The last survivor of the Shirtwaist Fire is Bessie Cohen.

The 19-year-old seamstress who escaped the Triangle Shirtwaist fire that killed 146 of her co-workers died in Los Angeles on Sunday.According to the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees, she was the last known survivor of the Manhattan fire.

Jack Kosslyn said his mother died at the Jewish Home for the Aging in Los Angeles, where she had lived for 14 years.He said that until six weeks ago, she had retained most of her memories.

Over the years, she had graphically recalled for her family, as well as for historians and documentary filmmakers, what she experienced and witnessed on March 25, 1911, when the worst factory fire in New York history raged through the top three floors of the 10-story Asch Building on the northwest corner ofBehind locked doors, 500 women, mostly Jewish and Italian immigrants, worked on shirtwaists.Shirtwaists were made of lightweight fabric and depicted in the illustrations as the uniform of modern womanhood.

Mrs. Cohen was on the ninth floor at the time.Two years before she came to New York, she had come alone from Russia and had saved money to bring her sisters to America.Since one of the women on the ninth floor had just become engaged, someone brought a cake and slices to the workers, who were near the end of their workweek.

For the rest of her life, she would remember that she had urged her friend, Dora, who was 15, to ask the foreman to give her a 50-cent raise to bring her salary up to $3 a week.Bessie was teaching a dance step to another worker when someone screamed fire.The cutting room was on fire.

Thirty percent of the Triangle Shirtwaist workers were killed within 15 minutes.Mrs. Cohen told her children that when she heard a foreman shout to her in Yiddish, ''Bessie, save yourself'', she went to look for the cheap straw hat she had bought the day before.Dora looked frightened as she looked across the room.Dora was gone when she looked again.She was one of the people who died after jumping from the windows.

Only the seventh floor could be reached by the fire trucks' ladders.There were so many women jumping at the same time that the nets tore and did not hold them.They tried to escape by sliding down the cables, but lost their grip.Most of the people who died worked on the ninth floor.

The doors leading from the shop areas were locked to keep the women from using their sewing machines.The owners were acquitted when the jury couldn't decide if they locked the doors or not.Civil suits brought by relatives of 23 victims ended with payments of $75 to each of the families.

On the day of the fire, Mrs. Cohen hid her face with her purse as she ran to the street.

The bodies were arrayed so that friends and relatives could identify them, after she returned to the street the next day.Mr. Kosslyn said his mother kept a newspaper picture of her collapsing.

He said that she became active in the International Ladies Garment Workers Union after the fire because she took other jobs.Two years before the fire, a three-month strike of 20,000 shirtwaist workers in New York City and Philadelphia helped to cement the union and focused public attention on conditions in sweatshops.The International Ladies Garment Workers were replaced by the needletrades union.

According to The Associated Press, at least one survivor of the fire is still alive.According to her family, Rose escaped by fleeing to the roof.

The Triangle Shirtwaist fire has become a symbol of workplace safety.The union demanded safer working conditions after the fire.A huge crowd of sympathizers, including Mrs. Cohen, paraded in mourning to the arch in Washington Square Park.The Bureau of Fire Investigation was established by the city of New York at the end of the 19th century.The bureau had the power to regulate safety.

After being gutted and rebuilt, the Asch Building became part of New York University.

In 1915, Lewis Cohen and his wife, Bessie, moved to New London, Conn., where her son and daughter were born.She would bury her head in her arms and cry after the fire because she was afraid of thunder and lightning.