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Throughout history, women have often been treated like second class citizens. Women have had to fight for the right to be legally independent from their husbands and for the right to vote. Few cases demonstrate just how undervalued women have sometimes been than the experiences of the young women who worked with radium paint in the early 20th century.
In the 1920s, a position as a dial painter was considered excellent work for a young, working-class woman. The girls were skilled at the fine work, and the companies paid well to have the luminescent paint applied to small watch faces and instrument dials. Once girls obtained a position, they helped friends, sisters, and cousins get into the company as well.
Since radium was believed to have health benefits, little control was exercised over the use of radium paint. The girls would paint their nails and use it like makeup. Their dresses would glow in the evening from the dust that settled on them while at work. When applying paint to the tiny watch faces, the girls would create a fine point on their brushes by placing it between their lips.
Then girls started dying.
Girls in their teens and twenties working in dial painting studios started suffering from fatigue, headaches, digestive issues, and pain in their joints, but one of the worst symptoms of radium poisoning affected their mouths and jaws. They noticed loose teeth that eventually fell out, leaving behind sores that wouldn't heal. Several women eventually died from so much of their mouths rotting away that they bled to death.
The wide variety of symptoms made it difficult to diagnose radium poisoning and made it easier for the radium industry to claim that no such thing existed.
It was eventually discovered that radium took calcium's place in the women's bones, making them fragile and radioactive. Broken and disintegrating bones left some bedridden and others in stiff braces to hold their spines in place. If the early symptoms did not prove fatal, the women started developing tumors and cancers that left them infertile, required amputations, or caused their bodies to simply waste away.
The first test for diagnosing radium poisoning was developed after a male employee of US Radium Corp died. No one had listened to the female dial painters, but the death of a male scientist was more difficult to ignore. During the autopsy, the victim's bones were reduced to ashes so that they could be tested with an electrometer, and radium poisoning was officially diagnosed for the first time.
This didn't help those who were sick, since their bones couldn't be removed and tested, so work began in earnest to develop additional tests. In 1925, decades after the discovery of radium, scientists and doctors finally determined ways to measure radioactivity in bones and breath. The dial painters who were tested had results that indicated radium deposits within their bodies at extraordinarily high levels.
Unfortunately, there was still no cure. While those who had worked with radium knew what was killing them, the information was bittersweet. Symptoms could be treated, but there was no way to remove the radium that was deposited into bones where calcium should have been. Women continued to sicken and die, while companies continued to profit from their labor for about two more decades before the nation's laws caught up with the needs of those who were vulnerable to exploitation.
The dial painters of Ottawa, Illinois are featured in my novel, Luminous. When I learned about their fight to have worker compensation laws changed and Radium Dial held accountable for their illnesses, I knew I had to write their story. Catherine Donohue in particular captivated my interest and I felt as if I had discovered a historical kindred spirit.
Catherine was nineteen when she started working at Radium Dial, and she was in her twenties when she and her friends started noticing strange health problems. By the time they realized what was happening, it was too late for Catherine, but she was determined to survive long enough to fight the legal battle that would win protection for others.
The final hearing Catherine participated in before the Illinois Industrial Commission had to be held in the Donohue home because Catherine was no longer able to rise from her bed. She was thirty-five and had two small children with her husband, Tom. She weighed less than seventy pounds and her jaw was disintegrating.
Pro-bono attorney Leonard Grossman argued the women's case and was prepared to present it to the Supreme Court, but Radium Dial was denied an appeal. This final victory came shortly after Catherine had died, but her testimony led to changes in worker compensation laws and safety standards for dangerous substances that protect workers today.
Read more of Catherine's story in Luminous.
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