Charlie Fenton’s Reviews > The Radium Girls > Status Update

‘In many ways, it was a battle that had begun on 5 February 1925, when Marguerite Carlough had first filed suit in New Jersey: the very first dial-painter ever to fight back. Catherine’s triumph in court, thirteen years later, was one of the first cases in which an employer was made responsible for the health of its employees.’

‘For almost six years Radium Dial had known the women were radioactive. Yet ‘the knowledge of the discoveries had been carefully concealed by the firm, who feared disruption of their business if the facts became known... the victims had not been informed of their condition, nor the cause, through fear of panic among the workers’.’

“I have had my jaws curetted seventeen times,” said Grace simply, “with pieces of the jawbone removed. Most of my teeth have been removed. [My] spine [is] decaying and one bone in [my] foot [is] totally destroyed.”

‘Saturday night slipped into Sunday morning, and Ella’s condition declined. As she lay in bed, her system septic, her head swollen and black, her face unrecognisable, the poison in her body did its worst. At 4.30 a.m. on Sunday 4 September, her death came suddenly. She had been at work painting dials just the week before; all she’d had was a little spot on her face? How had it come to this?’

Now that is shocking. Someone working for the company, taking blood, examining and reading the girls’ x-rays, wasn’t even an MD. He had lied. He was a doctor, but his degree was in philosophy. He told them they were all in perfect health, but was not qualified to know that. This just gets worse and worse.

‘Yet it went way beyond bias: Flinn was lying through his teeth. For not only did his published conclusions contradict his stated opinion to Dr Drinker - ‘I cannot but feel that the paint is to blame for the girls’ conditions’ - but in June 1926, six months before his study was published, Flinn finally discovered two radium-poisoning cases at the Waterbury Clock Company.’

‘Sarah’s own life may have been cut short, but the radium inside her had a half-life of 1,600 years. It would be shooting out its rays from Sarah’s bones for centuries, long after she was gone. Even though it had killed her, it kept on bombarding her body ‘every day, every week, month after month, year after year’... It is bombarding her body to this day.’

‘Ironically, the radium did, at first, boost the health of those it had infiltrated; there were more red blood cells, something that gave the illusion of excellent health... But it was an illusion only. That stimulation of the bone marrow, by which the red blood cells were produced, soon became overstimulation. The body couldn’t keep up.’

‘It was radium, lurking in Mollie Maggia’s bones, that had caused her jaw to splinter. It was radium, making itself at home in Hazel Kuser, that had eaten away at her skull until her jawbones had holes riddled right through them. It was radium, shooting out its constant rays, that was battering Marguerite Carlough’s mouth, even at this moment.’

‘At once, Viedt reported these developments to the New York headquarters. Not long after, USRC executives decided to launch an investigation to determine if there was anything dangerous in the work. For too long there had been rumour and suspicion; it couldn’t continue. After all - now, it was bad for business.’

That’s what it all comes down to for these people at the end of the day.