The Radium Girls: Chapter 36–Postscript

It was a modest wedding with only twenty-two guests.

Catherine’s uncle and aunt had both passed away by then, and Tom's family did not approve of the union because of the bride's poor health. Defiantly, he’d married her anyway.

Nor did they notify the Bureau of Labor Statistics of these curious cases, as they once promised to do.
An oversight? Or was it as some of the dial-painters’ relatives thought: a conspiracy to protect the company?

Reed, taken aback by Tom’s direct question, did as he had always done and tried to ignore the situation.

Reed floundered under the attack, and the police were called.

With Radium Dial vanquished, Joseph Kelly had a monopoly on radium dials in the little town of Ottawa.

“Walking Ghosts Jilted by Justice!”

Forty-six years old, he was larger-than-life and charismatic, with a passion for helping those in need.

“We should have laws,” Grossman started in his somber, melodious voice, “that will do away with things that rack, ruin, and destroy bodies.”

It was, in fact, the office of the county auditor.

Only Arthur Magid was present, seated next to the arbitrator (judge) at the big table.

The papers commented on her “weak and muffled voice,” which was “faltering.”

Catherine glanced over her shoulder at her friends, who sat in a row behind her, listening intently.

And then, as her fingers twisted a scapular medal—a Catholic talisman—she told of no longer being able to kneel to pray.

After such staggering testimony, Grossman allowed her to rest.

“Is she able to earn a livelihood?”

The scream was a watershed. After it, Catherine could not keep herself upright.

As the judge called an immediate recess, Catherine was carried to the county clerk’s office and laid out on a desk.

In fact, they said giving evidence might prove immediately fatal.
But Catherine was adamant.

As he announced that a bedside hearing would be held the following day, he added a final comment that he knew would provoke the press into copious column inches.

Sometimes, she dozed to the lullaby of her friends’ voices as they lilted around her.

Yet Catherine now took some small solace from an unexpected source.

Her story was emblazoned across the newspapers, and readers were horrified by it.

In it, Grossman did not mince his words.

“I cannot imagine a fiend fresh from the profoundest depths of [hell] committing such an unnatural crime as the Radium Dial Company did,” he wrote.

“[Their actions are] an offense against Morals and Humanity, and, just incidentally, against the law.”

“The Industrial Commission finds that...a relation of employer and employee existed between the company and the plaintiff...[and that Catherine Donohue’s] disability did arise out of and come in the course of her employment.”

“I only wish my case was through with,” she said wistfully.

They upheld Catherine’s award, and not only that, they added an additional $730 ($12,271) to it to cover the medical expenses she’d incurred since April.

As was required by Illinois law in cases of poisoning, an inquest was held into her death.

He called her death “a cool, calculating, money-making murder.”

She had proved herself a most exceptional woman: a quiet, unassuming person who had only wanted to work hard and love her family but who had made a difference to millions in the way she responded to her own personal tragedy.

It was a pure, clean victory, with no clouds or contingencies to sully it.

It was a pure, clean victory, with no clouds or contingencies to sully it.

The AEC termed the women of “incalculable value.” They seemed able to predict for scientists the likely long-term health effects of this new radioactive danger. Their suffering would provide “vital insight, with implications for hundreds of millions of people all over the world.”

The study of the dial-painters did not end when the threat of nuclear war subsided.

In 1991, the New Jersey Supreme Court found USRC “forever” liable for the contamination and declared the firm had known about the dangers at the time it operated there. Residents of contaminated homes sued the firm.

“The radium girls,” the governor announced, “deserve the utmost respect and admiration...because they battled a dishonest company, an indifferent industry, dismissive courts and the medical community in the face of certain death. I hereby proclaim September 2, 2011, as Radium Girls Day in Illinois, in recognition of the tremendous perseverance, dedication, and sense of justice the radium girls exhibited in their fight.”

“The radium girls,” the governor announced, “deserve the utmost respect and admiration...because they battled a dishonest company, an indifferent industry, dismissive courts and the medical community in the face of certain death. I hereby proclaim September 2, 2011, as Radium Girls Day in Illinois, in recognition of the tremendous perseverance, dedication, and sense of justice the radium girls exhibited in their fight.”

Workers were offered just $100 ($363) in severance pay and had difficulty suing the firm.