Drinking The Cool Aid

Radium Girls // 194 // Part 3

• Megan and Hanna Hawkins • Season 1 • Episode 193

Share episode

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.

Website: https://www.drinkingthecoolaid.com/
Linktree: https://linktr.ee/drinkingthecoolaid
Support us: https://paypal.me/mhawk7?country.x=US&locale.x=en_US

Resources:

Support the show

The first case called to his attention was in June of 1925, when the very first MALE employee, Dr. Leman, had died. Martland was asked to do an autopsy due to Dr. Leman passing very quickly from anemia, but like too quicklyyy. Martland suspected radium poisioning but he needed to prove it, the tests he ran did not show radium as being the problem, so he realized he needed more specialists help to prove it, so he contacted someone at USRC and Von Sochocky. They were allowed to do further testing at the labs at USRC as long as they promised to stay quiet about their findings. 


The testing process for this caused them to make medical history as they were the very first people to ever measure radioactivity in a human body and their test was a SUCESS, they had proved that Dr. Leman had died from Radium poisioning. In order to do this test, they had to reduce his bone to ashes and used an electrometer to measure the amount of radioactivity that was in them. 


Martland went to meet Margureite and while doing so, noticed that he sister, Sarah wasnt doing so great herself, after running tests, he determined her sister too needed to be admitted to the hospital, sometimes running a fever of over 105, and so together the sisters lay, sharing a room, not having any idea how horrible of a fate they had ahead of them.


Martland desperatley wanted to test them for radium poisioning but uhhh how ya gonna do that when you have to reduce someones bones to dust to be able to do so. So him and Von Sochocky came up with their own way to be able to test living patients. They had come up with two methods, one was called the expired air test, in which the person would blow thru bottles, into an electroscope, so they could measure the amount of radon and the second method was called, the gamma-ray test, in which the person would sit in front of an electroscope, so it could read the gamma radiation coming from their skeletons. 


The very first person to EVER be tested for radium poisioning while alive, would be Marguerite's sister, Sarah. Now removed from her sister's room due to being so sick, she was going to be the person who either proved or disproved what they'd been fighting for, for so long.

They ran their very first test by holding the electrometer 18 inches from her bones, a quote, "normal leak" is 10 subdivisions in an hour, Sarah had leaked 14 subdivisions. They then did the breath test, which normal range would be, 5 subdivisions in a half hour, Sarah's was 15.4 subdivisions. Meaning she was actually breathing out radium. 
Sarah deteriorated very quickly and became delirious due to all the pain she was in, she became septic, had blood vessels bursting, and had pus and blood coming out of her mouth on a constant basis, and only a week after being admitted, she passed away on June 18th. 

Martland immediately jumped in to do an autopsy and since he now knew how to do it to be able to test for radium poisoning, he could do so on his own accord and not have to keep it a secret this time and he was ON TOP of things. As soon as Sarah passed, he let all his suspicions fly to the media, he made it clear it was suspicions, but also that he was trying to prove it wasn't. They picked the story right up and put in the paper. The very same paper that Marguerite was asking the nurses to see. She was denied and when she asked why, they informed her of her sister Sarah's death. Yep, you heard that right, she was in the same fucking hospital as her sister and was NOT told she had died until they were forced to tell her and she couldn't even attend her funeral because she was too sick. 


Martland put everything into testing Sarah's body because of course the company was REAL quick to deny her death having anything to do with working with radium. He examined her incredibly thouroughly and noted that her bad leg had been 4 centimeters shorter than her other leg and that her bone marrow was dark red instead of yellow and fatty like any healthy adult would have. He said the radium was in the heart of her bones, meaning the very layer where bone marrow is produced, it was DIRECTLY next to it. He tested her organs and bones that werent even near the mouth, as that's where most of the girls had the start to their issues, and he discovered that literally her ENTIRE body was radioactive. 

He did one last test and truly I think this is brilliant, he took some of Sarah's bones, and strapped dental films, like for Xrays, all over them, then left them in the dark room. When preforming this experiment on regular healthy bones, he would leave them in place for a few months at a time, sometimes up to 4 months, and absolutley nothing would happen to the film. When Sarah's bones were left for only 60 hours, they caused white expsoure patches all over the film. 
The Drinkers got word of Sarah's death and finally pulished their original report, in August of 1925. This started to finally blow things up a bit and of course there was a response from the radium companies, but its absoluteley the same things youve been hearing the whole time from them, so we are gonna skip that speach. 


Now it's time to test Marguerite. So the subdivison leaks actually flucuate on what's normal depending on enviormental factors, so that day it was 8.5 in 50 minutes, Marguerite measured in at 99.7 subdivisions, but that wasn't higher than Von Sochocky's amount, whos turned out to be higher than anyones in the first few tests. 
Katherine, Quinta, and Grace Fryer, thru connections of knowing eachother and Dr. Knef, who was working with Martland, all went to get tested for radium poisioning. One by one all 3 of the girls took both tests, and one by one all 3 girls were told they in fact, did have radium poisioning and there was no cure. (Remember, at the time since radium poisioning wasn't known, these girls had hope that they would figure out what's wrong with them and find a cure, now theyre being told, well we know what you have, but there's no way to fix it, can you imagine the frustration and let down!?)

Tho obviously incredibly devastating news, this was the legal proof they needed to start fighting. 
They started talking to lawyers and were broken the news that there was a 5 month statue of limitations for them reporting this in NJ, of which all 3 girls were past. There was a 2 year statue if filed thru federal court, but they were sadly past that too. 
Martland and Katherine Schaub got together to do something neither of them wanted to do. Create a list of all those sick, dead, or knocking on deaths door. A list that would later be called, the list of the doomed. Katherine gave him all the names she could think of, Martland made the list, and over time, he added names to the list and also added the dreaded, "D" next to womens names, meaning they had passed on. 


Katherine was becoming sicker and sicker, she no longer got her period, couldnt eat, her body was not functioning properly, her personality had changed to more of a gloom, and she had to be admitted for nervous issues. 
Marguerite was still hanging on with almost white blood and her blood cell count being a mere 20%, regular being 100%, her jaw had become a literal stump, as most of it had rotted away. 
Sharing the same hospital as Marguerite, was Albina Larice, not for radium poisioning but because she was pregnant. She had been experiencing pain that felt off, pain that didn't make sense, but she knew something was wrong. She had gone into labor with her son and was told to push, so she did, but she would never get to hear his little cry, as he was unfortunately stillborn. 


Only a couple short weeks after the loss of her son, Albina started to be in a lot of pain. After no help from her famliy physician, she consulted, Dr. Humphries, who worked at the Orthopedic Hospital. This is where she overheard some doctors, talking about how she could be one of the radium cases. They placed her in a plaster cast for 4 months, but much like when they did this with Quinta, it didn't have any benefits. 
Also seeing Dr. Humphries, was Edna. She had found him after being treated for rheumatism and showing no improvements. He noted her left leg was an inch shorter than the right, which we have seen multiple times now. He did an Xray after she had a slight fall, not a bad one, just a normal fall, and she had broken her femur. That's how brittle these poor women's bones were becoming at this point. What her Xray did NOT show, was any signs of radium poisioning, so she was treated with a plaster cast and sent on her way. 


In the early morning of Boxing Day, 1925, at only 24 years old, Marguerite was reunited with her sister as she passed away in her home. Her parents left behind, to bury both their daughters. Tho she did not die in vein, as Marguerite was one of the very first to bring a lawsuit against the company, and that was not forgotten. 
In 1926, Wiley was able to pass a new law, making radium necrosis, a formally compensable disease. She thought it went too smoothly, and that's because of all the things they attached before passing it. Anyone injured before 1926, were not allowed to file a claim, and because it became part of the exsisting law, the 5 month statue of limits was attached to it, well like weve talked about, the symptoms do NOT show up in that amount of time, it can sometimes take years, and the new law ONLY covered radium necrosis, specifically aggresive jaw necrosis, meaning that every other issue that came with radium poisioning was NOT covered. 


Grace Fryer and Albina were both rapidly declining and nothing was helping either of them, with Grace down to just 3 teeth left on her lower jaw, and Albina with locked hips, making it almost impossible to do anything. Katherine Schaub refusing to leave her house unless for church, was too rapidly declining and horribly depressed. 
An article was published and it was titled, Suits Are Settled in Radium Deaths. It stated that USRC had setteled out of court on suits of Hazel Kuser, Marguerite Carlough, and Sarah Malliefer. The settlements were 9,000, 3,000, and 1,000. (This is obviously SOMETHING, but not nearly enough. Not enough to even cover the left over medical bills)


Grace Fryer saw this article and used it as fuel, maybe she too could get some of her medical bills covered and get the word out there that this is actually happening. Her claim was sent by her lawyer to USRC, they had their lawyer respond back, and Grace was told she could settle for 5,000. Grace wasn't trying to be greedy even after everything she had gone thru with them and was going to settle if they decided not to take a better offer for her. USRC responded back that they would not offer her anything more and would no longer settle, so her lawyer, dropped her case. 
Articles are still being published at this point as an attempt to cover everything up and they were even using old publishing studies from people who no longer believed it was safe, but they just went ahead and let that happen, no one said shit about it.  
The company doctor, Flinn, examined Grace himself and claimed her blood picture was better than his and she was completley healthy. 


Dr. Knef, remember, he was a dentist who was helping a lot of these girls, got a little too fed up with basically giving out services for free and a whole lot too cocky, and went to USRC with a proposition. He was going to keep treating these girls, but he was going to keep them as quiet as possible for the next 4-5 years because ya know, a majority of them are going to die anyway during that time, and hed keep all his findings quiet, as long as USRC would pay him a certain amount of money to care for the girls. They basically told him to go fuck himself and they had Dr. Flinn, if they needed examinations done. (talk about how sick it is that he changed sides for money)
Keep in mind, the girls at Radium Dial, in Ottawa, have basically zero clue whats happening over in Orange, New York, still. They were using those glass pens for a short time instead of the brushes, but that didnt last long, and they went back to the same old methods, lip, dip, paint. 


Poor Grace's condition was getting really bad, her spine had been shattered and her foot had crushing and thinning of the bone, she was put in a solid steel back brace, she had to wear it daily, and was only allowed to take it off for 2 minutes at a time. She was contiuously being denied by everyone she tried to contact to help her legally, but was referred by Hoffman to an attorney by the name of Raymon H. Berry. So in may of 1927, she met with him and gave him a very lengthy statment. Just 3 days later, Katherine Schaub also contacted him. He conducted interviews with Von Sochocky amd Martland, then called Katherine and Grace back. He was going to take their case. 
Berry had an angle, the girls had only been diagnosed in July of 1925 by Martland, meaning that 2 year statue of limits, only started when they were diagnosed. And May 18th, 1927, Grace's case was offically filed. 


Grace was suing for 125,000, which would now be about 1.7 million. Word spread fast about the girl who showed up to court in a steel frame, and more girls started coming forward, including Quinta who could no longer bend over, and her sister Albina whos left leg was now 4 inches shorter than the right. Berry started filing lawsuits for whoever came forward and if they were married, for their husbands also. In June Edna also got ahold of Berry, after she was fumbling for her medicine in the dark, saw herself in the mirror, screamed and passed out, because there staring back at her in the mirror, was all her bones, glowing thru her skin. 
In the summer of 1927, all 5 girls, were officially a part of this case, and so the fight began.


Resources: