Labor union hero and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio omitted in his state of the city speech Tuesday that the embroidery business owned by his grandmother and great aunt was considered a firetrap in 1915. The site City Council Watch goes as far as to call his grandmother a “sweatshop boss.”
Stirring up memories of old New York at the turn of the last century, Mayor de Blasio spoke about his grandmother and her sister who came from southern Italy to find a new life in America.
“More than a hundred years ago, a young woman named Anna Briganti arrived in our city after emigrating from Grassano, a small town in southern Italy rich in natural beauty, but scarce in opportunities for its people,” he said.
De Blasio went on to say how his grandmother “traded picturesque hillsides, and small town familiarity…for an apartment at 205 East 17th Street in Manhattan, just a short walk from here…a place lacking the tranquil comforts of her childhood…a neighborhood where few spoke her native language.”
According to the mayor, his grandmother opened her own business in 1910 with her sister and her mother.
“So, in the year 1910 — a decade before our country granted women the right to vote — Anna opened an embroidery company: The Misses Briganti… its very name a proud symbol of single women — the ‘Misses’ referring to her sister, and her mother, and herself — three women who started the business, together. Anna Briganti was my grandmother. I am here because of her.”
De Blasio, however, makes no mention about what happened five years after his family opened the embroidery shop on East 17th Street. According to a December 4, 1915 New York Times piece, de Blasio’s great aunt pled guilty to “having an inadequate fire alarm apparatus” in the 34 person embroidery factory.
According to The Times, 13 city factory owners were accused of violating safety appliance regulations. “As a result of an extensive campaign against fire hazards in the factories of the city thirteen persons were arraigned yesterday on the charge of violating regulations relating to smoking and safety appliances. Six men and one woman appeared before Magistrate Frothingham in the Yorkville Court. All but two were fined from $5 to $20, the others obtaining an extension of time to comply with the law. The woman was Miss Imperior Briganti, who employs 34 persons in a factory at 205 East Seventeenth Street. She pleaded guilty to having an inadequate alarm apparatus.”
The case happened four years after the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire killed 146 garment workers, which was no more than a mile from his family’s embroidery factory.
Today’s public employee unions, who are some of de Blasio’s biggest supporters, regularly talk about the factory fire. While the mayor himself was not born until many years after both incidents, he’s never made any mention of the working conditions in the family embroidery factory. He did, though, commend the SEIU for transforming the workplace since the Shirtwaist Factory fire happened over 100 years ago.
