Remembering The Radium Dial Girls

Sep 5

Living through what seems to be a teetering pandemic world, one of the biggest ongoing conversations—besides the status of case surges and developing variants—is that of people returning or failing to return to work. Surely you’ve seen the signs at nearly every fast food restaurant and in some cases, TV commercials, offering sign-on bonuses or increased starting wages for practically all forms of occupation. While the need for employees could be the result of many fearing for their own personal health and safety, other arguments discuss unfair working conditions, lack of benefits, and, of course, unfair wages, as the reason for lack of workforce.

Whether you are vaxxed or unvaxxed during these times, the virus is undoubtedly still believed to be a threat, if not to you, then to others you might come in contact with. So, while living through such trying times, what is the rush to go back to a job that doesn’t pay you as much as the (American) government is willing, just to keep you safe?

The girls working in radium-dial factories back in the early 20th century were not so lucky, however. Subjected to working conditions much different from our decades of developed and reformed workers’ rights movements, among other established health and safety regulations, the women of this time period were just happy to work—and for good money, too. That is, if you believe you can put a price on your life, in which case these female workers never even had a clue.

One of the better paying jobs for women of this time, radium-dial painting, involved the fine painting of glow-in-the-dark numbers onto watches and airplane instruments. In order to have the finest lines and cleanest numbers, though, the women would perform lip-pointing, in that they’d lip, dip, and apply the radium-infused paint onto the dial. While one might think that someone would consider things like lead or chemicals in paint in general, at the time, radium was believed to be this miracle drug that was good for you. In grocery stores and shops, it wasn’t hard to find radium water, radium face cream, radium toothpaste, etc. While it wasn’t always actually in these products, given its expensive and precious namesake, the papers would tell you that radium would give you a “healthful glow” should you consume it.

Given that information and all the hype surrounding the drug, getting paid well and getting your own daily dose of radium was practically a dream job. Until workers started becoming fatally ill.

In October 1921, Mollie Maggia would make an appointment for what she believed was just an achy tooth. No matter what her doctor prescribed, Mollie’s condition only worsened. By November of that same year, family members were beginning to worry about her “deteriorating” condition. While ill, Mollie’s mouth had formed many ulcers. She’d lost a dozen teeth and also developed a stench in her breath, which she was reported to be embarrassed about. With negative test after negative test trying to determine what might be causing Mollie’s illness, her doctor would later misdiagnose her as having “Phossy jaw”—a diagnosis given to many of the female workers until radium poisoning was later clarified. Writing about one of Mollie’s appointments that occurred the following spring, author Kate Moore, in the highly acclaimed book The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women, retells one of the most terrifying scenes I have ever read, let alone begin to imagine:

“There were barely any teeth now, he saw; red-raw ulcers peppered inside of her mouth instead. Mollie tried to indicate that her jaw was hurting especially, and [Dr.] Knef prodded delicately at the bone in her mouth.

“To his horror and shock, even though his touch had been gentle, her jawbone broke against his fingers. He then removed it, ‘not by an operation, but merely by putting his fingers in her mouth and lifting it out.’”

Investigating one of the most scandalous corporation cases in America’s industrial history, Moore recounts the case in such a craftful, haunting, and mesmerizing way that leaves you both disgusted at the companies for the pain they’d caused and empathy for the women who suffered these horrific symptoms.

Like her own version of true crime, Moore pulls you in through countless details deeply researched from dozens of books, interviews, various articles, publications, and special collections. The result: a nonfiction masterpiece that reads quite like haunting fiction, in that the characters, details, and conversations are so well-studied and natural, that you are constantly shocked and sickened again and again, remembering all the while that everything retold are the ghostly truths of women since deceased—most of whom, much too soon.

Even looking back on this six months later, I remember how immediately hooked and horrified I was by what I was reading about this particular (and often unspoken) staple of American history. From learning about how radium was once believed as the world’s new “wonder drug” to the latest hurdle women had overcome: finally being granted the freedom to vote. Yes, these little victories and small hopes for the future shone brightly during the years of the First World War. Many countries had already seen too much death and wanted a new outlook. So, when women working at the radium-dial factories began falling ill, it was a long, slow battle for the truth; the companies didn’t want to admit they were wrong, or that such tragedies could befall young women on their account. Instead of fessing up to the science of their glowing paint, the corporations battled every woman’s claim, using up time that, unfortunately, a lot of these young girls no longer had.

Just short of a year after Mollie’s horrific jaw extraction, on Sept. 22, 1922, Mollie would succumb to a very terrible, painful death—the first one of many to die due to this affliction. While not all women affected were taken as quickly as Mollie had been, the radiation from the radium and their lip-pointing would be proven to be the reason behind the mysterious cases some decades after her. With each building case, you would think that the public would have paid more attention, demanding justice. In a constant pull between local advertisements and articles published in the paper and these dying women, it is a shame that so many had to die before justice could be served. (If you could even really call it that.)

Without giving too much away, this book is full of true horror and topics that we should still be talking about. In celebrating the 10th anniversary of the establishment of the Radium Girls statue on Sept. 2, it is only appropriate that we never forget these unnecessary horrors that befell so many women, and the lessons that were ultimately learned regarding the importance of the health and safety of industrial workers.

Article written by Destiny Johnson

Destiny writes about true crime and thrillers. She likes movies and stories that make you question the world around you, more so than what makes you jump.