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

Soon after she gives birth, Albina develops serious pains and seeks the assistance of Dr. Humphries, who works at the Orthopedic Hospital. He puts her in plaster casts, which do not help. Edna Hussman is also treated for hip pain at the hospital. She suffers a spontaneous fracture of the femur, but her x-ray does not show the white film that the others’ x-rays had shown.

Dr. Flinn continues his work, too, having been asked by USRC to examine as many workers as possible. Using a list of names given to him by Wiley, who hadn’t known he was with USRC, he writes to Katherine Schaub and others who worked at the factory. However, he examines mostly current employees and few former employees.

Dr. Martland publishes a medical study with Dr. Knef and Dr. Conlon, another physician, that explains radium poisoning. The conclusions are rejected by many in the radium industry, as Martland also rejects the popular idea that ingesting radium has health benefits. USRC is pleased with the backlash to Martland’s work, and believes that Dr. Flinn is about to publish opposing evidence. However, Flinn had privately written to Drinker that he suspected radium is the cause of the girls’ illnesses. 

In 1926, two pieces of good news greet the “radium girls.” First, radium necrosis is added to the list of compensable diseases under workplace compensation laws. Second, USRC settles and pays out to the families who filed suits, likely because they would have lost had the case gone to court. Grace Fryer is newly optimistic that this could open to the door for a bigger suit, and files a suit with the help of lawyer Henry Gottfried. USRC’s lawyer, Stryker, responds that the company will not pay out without a suit. This confuses Grace, as she thought her case was strong and that the new worker’s compensation law would help. However, the law does not allow retroactive compensation, and has a statute of limitations of five months. It also only would compensate the jaw necrosis, not the other radium-induced conditions.

Grace’s lawyer drops her case. Meanwhile, Dr. Flinn by publishing a false paper declaring the radium paint safe, which directly contradicts what he wrote to Drinker. Knef was “at his wits’ end” (205) and approaches the executives of USRC with an offer. He offers to testify against the girls in exchange for $10,000 ($134,000), then threatens that if they do not agree to his offer, he would testify against USRC in court, explaining that “It [is] customary for experts to testify for the people who pa[y] them” (206). Unbeknownst to Knef, USRC has already secured Dr. Flinn, so Knef is of little use to them. They declare his proposition immoral, and later use the fact that they had refused the offer as a way to take the “moral high ground” (207).

It is 1926 in Ottawa, Illinois, weddings between dial-painters and local men are extremely common. At one such wedding, Catherine Wolfe meets Thomas Donohue, a painter and laborer. They wed in 1932.

News of the suits in Orange never reaches the Ottawa dial-painters’ ears. The scientific studies are debated in small, medical circles, and the articles published in the East-coast papers never make it to the Midwest. Despite the publicity about radium paint, including Swen Kjaer’s study, there are no interventions on a national level to monitor workplace practices such as lip-pointing. Radium Dial introduces glass pens as an alternative, but they are not commonly adopted and result in less accurate work. Consequently, the pens fall out of use and are not replaced with anything better. 

Back in Orange, Dr. Martland sends Grace Fryer to Dr. Humphries’ office for new x-rays after she sharply worsened. Hoffman had written to Roeder on Grace’s behalf only to learn that he had left USRC. The new president, Clarence B. Lee, rejects Hoffman’s request for help.

Meanwhile, one of Grace’s vertebrae and a foot shatter from the effects of radium. She continues to run into roadblocks with lawyers who repeatedly tell her that her case is impossible. Finally, at Hoffman and Martland’s urging, she consults the young lawyer Raymond Herst Berry, who takes on her case. His central argument would be that because USRC had actively mislead the girls, causing a delay, the two-year statute of limitations period should not legally have begun until they got their official diagnosis from Martland in July 1925. This meant that they had two months remaining to file a suit, which they did on May 18, 1927. Grace’s case attracts sympathetic headlines, and encouraged, Edna, Quinta, Albina, and their husbands file suits with Berry as well.

The cases surprise USRC, but the company quickly issues a response that denies responsibility and blames the girls for being negligent in their work. While USRC hires private detectives to follow the girls and spread rumors about them, Berry begins interviewing the girls’ allies, Wiley, Hamilton, Hoffman, Martland, Humphries, and von Sochocky. Drinker refuses to assist, and is involved only through an official court summons. Martland, too, is reluctant to testify as he does not want to get involved in the fierce legal battle.

Meanwhile, Dr. Flinn continues to work on USRC’s side. Berry learns that workers from the Waterbury Clock Company in Connecticut have radium poisoning, but that none of the workers have filed suits due to Dr. Flinn’s interventions. He has had “full access” to the girls, repeatedly denying that their tests showed any signs of radium poisoning. He “was willing to play a two-faced role” (227). He deceives the dial-painters into thinking he is a “concerned medical expert” (227) while also persuading them to settle with the company, which frees USRC “from further liability” (228). The settlements are very small, and had the girls had legal advice, they could have gotten justice through worker’s compensation, with its more generous five-year statute of limitations. Because Waterbury is a clock company, and not a radium company, agreeing to small settlements and thus “admitting that the paint had harmed the girls” (228) did not affect the rest of their business. When Berry learns of this, he investigates Dr. Flinn further and learns that Dr. Flinn has no medical training, and is a complete fraud.