This content was originally published by the Longmont Observer and is licensed under a Creative Commons license.
It was 1917, WWI was raging in Europe. The young girls in Ottawa, Illinois were excited. The watch dial factory of the Radium Luminous Material Corporation was hiring and they wanted young girls, from eleven to thirty years old to use radium to paint numerals on the watch faces that were made, mostly for the soldiers. Most of these girls had never worked before, but now they could give money to their families for food and rent. And they could get some new things of their own.
The job was not hard, a little boring perhaps, but the girls sat at a table next to each other and talked and laughed and had a fine time. They used brushes and radium to paint the characters and sometimes the brush’s hair fell out after just painting a watch or two. The girls were told to put the brushes in their mouths and twirl them to put a nice point on the tip, and that helped. They dipped the brushes in the radium, twirled them in their mouths, and painted the watch faces.
Radium got on the girls’ clothes and in their hair and made them glitter and shine. They would sometimes flick some of the radium on themselves as they left the factory at the end of the day. The girls could finally afford to buy nice clothes and have their hair done. In the evenings they would go out to the clubs and restaurants and people would say, “Here come the Radium Girls!” They were shiny and glimmering and beautiful.
Until one of them got a toothache. When her dentist wiggled her tooth, it came out in his hand. As did the one beside it. He told her, “You’re going to have to have all your teeth pulled and get false ones.” That crushed her, as young as she was, and she told her friends. They all stood in front of the mirror and wiggled their teeth and it was amazing how many had loose teeth, teeth they could pull out themselves.
The girls noticed that they had a lot of pain, especially in their joints. They were starting to get scared and they asked the owner, again, about the radium. Was he sure it was safe? Of course it was. Was he sure it wasn’t poisonous? Of course not. Then what was wrong with them? They were growing old before their time.
The girls got worse. Most all of them were wearing false teeth by now, and some walked with canes. One suddenly reached into her mouth one day and pulled out her own jawbone. The girls’ doctors and dentists urged them to file a lawsuit against the Radium company, but the girls didn’t know how to go about doing something like that, and they were too tired and sick anyway. One girl had her leg amputated at the ankle, then under her knee, and finally above the knee. One girl had her left arm amputated. The girls were dying, no more were they the glimmering, glittering radium girls. Girls who used to be jealous of them now were glad they were not working at the radium plant. Something was wrong there, very wrong.
Finally, about seven of the girls got together and helping each other, they sought a lawyer. But, after hearing their story, he refused to help them. They went to another lawyer, and another, and then they found Leonard Grossman. He worked with them, he fought for them. He took all their testimony and there were seven girls in court the first day of the trial. One with no leg, one with no arm. But they were there to fight. And fight they did.
What a wonderful book. It had my complete attention from the first page. The pictures were gruesome and caused me to get on my computer and look up Radium. I found a lot of very interesting information. And it prompted me to write a letter to the author, Kate Moore. This is one of the most interesting books I have ever read.
