, as he is the descendant of three of the women who died tragically in that fire on March 25th, 1911.

It was in 2006, on the 95th anniversary of the disaster, that Senator Maltese announced the fact that he had lost his grandmother and two aunts in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. Moreover, his brother, Vincent Maltese, is currently the president of the “Triangle Shirtwaist Fire Memorial Society”, an association founded with the purpose of keeping alive the memory of the victims of a fire that represents, in my opinion, one of the greatest tragedies in American history, along with September 11, 2001.

SOUTHERN ITALIAN EMIGRATION TO THE USA
Sacrifice, Suffering, Heroism and Social Integration

The story of the emigration - of many women and men who left with nothing in the search for a way to make a living - is the story of poor people, obviously, but, most of all, it is a story of courage, of people who risked their own lives, far away from their loved ones, in order to live their lives with dignity, as human beings. The story of the Malteses helps us to understand that men become heroes when they continue to live, and struggle, despite everything.

Historical Premise:

The fire in New York occurred on the 25th of March, 1911, and not on the 8th, at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, a factory where women’s shirts were sewn, which was located on the 8th, 9th and 10th floors of a Manhattan building on the corner of Green Street and Washington Place in Greenwich Village. Today, the building houses the Science Department of the New York University Arts and Sciences program.

I would like to tell you something about some of the women who died in that fire of March 25th, and consequently, the story of three women from the Maltese family: 146 people were found dead - nearly all of them women - more than 35 of whom were Italian, and most of those of Sicilian descent. From what I have been able to learn, in part from the Ellis Island registry, the following women were among the Sicilian victims: Vincenza Benanti (22 years old, from Marineo, a town just a few kilometers from where we live), Giuseppa Castello (21 years old), Michela Nicolosi (22 years old, from Bisacquino, in the Province of Agrigento), Clotilde Terranova (22 years old, from Licata, in the Province of Agrigento). And from Marsala, three women from the same nuclear family: Caterina Maltese (40 years old, maiden name Canino), and her two daughters, Lucia (20 years old) and Rosaria (14 years old!).

THE MALTESE FAMILY
An Example of More than a Century of Emigration

The Maltese family represents - in my view, in exemplary fashion – more than a century of Italian emigration. We know that it was, in the beginning, a period of immense suffering, which was followed, little by little, by the conquest of many gradual steps on the social ladder in order to arrive where we are today, particularly in the United States, at perfect social integration.

The Ellis Island registry, which has been online for several years, allows us to follow the footsteps of the members of the Maltese family who arrived in America.

The 38-year-old man from Marsala, Serafino Maltese, husband of Caterina and father of Lucia and Rosaria, all destined to be killed in the fire, landed at Ellis Island on May 19th, 1906, after 18 days of sailing. He had departed from Palermo on the 1st of May, 1906.

Several months after his arrival, he likely surveyed his situation, and, unlike many Italian immigrants of that time, decided to remain, and establish himself in America for an extended period of time. Consequently, he wrote to his wife and invited her to come, and bring all of their children, and join him in America.

The rest of the Maltese family arrived at Ellis Island on August 3rd, 1907: Caterina Canino, age 36, and their 5 children: Lucia (age 16), Vito (age 14), Rosaria (age 11), Maria (age 4) and Paolo (age 2).

Unfortunately, their arrival in America was immediately met with a terrible loss and mourning, which, looking back, could be considered a sign of a cruel and unfortunate destiny: little Maria died at the hospital on Ellis Island from an illness she had been suffering since at least June of that year.
Indeed, it was Maria’s illness that had delayed the family’s departure, which had originally been scheduled for two months prior.

In effect, all four of the Maltese women were practically and immediately devastated by the New World. By 1911, only the three males of the family remained: Serafino, Vito (who would have been about 18 by the time of the fire) and little Paolo (who would have been 6 years old).

When I first heard about this story, I was taken with curiosity and instinctive interest, and went about discovering the pieces little by little. I imagined the tragedy that the Maltese family had lived through, and how it most certainly must have affected the destinies of the three surviving male members. I was convinced that their lives in America would have been so brutally and negatively marked by these losses that they, too, would have met with bad endings.

Then I had to change that belief. And, I must say, I happily changed that belief when I learned that another Serafino Maltese, Mr. Seraphin R. Maltese, to be precise, was an active Senator (and has been since 1988) of the State of New York, representing the Borough of Queens. I don’t know whether Serphin (Caterina Canino was his grandmother, while Lucia, Rosaria and Maria were his aunts) is the son of Vito or Paolo, as his being born in 1932 could make either one of them his father. But that is of minor importance.
What is important is that the story of the Maltese family represents, without a doubt or shadow of rhetoric, in the face of such a tragic destiny, the perfect synthesis of what America represented for Italian immigrants: the beginning of many tears, and blood, and today, the honor of being among the first.