March is Women’s History Month, and as promised in my last post, I’m going to blog about some women of library history this month.
Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire
Today’s post is about Helen Marot (June 9, 1865 – June 3, 1940), “an American writer, librarian, and labor organizer. ” (Wikipedia) One of her many accomplishments was serving on the commission that investigated the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire.
Her work with libraries includes:
- She organized the King Library of the Church of the Redeemer in Andalusia, Pennsylvania.
- She worked as a cataloger in a Wilmington, Delaware library.
- She opened (along with Dr. George M. Gould and Innes Forbes), a private library specializing in works on social and economic topics: The Free Library of Economics and Political Science (in Philadelphia).
Read some of Helen’s writing at The Internet Archive.
Six women including Mary Dreier, Ida Rauh, Helen Marot, Rena Borky, Yetta Raff, and Mary Effers link arms as they march to City Hall on December 3, 1909 during the New York shirtwaist strike to demand an end to abuse by police.
A Life in Libraries 