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

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Copyright 2017 by Kate Moore

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Cover Image Health Effects of Exposure to Internally Deposited Radioactivity Projects Case Files. Center for Human Radiobiology, Argonne National Laboratory. General Records of the Department of Energy, Record Group 434. National Archives at Chicago.

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Originally published in 2016 in the United Kingdom by Simon & Schuster UK.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Moore, Kate (Writer and editor), author.

Title: The radium girls : the dark story of Americas shining women / Kate Moore.

Description: Naperville, Illinois : Sourcebooks, Inc., [2017] | Originally published as: The Radium Girls : they paid with their lives, their final fight was for justice, in 2016 in the United Kingdom by Simon & Schuster UK. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016040681 | (hardcover : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Watch dial painters--Diseases--United States--History. | Radium paint--Toxicology. | Consumers leagues--United States--History. | Industrial hygiene--United States--History--20th century. | World War, 1914-1918--Women--United States. | World War, 1914-1918--War work--United States.

Classification: LCC HD6067.2.U6 M66 2017 | DDC 363.17/990820973--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016040681

For all the dial-painters

And those who loved them

I shall never forget you

Hearts that know you love you

And lips that have given you laughter

Have gone to their lifetime of grief and of roses

Searching for dreams that they lost

In the world, far away from your walls.

Ottawa High School yearbook, 1925

CONTENTS

LIST OF KEY CHARACTERS

Newark and Orange, New Jersey

The Dial-Painters

Albina Maggia Larice

Amelia Mollie Maggia, Albina Maggia Larices sister

Edna Bolz Hussman

Eleanor Ella Eckert

Genevieve Smith, Josephine Smiths sister

Grace Fryer

Hazel Vincent Kuser

Helen Quinlan

Irene Corby La Porte

Irene Rudolph, Katherine Schaubs cousin

Jane Jennie Stocker

Josephine Smith, Genevieve Smiths sister

Katherine Schaub, Irene Rudolphs cousin

Mae Cubberley Canfield, instructress

Marguerite Carlough, Sarah Carlough Maillefers sister

Quinta Maggia McDonald, Albina and Amelias sister

Sarah Carlough Maillefer, Marguerite Carloughs sister

The United States Radium Corporation

Anna Rooney, forelady

Arthur Roeder, treasurer

Clarence B. Lee, vice president

Edwin Leman, chief chemist

George Willis, cofounder with Sabin von Sochocky

Harold Viedt, vice president

Howard Barker, chemist and vice president

Sabin von Sochocky, founder and inventor of the paint

Mr. Savoy, studio manager

Doctors

Dr. Francis McCaffrey, New York specialist, treating Grace Fryer

Dr. Frederick Flinn, company doctor

Dr. Harrison Martland, Newark doctor

Dr. James Ewing, Dr. Lloyd Craver, Dr. Edward Krumbhaar, committee doctors

Dr. Joseph Knef, Dr. Walter Barry, Dr. James Davidson, local dentists

Dr. Robert Humphries, doctor at the Orange Orthopedic Hospital

Dr. Theodore Blum, New York dentist

Investigators

Dr. Alice Hamilton, Harvard School of Public Health, Katherine Wileys ally, and colleague of Cecil K. Drinker

Andrew McBride, commissioner of the Department of Labor

Dr. Cecil K. Drinker, professor of physiology at the Harvard School of Public Health, husband of Katherine Drinker

Ethelbert Stewart, commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Washington, DC

Dr. Frederick Hoffman, investigating statistician, Prudential Insurance Company

John Roach, deputy commissioner of the Department of Labor

Dr. Katherine Drinker, Harvard School of Public Health, wife of Cecil K. Drinker

Katherine Wiley, executive secretary of the Consumers League, New Jersey

Lenore Young, Orange health officer

Swen Kjaer, national investigator from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Washington, DC

Dr. Martin Szamatolski, consulting chemist for the Department of Labor

Ottawa, Illinois

The Dial-Painters

Catherine Wolfe Donohue

Charlotte Nevins Purcell

Frances Glacinski OConnell, Marguerite Glacinskis sister

Helen Munch

Inez Corcoran Vallat

Margaret Peg Looney

Marguerite Glacinski, Frances Glacinski OConnells sister

Marie Becker Rossiter

Mary Duffy Robinson

Mary Ellen Ella Cruse

Mary Vicini Tonielli

Olive West Witt

Pearl Payne

For the Radium Dial Company

Joseph Kelly, president

Lottie Murray, superintendent

Mercedes Reed, instructress, wife of Rufus Reed

Rufus Fordyce, vice president

Rufus Reed, assistant superintendent, husband of Mercedes Reed

William Ganley, executive

Doctors

Dr. Charles Loffler, Chicago doctor

Dr. Lawrence Dunn, physician of Catherine Donohue

Dr. Sidney Weiner, x-ray specialist

Dr. Walter Dalitsch, specialist dentist

PROLOGUE

PARIS, FRANCE

1901

The scientist had forgotten all about the radium. It was tucked discreetly within the folds of his waistcoat pocket, enclosed in a slim glass tube in such a small quantity that he could not feel its weight. He had a lecture to deliver in London, England, and the vial of radium stayed within that shadowy pocket for the entirety of his journey across the sea.

He was one of the few people in the world to possess it. Discovered by Marie and Pierre Curie late in December 1898, radium was so difficult to extract from its source that there were only a few grams available anywhere in the world. He was fortunate indeed to have been given a tiny quantity by the Curies to use in his lectures, for they barely had enough themselves to continue experiments.