The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women

by Kate Moore

Gods can be kind. Loving. Benevolent. Yet as the playwright George Bernard Shaw once wrote, “The gods of old are constantly demanding human sacrifices.”6 Enchantment—in the tales of the past, and present—can also mean a curse.

On sale were radium jockstraps and lingerie, radium butter, radium milk, radium toothpaste (guaranteeing a brighter smile with every brushing) and even a range of Radior cosmetics, which offered radium-laced face creams, soap, rouge, and compact powders.

Of course, to the layman, all this was unknown. The mainstream position as understood by most people was that the effects of radium were all positive; and that was what was written about in newspapers and magazines, championed across product packaging and performed on Broadway.

The residue from radium extraction looked like seaside sand, and the company had offloaded this industrial waste by selling it to schools and playgrounds to use in their children’s sandboxes; kids’ shoes were reported to have turned white because of it, while one little boy complained to his mother of a burning sensation in his hands. Yet, in comments that made reassuring reading, von Sochocky pronounced the sand “most hygienic”10 for children to play in, “more beneficial than the mud of world-renowned curative baths.”

As well as the seemingly unstoppable disintegration of her mouth, to his trained nostrils the noticeable smell coming from her seemed “peculiar”6: “it differed decidedly from the odor commonly associated with the usual forms of necrosis of the jaw.”7 Necrosis meant bone decay. Mollie’s teeth—those that were left—were literally rotting in her mouth.

“Phossy jaw”—as the victims of phosphorus poisoning had grimly nicknamed the condition—had very similar symptoms to those that Mollie was enduring: tooth loss, gum inflammation, necrosis, and pain.

She hobbled over to Dr. Knef’s dental chair and then leaned back. Gingerly she opened her mouth for him. He bent over her and prepared to probe inside. There were barely any teeth left now, he saw; red-raw ulcers peppered the inside of her mouth instead. Mollie tried to indicate that her jaw was hurting especially, and Knef prodded delicately at the bone in her mouth. To his horror and shock, even though his touch had been gentle, her jawbone broke against his fingers. He then removed it, “not by an operation, but merely by putting his fingers in her mouth and lifting it out.”12 A week or so later, her entire lower jaw was removed in the same way.

Only that February, the local paper had declared: “Radium may be eaten…it seems that in years to come we shall be able to buy radium tablets—and add years to our lives!”

After her jaw had gone, an important discovery was made. Knef had always hoped that by removing a tooth, or a piece of infected bone, the progress of the mysterious disease would be halted. But now it became evident that “whenever a portion of the affected bone was removed, instead of arresting the course of the necrosis, it speeded it up.”14 Over the summer, Mollie’s condition deteriorated even further. She was getting painfully sore throats now, though she knew not why. Her jaw, at times, would spontaneously bleed, and Edith would press white cotton bandages to her face, trying to stem the flow.

In September 1922, the peculiar infection that had plagued Mollie Maggia for less than a year spread to the tissues of her throat. The disease “slowly ate its way through her jugular vein.”16 On September 12, at five p.m., her mouth was flooded with blood as she hemorrhaged so fast that Edith could not staunch it. Her mouth, empty of teeth, empty of jawbone, empty of words, filled with blood, instead, until it spilled over her lips and down her stricken, shaken face. It was too much. She died, her sister Quinta said, a “painful and terrible death.”

This was called to the attention of Mr. Viedt, who was quick to address the concerns. Viedt told him, the inspector reported, that “he has warned [the girls] time and time again of this dangerous practice, but he could not get them to stop it.”5 Had the dial-painters overheard this conversation, they would probably have been stunned. Other than Sabin von Sochocky’s one-off warning to Grace Fryer that lip-pointing would make her ill, not a single other dial-painter, including the instructresses and forewomen, ever reported a warning being issued and certainly not one that included reference to lip-pointing being a “dangerous practice.”

As early as 1914, specialists knew that radium could deposit in the bones of radium users and that it caused changes in their blood. These blood changes, however, were interpreted as a good thing—the radium appeared to stimulate the bone marrow to produce extra red blood cells. Deposited inside the body, radium was the gift that kept on giving.

But if you looked a little closer at all those positive publications, there was a common denominator: the researchers, on the whole, worked for radium firms. As radium was such a rare and mysterious element, its commercial exploiters in fact controlled, to an almost monopolizing extent, its image and most of the knowledge about it. Many firms had their own radium-themed journals, which were distributed free to doctors, all full of optimistic research. The firms that profited from radium medicine were the primary producers and publishers of the positive literature.

Lip-pointing had been stopped in late 1923; Josephine Smith, the forelady, revealed: “When [the company] warning was given about pointing brushes in [our] mouths, it was explained to the girls [that] this was because the acid in the mouth spoiled the adhesive.”25

Radium, they noted, had a “similar chemical nature” to calcium. Thus radium “if absorbed, might have a preference for bone as a final point of fixation.” Radium was what one might call a boneseeker, just like calcium; and the human body is programmed to deliver calcium straight to the bones to make them stronger… Essentially, radium had masked itself as calcium and, fooled, the girls’ bodies had deposited it inside their bones. Radium was a silent stalker, hiding behind that mask, using its disguise to burrow deep into the women’s jaws and teeth.

On June 7, 1925, the first male employee of the United States Radium Corporation died. “The first case that was called to my attention,” Martland later remarked, “was a Dr. Leman.”

Dr. Flinn had been examining the girls: taking blood, reading their x-rays. He had been arranging medical treatment and writing to the women on the letter-headed paper of the College of Physicians and Surgeons. “[I] understood,” said Grace’s physician Dr. McCaffrey, who’d arranged her examination with Flinn, “that Dr. Flinn was an MD.”20 But now, when Berry asked the authorities to look into exactly who Flinn was, he received the following letter from the New Jersey Board of Medical Examiners: “Our records do not show the issuance of a license to practice medicine and surgery or any branch of medicine and surgery to Frederick B. Flinn.”21 Flinn was not a medical doctor. His degree was in philosophy. He was, as the Consumers League put it, “a fraud of frauds.”

After the arrival of Berry’s team, preparations were made for raising the coffin. Curtains were drawn around and the entire party went inside the tent. The grave workers heaved on the ropes and chains. Slowly, Mollie rose the six feet to the surface. “The outer box was in bad condition and easily pulled apart; the casket was likewise ready to fall apart.”13 Despite the dim fall day, the coffin seemed to glow with an unnatural light; there were “unmistakable signs of radium—the inside of the coffin was aglow with the soft luminescence of radium compounds.”14 Someone lent over the glowing coffin and pulled a silver nameplate from the rotten wood. Amelia Maggia, it read.

Radium was a clever poison. It masked its way inside its victims’ bones; it foxed the most experienced physicians. And like the expert serial killer it was, it had now evolved its modus operandi. Ella had developed what was called a sarcoma: a cancerous tumor of the bone. She was the first known dial-painter to die from such a thing—but she would not be the last.

Berry did manage to win a settlement of $8,000 ($113,541) for Mae Canfield in the new year, but the company had a straitjacket clause attached. The only way they would pay his client any money, they said, was if Berry himself was incorporated into the deal. He was far too knowledgeable about their activities—and becoming far too skilled in court—to be left off a leash. And so Raymond Berry, legal champion, the pioneering attorney who had been the only lawyer to answer Grace’s call for help, found himself forced into signing his name to the following statement: “I agree not to be connected with, directly or indirectly, any other cases against the United States Radium Corporation, nor to render assistance to any persons in any actions against said Company, nor to furnish data or information to any such persons in matters against said Company.”37 Berry was gone. He had been a serious fighter against the firm, an irksome thorn in their side. But now, with surgical precision, they had plucked him out and banished him.

The previous February, 1932, Katherine, Grace, Edna, and Albina had all received a no-nonsense letter from Dr. Ewing: “We wish to inform you that no bills will be approved by the Commission for any services which have not been specifically approved by Dr. Craver. The Commission feels that they must scrutinize expenses more carefully.”2 The board now refused to cover medicines “we do not feel are useful,”3 routine doctors’ visits, and home nurses; the latter was a service the women increasingly relied on to help clean and dress themselves. The board was acting, it said, “to prevent this ‘exploitation’ of the radium corporation.”

It had been all over the papers last March. Byers was a world-renowned industrialist and playboy; a wealthy man who raced horses and lived in a “magnificent home”9: he was high-profile and important. After Byers had received an injury back in 1927, his doctor had prescribed Radithor; Byers was so impressed with it he consumed several thousand bottles.

It seemed wealthy consumers were much more worthy of protection than working-class girls; after all, dial-painting was still going on, even in 1933.

For that company, the Byers case was a disaster. USRC supplied the radium for many of the products that had now been banned. The whole radium industry collapsed. It may or may not have been connected, but in August 1932, having failed to find a buyer for the old Orange plant, the firm had it razed to the ground. The dial-painters’ studio was the last building to come down.

In 1963, perhaps at least partly in response to the research on the dial-painters, President Kennedy signed the international Limited Test Ban Treaty, which prohibited atomic tests above ground, underwater, and in outer space. Strontium-90, it had been determined, was too dangerous for humanity after all. The ban undoubtedly saved lives and, very possibly, the entire human race.

As for the companies, eventually the law caught up with them—though by then the damage had been done. In 1979, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found that the former USRC site in Orange had unacceptable, environmentally hazardous levels of radioactivity: twenty times higher than was safe. There was widespread contamination—and not just of the site, but in those locations where the company had dumped its radioactive waste as landfill. Almost 750 homes had been built on top of that waste; they too needed decontamination. More than 200 acres of land were affected in Orange, some to a depth of more than fifteen feet.

The EPA ordered the corporate successor of USRC to perform the cleanup work, but it declined, except for agreeing to erect a new security fence (even this they did not see through; the EPA was forced to complete it). The courts were not forgiving; in 1991, the New Jersey Supreme Court found USRC “forever”42 liable for the contamination and declared the firm had had “constructive knowledge”43 about the dangers at the time it operated there. Residents sued the firm; after seven years, the cases were eventually settled out of court, costing the company some $14.2 million (almost $24 million) in damages. It reportedly cost the government $144 million ($209 million) to clean up radium-contaminated sites across New Jersey and New York.

The dial-painters’ case ultimately led to the establishment of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which now works nationally in the United States to ensure safe working conditions.

There are now processes for safe handling, for training, for protection. Workers also now have a legal right to see the results of any medical tests.

That was the tragedy. Radium had been known to be harmful since 1901. Every death since was unnecessary.

“The studies of the radium-dial workers,” wrote Dr. Ross Mullner, “form the basis of much of the world’s present knowledge of the health risks of radioactivity. The suffering and deaths of these workers greatly increased [scientific] knowledge, ultimately saving countless lives of future generations.”

Through their friendships, through their refusal to give up and through their sheer spirit, the radium girls left us all an extraordinary legacy. They did not die in vain. They made every second count.