Brew: A woman arrives for her first day on the job.
Her work is set out in front of her.
A watch dial, a glass of water, a fine tip
paintbrush, and a tiny vial of glow in the dark paint.
Her boss tells her that the best way to paint watch dials is to dip
her paintbrush into the water before forming the tip using her mouth.
She does this all day, water, mouth, paint, dial, repeat.
But after only a few days at the watch dial factory in
Waterbury, Connecticut, her boss came to her and asked,
“You don't like this job, do you?” to which she replied
“No, I don’t”, and she was let go that very same day.
Mae Keane had been lucky to land this position; ranked
in the top 5% careers for women in the early 1920s,
considered an “elite job for poor working girls”.
The workers meticulously painted the
tiny dial numbers on 200 watches per day.
And with every digit they painted, they swallowed a bit of paint.
Looking back, Mae recalled, “I often wish I had met him after
to thank him, because I would have been like the rest of
them.” For in just a few years, the watch dial painters fell
ill by the dozens, impaired by all manner of vicious diseases.
Their teeth fell out, their jaws came unhinged, their legs
snapped under their own weight, and even their spines crumbled.
Out of those top 5% female workers now laid
bodies, "still glowing in their coffins".
This is how a company legally took the lives of their own staff
and escaped full responsibility: The story of the Radium Girls.
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In 1897, Marie Curie made a surprising discovery,
one that, on the surface, appeared simple, but had
lasting ramifications on the study of radioactivity.
After Henri Becquerel discovered that Uranium
emanated radiation, Curie decided to investigate.
Soon after, she found that Thorium gave off the same “rays”
as Uranium, telling her that radioactivity is not determined
by the specific substance, but the amount of that substance.
It was this discovery that led Curie to study soils
and materials that contained Thorium and Uranium.
She was surprised to see that an Uranium mineral called Pitchblende was
4 to 5 times more radioactive than the amount of Uranium would suggest.
This told her that there was something else in there giving off radiation.
Radium.
The dangerous effects of radiation were becoming well known to
almost everyone in the scientific community, and even Pierre
Curie himself, as of 1903, said that he “would not care to
trust himself in a room with a kilo of pure radium, as it would
doubtless destroy his eyesight and burn all the skin off his body”.
At the turn of the 20th century, Dr. Sabin von Sochocky, who studied radiation under the
Curies in France, returned to the United States in
1913 to develop a glowing paint containing radium.
The US Radium Company named this new glowing paint, “Undark”.
Not long after, Sochocky was hired by the United States Radium
Company to run their facility in Orange, New Jersey in 1917.
Sochocky claimed to know all there was to know about
radiation, however by 1917, the man was so saturated with
radiation that his mere presence triggered false readings on
electroscopes while measuring the purity levels of radium salts.
He died at the young age of 45, at the hands of his own creation.
Undark was a mix of glue, water, and radium powder that emitted
light with no need for power, making it perfect for use in watches.
Especially in military use.
You don’t want to get shot by the enemy just
because you lit a match to tell the time.
Painters would apply a little of the paint to the dials of watches,
and presto, now you can tell the time even in the pitchest black.
Radium became so popular that it was
used in all manner of household products.
You could buy radium lipstick, radium tonics for health, radium
face cream, and even radium chocolate if you lived in Germany.
The idea that this beautiful element gave off energy inspired
our imaginations so much that people began feeding it to hens
hoping it would help eggs self-incubate and even self-cook!
Marketers often used the word Radium to inspire their audiences to imagine
the possibilities of this new element, even when they contained no radium.
From “Radium Silk Lingerie”, to decks of cards
veneered with the word Radium, to even “radium brand
creamery butter”, the word itself seemed radioactive.
Back at the factory, Undark painting began in full force.
In the first years of the factory’s operation, The Great War was in
full swing, so the owners staffed the floor with women—the daughters
and wives of men serving in Europe, dubbed the “Radium Girls”.
Each painter was given a single small
tube of unmixed Undark per watch dial.
Workers would mix the substance before applying it to a
dial, and often get some on their hands in the process.
The painters would dip their brush in a glass of water before forming
the brush into a tip using their mouth to ensure they could get a
fine tip, but after some time, the factory owners removed the water
because they believed it wasted too much of the precious radium.
Of course, with or without the water, all of the women working at the
factory were consuming radium en masse, every day, for years at a time.
At peak production they managed to prepare 55,200 watch dials per year.
Up until 1920, the painters were even allowed to eat
at their work station, without washing their hands.
Eventually, they came to be known as “ghost girls” because of the
radioactive glow they emitted after long shifts at the factory.
Many of the workers would wear their best dresses to the job so they
could glow in the dark at the dancehalls after their shifts were over.
Some would even apply the paint to their teeth for a “radiant” smile.
The workers, some as young as 15, did ask if there was
any harm to consuming the paint, but were told that the
paint was safe, moreover, that it was good for them.
The factory was saturated with radium dust, and
no steps were taken to mitigate the effects.
In the early 1920s, not 3 years after the factory
opened, workers started falling ill, some even dying.
Amelia Maggia, known as Mollie to her friends, was one of the first.
Her initial symptom was a toothache, which
required a tooth extraction to improve.
Unfortunately, the teeth next to it also had to be removed shortly after.
In the place where the teeth used to be, came
painful ulcers that would leak blood and pus.
The unknown illness spread quickly, reaching Mollie’s mouth and
lower jaw first, before traveling into other parts of her body.
Her jaw was eventually removed, and despite attempts to save her
life, she passed away on September 12, 1922 of a massive hemorrhage.
Contrary to what the women in the factory expected,
Mollie was reported to have died as result of syphilis.
But Mollie wasn't the only one.
Not long after she met her untimely demise, more and more women started
reporting the same symptoms, including the horrifying realization that
they could see their own bones glow in the dark through their skin.
At the same time, the factory owners vehemently
insisted that garden variety STIs were to blame.
Remember kids, use protection, or else your bones will glow in the dark.
Dentists were on the frontline combatting this new
mysterious illness striking the factory workers.
They watched in horror as numerous women came into their
clinics with dental pain, loose teeth, mouth lesions and
ulcers, and tooth extraction wounds that refused to heal.
Not only that, many of the workers had their periods
suppressed, and suffered from fertility issues.
If workers were pregnant, they often experienced stillbirths,
and pressure from doctors who worried about major birth
defects, strongly recommending terminations of pregnancy.
In addition to that, many of the women developed extreme deformities in
their bodies, including bone fractures, and shortening of their limbs.
One thing medical practitioners noticed was that all the
women experiencing these symptoms were either currently,
or formerly employees of a dial painting factory.
The president of the company, one Arthur Roeder, employed the expertise
of Cecil Drinker, an expert of industrial hygiene and future Dean
of Harvard School of Public Health, to evaluate their practices.
Drinker, along with his wife and researcher partner Katherine, traveled
to Orange, New Jersey, to see the factory for themselves in 1924.
In his report, he wrote that radium dust saturated the factory.
“Dust samples … were all luminous in the dark room.
Workers’ hair, faces, hands, arms, necks, the dresses, the
under-clothes, even the corsets of the dial painters were luminous.
One of the girls showed luminous spots on her legs and thighs.”
Drinker delivered a report to the US Radium Company
pleading for increased safety precautions, but Roeder
insisted that some outside infection was the cause.
He made this claim referencing an internal investigation
that denied Drinker’s claims, however Roeder refused
to let Drinker see this so-called “investigation”.
Not only that, when Roeder found out that Drinker planned
to release his report independently, he threatened to sue.
Drinker did reluctantly relent, agreeing not to publish his
report, but his colleague, Alice Hamilton, was more tenacious.
She had learned that US Radium submitted Drinker’s report to
the New Jersey Department of Labor, but with major changes.
Primarily, this new report absolved US Radium of
all culpability in the deaths of the woman thus far.
Writing to the Drinkers in 1925, Hamilton said, “The New Jersey
Department of Labor has a copy of your report and it shows that
‘every girl is in perfect condition.’ Do you suppose Roeder
could do such a thing as to issue a forged report in your name?”
Learning this, Drinker doubled down on his report,
ignored threats of lawsuit, and published his findings
to the chagrin of Roeder and the US Radium Company.
When the report went public, New Jersey’s labor commissioner
decided that all of Drinker’s safety precautions were to be
implemented immediately, resulting in the closure of the factory.
But that wasn’t the end of the Radium
Girls’ troubles, or those of US Radium’s.
In 1927, Grace Fryer, one of the former workers at the factory, after 2
years of looking, managed to find a lawyer willing to take on her case.
Fryer, in the preceding years, had been attending
doctors to get to the bottom of her horrifying symptoms.
After getting some x-rays, she found out that her jawbone was
filled with tiny holes, and her teeth would surely fall out soon.
She consulted the expertise of Dr.
Frederick Flynn from Colombia University.
With the aid of one of his colleagues, he examined
Fryer and determined that she was totally a-ok.
She was in perfect health.
Okay that’s weird, right?
Ohh, that explains it.
Dr Frederick Flynn was not a doctor.
Flynn was a toxicologist on the payroll of US Radium, and
his “colleague” was one of US Radium’s vice presidents.
Take that how you will.
Fryer was joined by her coworkers Edna Hussman, Katherine Schaub, Quinta
McDonald and Albina Larice, in a suit against the company with the help
of attorney Raymond Berry, and the Consumers’ League of New Jersey.
They sought $250,000 in damages from the company.
Today, that would come to about 4 million dollars.
However, US Radium had an ace up their sleeve
in the fight against the women they poisoned.
Just delay the trial until they die horrible deaths, bedridden and
destitute, and then happily continue poisoning women for profit.
Works like a charm.
The company stymied any attempt to set a court date.
When the women finally got their day in court in
January 1928, none of them were strong enough to even
raise their arms over their heads to take their oath.
Fryer could not sit up without the aid of a
back brace, and she was unable to walk as well.
One medical expert testified that the 5 women would be dead within
the year, and despite this, US Radium convinced the judge to yet
again delay the case because some of their witnesses were on vacation.
Cuz I mean let’s be honest, we wouldn’t want to
cut someone’s vacation short, that would be cruel.
Journalist Walter Lippmann called this decision, “one of the most
damnable travesties of justice that has ever come to our attention.
It is an outrage that the company should attempt to keep these
women from suing… There is no possible excuse for such a delay.
The women are dying.
If ever a case called for prompt adjudication, it is
the case of five crippled women who are fighting for a
few miserable dollars to ease their last days on Earth.”
Even Marie Curie addressed the case, saying, “I would be only too
happy to give any aid that I could, but there is absolutely no
means of destroying the substance once it enters the human body.”
To add insult to injury the trial uncovered the fact that
the male scientists employed by US Radium to process radium
into the powder that became Undark were issued lead aprons,
and only handled the radioactive material with metal tongs.
Whereas the women who actually handled the paint, who
had to put the brushes in their mouths as part of the job
description, were given no protective gear whatsoever.
In the end, the 5 women’s medical bills were piling up, and
knowing that the case would, in all likelihood, not finish
before their deaths, they decided to settle out of court.
US Radium agreed to the settlement, but not before they could get
District Court Judge William Clark assigned as a mediator for the case.
Oh and by the way, Judge William Clark was also a stockholder in US Radium.
That is how the world works!
The girls agreed not to hold US Radium responsible for their health
issues in exchange for $10,000 each— about 150,000 today, and the promise
that US Radium would cover their medical and legal expenses, as well
as $600—about 10,000 today, annually for as long as the women lived.
What did US Radium have to say about this result?
They asserted that they were right the whole time, but settled because the
public was biased against them, and they wouldn’t have gotten a fair trial.
I’m beginning to think “fair” doesn’t mean what I think it means.
Continuing, US Radium’s new president, Clarence Lee, said
“We unfortunately gave work to a great many people who were
physically unfit to procure employment in other lines of industry.
Cripples and persons similarly incapacitated were engaged.
What was then considered an act of kindness
on our part has since been turned against us.”
Poor them.
You may be disappointed to learn that not many of those
$600 annual payments actually ended up being paid,
since all but Albina Larice passed away before 1939.
But this story isn’t just about corporate negligence and greed.
It’s also a story about incremental change.
After the trial, the Consumers League of New Jersey, who
joined the 5 women in their lawsuit, campaigned to have
the radium necrosis classified as an occupational disease.
This gave workers the ability to claim
compensation when before they were given nothing.
Furthermore in 1941, New Jersey ruled that
all industrial diseases were compensatable.
The state also increased the amount of time
that workers could come forward with claims.
The case also led to the creation of the US Occupational Safety
and Health Administration, also known as OSHA 40 years later.
This didn’t stop the radiation train though, and radium continued
to be used for the dials on wristwatches until the 1960s.
Man: “The radium painted dial of your watch for instance, is harmless!”
Brew: However, workers were now required to wear protective
gear and stricter safety precautions were implemented.
Mae Keane, one of the women let go by one of the many radium dial factories
littering the American continent, passed away at the age of 107 in 2014.
Over her life she had health problems, bad teeth,
occasional migraines, and a couple fights with cancer.
It’s difficult to prove if any of that was connected to her time in
the factory in Waterbury, but her time there definitely wasn’t good.
It just goes to show how close we are to this history.
This is less than one human lifetime away.
These women died, often in horrible conditions with
no support, but their unwilling sacrifice cleared the
way for the labor laws that protect us to this day.
We owe them more than we could ever repay, and it’s up
to us to ensure nothing like this ever happens again.
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