Mollie would probably have been devastated if she’d been told, but many doctors at that time kept diagnoses from their patients and it is very likely Knef didn’t tell her, wanting her to concentrate on getting well. She would have known, had she heard the news, that it couldn’t possibly be that. But she had no idea what the real cause could be. If anything, she should be full of health – not only was she young, in her twenties, but she had worked with radium for years, for goodness’ sake. Only that February, the local paper had declared: ‘Radium may be eaten . . . it seems that in years to come we shall be able to buy radium tablets – and add years to our lives!’
But, for Mollie, time it seemed was running out. After her jaw had gone, an important discovery was made. Knef had always hoped that by removing a tooth, or a piece of infected bone, the progress of the mysterious disease would be halted. But now it became evident that ‘whenever a portion of the affected bone was removed, instead of arresting the course of the necrosis, it speeded it up’. Over the summer, Mollie’s condition deteriorated even further. She was getting painfully sore throats now, though she knew not why. Her jaw, at times, would spontaneously bleed, and Edith would press white cotton bandages to her face, trying to stem the flow.
September 1922. In Newark Mollie’s former colleague Edna Bolz was preparing to wed. Her husband-to-be was Louis Hussman, a plumber of German heritage with blue eyes and dark hair. He was ‘devoted’ to her. She laid out her accoutrements with touching anticipation: the bridal gown, her stockings, her wedding shoes. Not long now.
Not long now. They are words of excitement. Expectation. And reassurance – to those in pain.
Not long now.
In September 1922, the peculiar infection that had plagued Mollie Maggia for less than a year spread to the tissues of her throat. The disease ‘slowly ate its way through her jugular vein’. On 12 September, at 5 p.m., her mouth was flooded with blood as she haemorrhaged so fast that Edith could not staunch it. Her mouth, empty of teeth, empty of jawbone, empty of words, filled with blood, instead, until it spilled over her lips and down her stricken, shaken face. It was too much. She died, her sister Quinta said, a ‘painful and terrible death’.
She was just twenty-four years old.
Her family knew not what to do with themselves; knew not what could have happened to take her from them so suddenly. ‘She died and the doctors said they didn’t just know from what,’ remembered Albina.
The family tried to find out. Albina added, ‘My elder sister went down to Dr Knef’s office; we were told after her death that she died of syphilis.’
Syphilis. What a shameful, sad little secret.
The final medical bills came in, addressed to the girls’ father, Valerio, and labelled ‘for Amelia’. Her family doctor reduced, on request, the amount he charged them. But though it was a welcome gesture, it couldn’t bring Mollie back.
They buried her on Thursday 14 September 1922, in Rosedale Cemetery, Orange, in a wooden coffin with a silver nameplate. It was inscribed simply ‘Amelia Maggia’.
Before they said their goodbyes, her loved ones laid out her clothes: her white dress, her stockings, her black leather pumps. Gently, they clothed her body in the garments, and then Mollie was laid to rest.
Her family hoped that now, at last, she would find peace.
6
Ottawa, Illinois
United States of America
September 1922
Two days after Mollie’s funeral, and 800 miles away from Orange, a small advertisement appeared in the local paper of a little town called Ottawa, in Illinois. GIRLS WANTED it declared. And then continued: ‘Several girls, 18 years or over, for fine brushwork. This is a studio proposition, the work is clean and healthful, surroundings pleasant. Apply to Miss Murray, old high school building, 1022 Columbus Street.’
It sounded wonderful.
Ottawa was a tiny town – population 10,816 – located 85 miles south-west of Chicago. It billed itself as a ‘genuine American community’ in its town directory, and those words were on the money. It was the kind of place where its banks proclaimed themselves to be ‘where friendliness reigns’ and local businesses advertised their location as being ‘one block north of Post Office’. Ottawa was in the heart of rural Illinois, surrounded by farmland and the impossibly wide skies of the Midwest. It was a place where folks were happy simply to get on with life: raise their families, do good work, live decent lives. The community was close-knit and emphatically religious; Ottawa was ‘a small [town] of many churches’ with the majority of residents Catholic. ‘The citizens of Ottawa,’ chirped the town directory, ‘are liberal-minded, prosperous and progressive.’ The perfect populace, then, for this new dial-painting opportunity.
It wasn’t the United States Radium Corporation hiring, although they knew their competitor well. The employer was the Radium Dial Company; its president was Joseph A. Kelly. He was based at the head office in Chicago, however, so it was to Miss Murray, the studio’s superintendent, the Ottawa girls applied.
Lottie Murray was an immensely loyal employee, a slim single woman forty-four years old who had been with the company five years, as it moved its studio around various locations before settling now in Ottawa. One of her very first successful applicants was nineteen-year-old Catherine Wolfe. She was Ottawa born and bred, a devoted parishioner of St Columba Church, which was located diagonally opposite the studio. Despite her young age, Catherine had already had some hard knocks in life. When she was only six, her mother Bridget had passed away; just four years later, in 1913, her father Maurice died from ‘lung trouble’. As a result, ten-year-old Catherine was sent to live with her elderly aunt and uncle, Mary and Winchester Moody Biggart, sharing their home at 520 East Superior Street.
Catherine was a shy, quiet person who was very unassuming. She had thick, jet-black hair and very pale skin; a rather neat woman with tidy limbs who didn’t go in for showy gestures. The job at the studio would be her first, painting the dials of timepieces and aeronautical instruments. ‘It was fascinating work, and the pay was good,’ she enthused, ‘but every line had to be just so.’
And there was only one known way to get the necessary point on the ‘Japanese brushes the size of a pencil’ that the Ottawa girls used. ‘Miss Lottie Murray,’ Catherine remembered, ‘taught us how to point camel-hair brushes with our tongues. We would first dip the brush into water, then into the powder, and then point the ends of the bristles between our teeth.’
It was the ‘lip, dip, paint routine’ all over again – but with an entirely new cast.