Peg not only brought her wages and her work home, but also the games she learned at the studio. ‘She entertained the younger siblings with “Let’s go in the dark!”’ revealed Peg’s niece Darlene. And there they would glow, a row of little Looneys with radium moustaches, shining sprites behind the blankets they’d put up for modesty in the tiny bedroom. Peg’s sister Catherine – the nearest to her in age – was enamoured of all she saw and longed to join Peg at the studio, though she never did. Everyone wanted to work there.
That was why Pearl Payne was so disappointed when – after only eight months as a dial-painter – she had to leave to nurse her mother again. She was the kind of woman who wouldn’t have begrudged that for a second, and so she simply bade farewell to her friends and went back to Utica, where she remained even after her mother’s recovery, keeping house. She gave the studio little more thought as she turned her attention to her next dream: having a family with Hobart.
It meant she wasn’t there when, later in the 1920s, the Radium Dial bosses took a company photograph. All the girls – there were just over a hundred of them in attendance that day – filed outside to have their picture taken. The company men were there too; just Mr Reed and his caretaking colleagues, not the executives from head office. The men sat cross-legged on the ground in front of the women, Mr Reed donning a white flat hat and his usual dark bow-tie. The girls ranged behind the men, some sitting on benches, others standing on the steps of the old high school: three rows of dial-painters, as jolly a bunch of girls as ever there was. Many had their hair bobbed short in the latest flapper style. They wore drop-waisted dresses embellished with long scarves and strings of pearls. ‘We used to wear our street dresses to the plant,’ Catherine Wolfe said – but what street dresses they were.
Catherine sat on the front row, in the centre of the picture, just to the right of Mr Reed and Miss Murray. It was perhaps a sign of her seniority; as one of the longest-serving employees, she was now a trusted worker who would on occasion assume duties above and beyond dial-painting. That day, she wore a dark, mid-calf-length dress with a long necklace of black beads; her feet and hands, as they often were, were folded neatly together. She wasn’t like Marie Becker, who would broadly gesticulate as she made one joke or another.
Now, all the girls – the jokers and the quiet ones, the conscientious and the unconcerned – sat still for the photographer. Some hugged each other, or interlinked their arms. They sat close together, staring at the camera. And as the shutter closed, it captured them all together, frozen in time for just one moment. The girls of Radium Dial, outside their studio: forever young and happy and well.
On the photographic film, at least.
11
Newark, New Jersey
1924
Dr Barry had never had such a busy January. Patient after patient came through his door, pale hands clutched to thin cheeks, discomfort obvious in the women’s questioning eyes as they asked him what was wrong.
Perhaps worst of all was Marguerite Carlough, who had first come to him on 2 January with evidence of a recent tooth extraction that had begun the process of the jaw necrosis he was seeing in so many girls. Katherine Schaub was back again; the newly married Hazel Kuser was attended by Barry’s partner Dr Davidson; Josephine Smith, the Orange plant’s forelady, and her sister Genevieve also sought treatment. Genevieve was best friends with Marguerite Carlough and was extremely anxious for her.
In all, to varying degrees, the dentists saw the same mottled condition of the bone. In all, they saw an illness that they knew not how to treat, although they never let the girls see their perplexity; the dial-painters would never have had the audacity to question them anyway. ‘I felt [Dr Barry] knew what he was doing,’ Katherine later said, ‘I couldn’t ask him [why my condition didn’t improve].’ Katherine’s nerves were still very bad; it was as much as she could do to get through the day, let alone ponder on complex medical matters.
For Barry, the sheer number of cases now proved his previous argument that the problem was occupational. He truly believed that phosphorus in the paint was to blame; the symptoms were so like those of phossy jaw that it had to be the issue.
Despite their aching jaws, the Smith sisters were still working in the studio that January. Barry now gave them an ultimatum: quit their jobs or he would refuse to treat them.
Josephine Smith ignored him. Yet, on seeing her friends’ conditions, she did take some precautions at work. When she weighed out the material for her team, she tied a handkerchief over her mouth and nose to avoid inhaling the dust.
Probably because some of the afflicted women were still working in the plant, rumours of Barry’s threats soon reached the ears of the USRC managers – somewhat to their annoyance. Business was going well: President Arthur Roeder’s company had contracts with the US Navy and Army Air Corps, as well as many hospitals and physicians; Undark was by now considered the standard material for government use. Evidently, the firm wanted nothing to get in the way of all these business opportunities. Thus, on hearing of Barry’s gossip-mongering, as they probably saw it, they were moved to write to their insurance company in January 1924 to reassure them of the situation: ‘There recently have been rumours and comments made by individuals, particularly dentists,’ they wrote, ‘in which they claim work in our application department is hazardous and has caused injury and poor health to a former operator of ours [probably Marguerite Carlough] and they are advising that other of our operators should discontinue being in our employ.’
It may seem striking that the deaths of Mollie Maggia, Helen Quinlan, Irene Rudolph and Catherine O’Donnell do not feature in this correspondence. But all four women had quit their jobs at the plant well before their deaths, some several years before, and it seems the firm was unconcerned about and possibly ignorant of their deaths. If it had chanced to hear of them, it was only Irene’s case that had been attributed to her work, and as the doctors thought it phossy jaw and the firm knew no phosphorus was in the paint, it could rest easy that the suspicions were unfounded. From their point of view, Irene was an orphan, anyway, whose parents had died young; with a genetic inheritance like that, she was probably never long for this world.
As for the others, if anyone at the firm had investigated the mysterious deaths of their former employees, officially Catherine had died of pneumonia, Helen of Vincent’s angina, and as for Mollie Maggia – well, everyone knew she had died from syphilis. The firm had employed over 1,000 women during its lifetime; four deaths from such a number was probably to be expected. The company therefore concluded confidently: ‘We do not recognise that there is any such hazard in the occupation.’