Drinking The Cool Aid

Radium Girls // 192 // Part 1

• Megan and Hanna Hawkins • Season 1 • Episode 192

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The Radium Girls were female factory workers who contracted radiation poisoning beginning in 1917, while they were painting watches with self-luminous paint.  This occurred at three factories in the United States: Orange, New Jersey, Ottawa, Illinois, and Waterbury Connecticut.  The women were assured that the paint was harmless, but that wasn't true, and they ingested deadly amounts of radium.

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Radium- radioactive element that glows in the dark 

 Radium, the "wonder substance" or, "liquid sunshine".  Because of its success on curing some cancers, it was largely believed radium was good for you. Doctors used it. Companies started putting it in their beauty and skin care products. Some water had radium in it and was called, Tonic Water. It was added to butter, lotions milk, toothpaste, soaps, bug killers, powder, cleaner for your furniture, counter, and tiles. Was used for constipation. People read about it in the newspapers and magazines and thought it could cure basically everything, including the elderly, by quote, "Making an old man you again" Doctors sold radioactive dressing and pills. People thought it had been predicted in the bible that this magic healing drug would come around. It could extend life. There was radium lined jars that youd fill with water and the recommended daily dose was 5 to 7 glasses a day. Radium jock straps, and lingerie, because who doesnt want their shit glowing?? Spa treatments, and there is even a song called, Radium Dance.


I will say, a lot of the companies that claimed to be adding radium to their products, weren't actually doing so, because it was ridiculously expensive. They only claimed it was added, but there was also of course companies that actually did. An object quote on quote containing radium could cost anywhere from 200 bucks to 4,000. TALK ABOUT PRICES OF RADIUM. 


WW1 caused factories to start popping up U.S. and these factories were producing watch dials, these dials were typically for people in the military, what made them so different was that they were painting the dials with a material containing radium, a paint called, Undark. This caused the watch dials to glow in the dark, which was helpful becasue they didn't want people at war having to shine a flashlight on their watches in the pitch dark because that could of course give away their position, so a lot of soldiers wore these glow in the dark watches, in turn causing demand and production to eventually go up. 


New factories opened up a lot of new positions for jobs, this job in particular tho, was looking for women, specifically because women have small hands, which made it easier for them to paint detailed work. It wasnt only watch dials they painted, it was clocks ranging from TELL SIZE  The pay was super good at the time, so this was turned into a really sought after job by many many women and 100's of women were hired. The three main factories were established and located in Orange, New Jersey in 1917, Ottowa, Illinois in 1920, and Waterbury, Connecticut in 1920.


All of these poor women who flocked in for a great job oppurtunity, would later be known as the quote, "living death victims", Ghost Girls, a lot of people know them as, radium girls, and Chicago newspaper named them, quote, "The Legion of the Doomed"


I just want to make this clear before we jump into this story too far, but once radium is in you, wether it be injestion, thru the skin, however, there is NO WAY to remove it, nothing you can do, nadda. 


These women at these factories end up becoming SO exposed to radium, my mind has a hard time wrapping around it. 


One of the many reasons radium is so dangerous is because it settles into your bones like calcium and makes your bones weak and brittle, one of the most common things happening, being honeycombing, which unfortunatley is exactly what you think.          And yes, as we all know radiation CAN actually help cure cancer, because it kills off the bad tissue, but it also kills off the good tissue too, it doesnt only attack the bad, doesnt pick and choose, it attacks everything. 


As early as 1914, some specialists knew that radium could be dangerous. When first used, it caused the bone marrow to produce extra red blood cells, in turn being good for the body, the problem is, that gave the illusion of giving a health boost, but the body cannot keep up with the overstimulation of red blood cells being produced, so instead the blood cells are destroyed and cause mountains of issues.


In order to paint the clock dials, the girls were given  EXPLAIN HOW PAINT WAS MADE.  They were set up at long tables, basically like a lunch table, with 20-30 girls per table. given a flat wooden tray, paper dials that were preprinted on the background of the face, and the numbers were left white for painting. They painted various sizes of clock faces, the smallest being a pocket watch, called the Pocket Ben, that was 3 1\2 cm across the face, making the smallest painting detail only a mm in width. All of the paint brushes were made of camel hair and really small, but the brush for the Pocket Ben was only about 30 camel hairs. 30 freaking camel hairs. Knowing that, it makes sense why dials this small were only for the most experienced painters. Every women started out painting the Big ben, which was an alarm clock, and they'd progress down to the smaller more detailed ones as they got better and better at it. 


So they had to paint each and every number individually, they did this using what they called, the: Lip, Dip, Paint, method. These girls would the paintbrush into their mouths, twirl it with their tongues or point it with their lips, dip it in the radium, paint a number, put it back in their mouths, dip it back in the radium, paint a number, and so on so that they could paint fine details. (Talk about pointing a paint brush) Some girls also used their fingernails to remove any excess paint that would accidentally get on the dial. They were doing this for each individual number. Some painters could get a few numbers in before having to put it back in their mouth and some had to do it multiple times per number (Talk about this more) 


This method wasn't the main one in the beginning, at first you got a small bit of water to dip the brush into, but okay, so you know how when you dip a paint brush in water, it causes it to flay out, welllll, that caused too much material to be wasted in the water, so they took that option away, and decided to be a bunch of assholes and poison their employees instead. The girls had a strict set amount of material and that was all they were allowed to use, they were not allowed to ask for more. They did help eachother out to keep one another out of trouble because you could literally be fired if they found out you wee wasting paint. At the end of the night, they'd go to the dark room, brush off the radium dust, and it'd be swept up to use the next day in the paint. Again, radium was suuuuuper expensive, coming in at $120,000 for a single gram, which would be about $2.2 million now


 When they questioned if it was dangerous at all, they were told it was perfectly safe and would make them glow and look good! 


By mixing their radium powder, they'd stir up dust, that would go up into the air, on the floor, their clothes, everywhere. In fact, they were exposed to SO much radium dust daily, that their hair, skin, teeth, clothes, nails, everything would glow. Women would wear their best or most fancy clothes to work so that when they went out dancing, to social events, on dates, their clothes would be glowing. People would see them walking down the street glowing and say they looked like ghosts. But these glowing girls were thought of super highly and known for being so lucky.


The girls weren't only exposed by the dust and paintbrushes tho, they also thought daily exposure of radium was healthy for them, they applied it to their teeth for a radiant smile, use it on their skin, lips, eyes, used it as makeup and nailpolish, some girls painted themselves with it, using it as like a party paint. Some of the girls liked to go in the dark room and paint eachother so they all were glowing, have parties back there, sprinkle it in eachothers hair, do designs, get it super close to their eyes, literally like we do now (talk about how megan and I have) At one point they were even eating at their work stations. Some girls even brought little bits of it home at the end of the day and put it all over the objects in their house or other random objects they owned. 



The hiring age for these factories claimed to be 18 and up, but there is more than enough proof that they were hiring wayyy younger than that, some as young as 11. A lot of them were straight out of highschool. 


The pay for these jobs was a lot higher than most places, which is one of the main reasons people thought the painters were so lucky. They were in the top 5% of female wages earners. Some of the most talented painters made even more than there their fathers, which was just absolutley crazy at the time, women didn't typically make more than men. Or they could make up to 3 times as much as the average painter. Not only was the pay good, but some girls viewed this as their patriotic contribution to people at war because they're making a majority of these watches for the soldiers. And actually a lot of these girls loved their job. 


The average pay was about 1 1/2 cents per clock face, some women averaging out around 200 faces a day. They'd take home about $20 a week, which now would be about $370. The fastest painters would of course be the top earners coming in at an average annual salary of about $2,080, which now would be around $40,000


Now, because pay was so good and they were still thinking the radium was healthy for them, some of them brought in their whole families, or entire sets of siblings.. Sisters, moms, daughters, friends, aunts, all worked together painting the dials. 


Fun Fact: Because a lot of the painters were teenagers, some would etch their names and addresses into a watch, as a little message for whatever soldier ends up wearing it, and sometimes theyd even get a letter back from them!! Which... is like super cute for then, but maybe not now...


I'm sure you've figured out by now, that a lot of these girls end up getting incredibly sick from the radium. 


SO, knowing all that, one of the most unfortunate things in this, is that it took a few years to symptoms to even start preseting themselves with many of them, or symptoms were so minor that they would have never been chalked up to it being work related. Another MAJOR problem here is radium was still decently new at the time, doctors did not even recongnize radium poisiong as a thing yet, most didn't even know it was a possiblity. So if the girls did have some sort of weird symptom and chose to go to the doctor about it, their symptoms would be chalked up to other things. It would have also been difficult, because any symptoms that did pop up at first, were all different for the women, so it would have been difficult for doctors to connect the dots right away. We are talking bones all of a sudden being easily broken, zits or cysts popping up in random places, toothaches, loose teeth, sore joints, teeth falling out, headaches, literally all over the place. On top of all that, a lot of people couldn't afford to go to the doctor anyway, so their symptoms were going under the radar. 


There were some girls who said the paint made them feel sick right off the bat and left the job and some that got sores in their mouth after only a month, but it was most likely thought to be a random reaction to something.


We are going to jump into a few personal stories quick and I'm going to start name dropping a bit. Starting with Kathering Schaub, super important name. Kathering started at the factory in NJ at the age of 14, just shy of 15 by 5 weeks. She was a beautiful young girl, with piercing blue eyes, was popular among her piers, really smart, and a quick learner. Before she worked at the factory, she was worked as wrapping parcels in Bamberger's Department, so this job was really a step up. Her dream job was to work in a literary career. She started under an inspector apprenticeship. So the NJ factory had a government contract to supply luminous airplane instruments as the war raging in Europe cause sales to go up, they also made dials for ships and compasses. Katherine would oversee plane stuff, making sure lines were 100% perfect, correcting minor issues, and with this actually came huge responsibility because these lines in particular had to do with planes, lives were on the line if it got messed up. Katherine was amazing at her job and soon became a dial painter. As she was promoted, Congress voted America into the conflict of the war in Europe and they needed to bring in more girls than they'd had before to keep up with sales. 


This factory is NJ we've been talking about, was originally located in Newark NJ and named Radium Luminous Materials Corporation. Due to supply and demand during the pick up of the war, they moved to a bigger building in Orange NJ, and changed their name to American Radium Company. They chose this area specifically due to their being a large amount of immigrant communities, as they provided work for numerous factories in the area. Once they moved buildings, they were able to have a dark room, do their own extraction, had labs, and their own processing plant. 


At this point you'll hear me referring to it as, American Radium, a lot. 


And business booming brings us to Grace Fryer, who was the eldest girl born in her family, 4th of 10 children altogether. 4 Boys and 6 girls. She was closest to her little brother Art, and her sister who was closest in age to her, Adelaide. She had brown curly hair and hazel eyes. She was known to be striking, but didn't really give two shits. She was all about living life and really career driven. She had a job making around the same as the painters made, but left that job to start at the factory because she lived in Orange, where the factory was located. Grace would eventually bring her little sister, Adelaide onto the job with her. Adelaide loved the social side of the job, which was a huge appeal to a lot of the girls, especially with so many being so young. She didn't have the same drive as Grace tho and was fired for talking too much. Grace is an important name you want to remember. 


For Grace,  it started with a slight pain in her bag, not enough to be dabilitating, but enough to annoy her and make walking uncomfortable. She had a few other aches and pains that had gone away on their own, and she had been promoted, so it wasn't something that was priority, she figured it was rehumatism.


Another young girl hired was Edna Bolz. She loved music and was religious. She was taller than most of her coworkers, elegant, fair skinned with golden hair, and a beaming smile. Also a major character in this. 


FIND ALBINA AND QUINTA STORIES AND PUT HERE


I do want to throw this in as a quick side note, the factories in other countries, INCLUDING Europe, were NOT using the, lip, dip, paint method. They were in operation for quite sometime, used all different methods, but never that required you to put the paintbrush in your mouth, but the girls in the U.S. did NOT know this at the time.

Katherine started developing pimples, which of course isn't that out of the ordinary for a teenager, but she decided to get checked out by a doctor anyway. When the doctor came back to give her results, he freaking asked her if she worked with phosphurus, because there had been literal changes in her blood. There was a well known industrial poison that was common in Newark, and he really thought she was dealing with that based off her results. But of course she had to tell him she was NOT working with phosphuros, so that wouldnt add up. Well now her doctor starts questioning like what the fuck are you working with?? So Katherine starts asking around to see if she can find out more. She questioned a few coworkers and it started to scare some of them a bit, because none of them knew what they were truly working either. So one of them tried to talk to their Boss, George Willis, who came out to the factory along with Von Sochocky, and convinced the girls it was absolutley safe to be around. We will talk about the two guys I just mentioned a little later on, just know they both suck. But Katherine's skin cleared up, so everyone kind of forgot about it.    

Amelia Maggia, known as, Mollie, who was Albina's sister,

 who always showed up to work with a smile on her face and enthusiasm. Was one of the first to start showing symptoms. It started with a toothache that bothered her enough to get it checked out. She went to the dentist, got the tooth removed, and returned back to work. Only problem was that hole where the tooth was, was not healing. She was recommended a dentist that specialized in rare mouth diseases and his name was Dr.Knef. Went she went in, the pain in her jaw and gums had become almost unbearable. The dentist did his examination and found that several of her teeth were loose. So he treated her for pyorrhea which is actually pretty common.

Pyorrhea is an infection in your gums, which causes them to swell and can result in loss of some teeth. 


Mollie kept having to get more teeth pulled as the dentist tried to stop the infection, but instead, none of the holes would heal, and instead, horribly painful ulcers would pop up where the teeth once were. This also caused a bad smell on her breath, so she stopped talking as much not only because of the pain but because she was embarassed by the smell. She kept on chugging at work no matter how fatigued she was, but her teeth were to the point where they straight fell out, they didn't even need to be pulled anymore. She was getting aches and pains in her joints and random parts of her body. She had seen a few different people at this point, but no one could figure out how to help, and her mouth and jaw were literally disintegrating. The doctors had finally come to a conclusion in January of 1922. A young single woman... of course it must be syphilis. For those who don't know what that is, it is a sexually transmitted infection that is bacterial, it usually startsw as sores, progresses to rashes, it can lay dorminant for years, and if not treated it can get very serious, very quickly, including affecting the brain.


Mollies test came back negative for syphilis, so it was back to the drawing board. Dr.Knef came up with the idea that it might be something similar to phosphorus poisoining, since there's a similar conditon called, "Phossy Jaw" the effects the gums teeth, all of that. And also much like Katherines doctor had thought she had at one point due that change in her blood. But he did say that her breath smelled different that what you'd associate with necrosis of the jaw, it had a bad smell, but it was just different. When she told Dr.Knef that she painted watches with undark for her job, he went to the factory himself and tried to ask what they used in the paint. Tho of course they refused to tell him anything about what's in it, they assured him that phosphorus was NOT used in the paint and that there's absolutely no way her sickness could be caused by anything at their perfect fucking factory. Her mouth continued to fill with sores to the point where she could hardly eat anymore. She was forced to quit her job to focus on trying to figure out what was wrong with her, aside from her rehumatism, which was getting worse. 


A little while passes and Dr. Knef gives her a call to come back in, so he can check her progress. But instead she shows up in even worse condition. She hobbles to the chair so he can examine what teeth she has left. There weren't many. She motioned that one side of her jaw was hurting the most. He super gently reached in her mouth to see if he could find the cause and her freaking jaw bone broke against his fingers. So he literally just grabbed part of her jaw bone and removed it right there, no surgery, nothing, just reached in, and lifted it out. Only a week later, her entire jaw bone was removed, by him reaching in her mouth, and just lifting it out.  (Talk about pain) 

Mollie at this point was anemic, continounsly getting sick, was tested again by Dr.Knef for syphilis. This time tho, the results came back positive. Even tho that wasn't what she had, It unfortanelty wouldn't matter much anyway, as removing parts of the dying bone was actally speeding up the process, with her jaw randomly bleeding and throat always horribly sore, Mollie was just living in nonstop, constant pain all day, every day. On September 12th, at 5 p.m., Mollie died a horrible death as she hemorraghed so fast and so much that Edith could not stop it. As the disease had spread into Mollie's throat, it had ate its way thru her jugular. There was absolutley nothing anybody could do. You guys, This all went down within a year. She was 24 years old when she died. 

Doctors still being confused as to what happened, determined her cause of death to be, syphilis. (talk more about)

She was buried on September 14th, 1922, at Rosedale Cemetery, In orange, NJ. Finally free of pain. 

Fun fact: Dr. Knef kept a piece of Mollie's jawbone because he was so fascinated by it, he grabbed her xrays out of the drawer her kept it in one day, and low and behold, her xrays had become foggy, they were no longer clear, which was really confusing to him because nothing was in his drawer that could have caused this.