America’s Shining Girls – Part 2.

by Harper Smith

(Find part one here!)

Mollie’s death was a tragedy, but unfortunately, it did not gain media coverage. For all they knew, it was one girl, who suffered tragically and died horrifically, but with no one to blame. Her story could very well have gone unknown–if it was not for the girls at the factories. In fact, one in particular, Irene Rudolph, may have been the one to truly start it all. In 1922, she began regularly seeing a dentist for much of the same problems that Mollie suffered from. Although the dentists she saw had never crossed paths with the man who operated on Maggia before her death, Irene had been friends with her, and after the similar stories from a few other women who’d also worked at the dial factory, she began to be suspicious. Doctors began to suspect the chemicals from the plant may have had something to do with it, but they could find no proof, the radium companies made too much profit to even consider looking into the issue. Radium is perfectly safe, they would say, and that was that. Meanwhile, former and current employee deaths began to pile up. 

But the girls and their families wouldn’t stand for that. They tried to sue the company, and two professional medical investigators were even hired to inspect the facility. But their reports came back unhelpful–the employees’ blood was “practically normal,” from all they could tell, and Radium Dial remained fully in business. In fact, when another former employee, Hazel Kuser, began to experience a rapid decline in her health, the firm refused to pay any of her crushing medical bills, and her family was soon nearly broke. A brave group of the suffering women–Grace Fryer, Katherine Schuab, Edna Hussman, and Quinta and Albina MacDonald–did eventually press a lawsuit against the firm, but it was a very slow-moving process, and although the presence of radiation was being discovered in the corpses of the fallen girls, the company conducted many schemes to keep them from winning. Despite their efforts, the case fell short.

It seemed hopeless, and it nearly was. But in 1937, seven years after the deaths of the original women who fought for the case, five new women took a stand for their rights. They were very ill–the radium had been working its way into their body for a long time now, and it had been taking its toll. Several of them could not even travel to court, including Catherine Wolfe Donohue, who was so sick by the time of the proceedings that doctors were not sure she’d live to see the hearing. But their ailing health only made them more determined. Their bodies’ luminous glow, which had once signified wonder and prosperity, now spelled their doom: radium poisoning has no cure. But they could not let other women continue to suffer as they did. And so they fought. They found a lawyer, Leonard Grossman, who took the case for free, as they were very poor. Radium Dial was by now very sick of these meddling women indeed–but as the papers began to report on the case, calling them “The Living Dead” and taking their side, the company began to sweat. 

The girls testified on February 10, 1938. They were pushing for money, a settlement from the company to help pay the medical bills they would not have had to face if it was not for radium, but it was more than that. They wanted the truth. They wanted the company to admit what they’d done, to them and to so many others: that they’d lead an entire generation of women to their untimely deaths just for profit. 

It was Catherine who would be their savior. She was so weak that she needed the support of at least two other people to stand, and her voice was quiet and faltering as she told her story. But tell it she did, laying out the years spent working as a dial painter and the illness that followed, the company’s firm insistence that there was nothing wrong with her or the other women. There’s nothing wrong with you–these were the words spoken by the company president when Charlotte Purcell came to him missing her entire left arm. When the firm stole Peg Looney’s body and removed her radiation-drenched bones so that her death could not be tied to them. When the dial painters begged, year after year, for some closure in what was happening to them. Some explanation for why their teeth were rotting, their limbs were shrinking, their bodies were becoming riddled with cancerous growths. We are blameless, Radium Dial would say, and send their fake doctors out with the “proof.” 

Catherine talked for hours at her hearing, but she could not go forever. Halfway through, doctors–real doctors–were brought in to share the reports they had taken of her illness. It was to help prove the existence of radium poisoning, but when they shared the horrible truth–radium is permanent. Radium is terminal.–she collapsed to the ground with a scream so anguished it could be heard from the corridors outside. Catherine had so much to live for: she had her husband, her three children, she had her fellow dial painters, who had become her closest friends. She had been holding out for a cure, and hearing that there was none was too much for her and her ailing body to bear. She was taken back to her home, but her spouse Tom stayed to hear the rest of the report. Months to live. Incurable in her stage. Your wife is going to die. 

She was too ill to leave her bed after the collapse–in fact, her physicians said it would prove immediately fatal. But Catherine Donohue was a fighter. She would not rest until she and her friends, and the countless others before them, saw justice. “It is too late for me…” she said, “ but maybe it will help some of the others.” The hearing resumed the next day, at her bedside.  Lawyers, doctors, judges, and friends all clustered together around her, straining to hear her muffled words. She demonstrated the ‘lip, dip, point’ routine that had led her to ingest so much poison. She told stories of how the firm had told her to paint better, faster, to not get any grease on the dials–but never that radium was toxic. Her voice was tired, and she struggled to keep her eyes open, but she fought. Catherine Donohue fought for all the women of Radium Dial, for her friends, herself, and for the rights of factory workers everywhere.

On April 5th, 1938, the verdict was ruled. 

They had found Radium Dial guilty. 

For years, the Radium Girls have been the unsung heroines of our country. Thanks to their bravery, radium poisoning was recognized as an official, deadly disease. Thanks to their desire for justice, workers’ rights everywhere were improved as they had never been before. Thanks to their determination, their fighting spirits that carried on through horrific suffering and fatal disease, they brought down a cruel organization that would have rather covered up murder than pay an ounce of money to their victims. These women are the true champions of America, and it’s up to you and me to remember their victory for years to come. 

(Author’s note: nearly all the information in this report was gathered from Kate Moore’s nonfiction novel “The Radium Girls.” It is a wonderful, informative book that shines light on these brave women and their individual stories. There was a plethora of information that I was not able to include in this two-part publication, and I sincerely hope that you consider going out and reading it, it is not an exaggeration to say it’s one of my all-time favorite books. The stories of Catherine, Grace, Mollie, Quinta, Albina, Peg, Inez, Charlotte, Marie, and so many more are not tales to be missed.)