Enter Dr Frederick Flinn.
Dr Flinn specialised in industrial hygiene, just like Drinker. He was the assistant professor of physiology at the Institute of Public Health at Columbia University; previously, he had been a director for a handful of mining companies. He was a serious man in his late forties with thinning hair and wire-framed glasses. Within a day or so of being asked to undertake research into the harmful effects of radioactive paint, he had met with Roeder, who agreed to furnish money for his study.
This was not Flinn’s first interaction with USRC; he had been involved with the firm the previous year, part of its defence against a lawsuit for damages regarding the fumes from the Orange factory, about which residents were still complaining. The company was also likely familiar with Flinn’s work with the Ethyl Corporation in early 1925, when the doctor had been hired to find evidence that leaded gas was safe.
Flinn began work the next morning with a tour of the Orange plant – but his remit did not end there. Through the contacts of USRC, Flinn gained access to the dial-painters of other firms, including the Waterbury Clock Company, giving them physical check-ups. To begin with, Flinn said, ‘I made my first examinations without any cost to the companies.’ But, later, he was paid by the firms employing the girls.
One of the radium companies he worked for was the Luminite Corporation in Newark, where he now encountered Edna Bolz Hussman, the ‘Dresden Doll’ beauty who had worked at the Orange plant during the war. Since her marriage to Louis in September 1922, Edna had worked for Luminite only intermittently, just to keep some housekeeping money coming in to boost Louis’s wages as a plumber. They didn’t need much though; they had no children. Instead, they shared their home with a small white terrier.
Edna was employed at Luminite one day when Dr Flinn asked if he could examine her. Although Edna later said that she did ‘not know directly in whose behalf the examination was had’ and that it ‘did not take place at my request’, it did, nevertheless, take place. Flinn examined her elegant body carefully and took some blood.
At that time, Edna had slight knee pains, but she was paying them no attention and it is not known if she mentioned them to him. She had probably heard the rumours about the Carlough lawsuit, however, so it must have come as a huge relief when Flinn gave his verdict following the tests. ‘[He] told me,’ she later said, ‘that my health was perfect.’
If only her former colleagues were as fortunate. Katherine Schaub was having a dreadful time. It had been, she later wrote, ‘a very depressing winter’. Her stomach was now troubling her; so much so that she could not retain solid food and had endured an abdominal operation. She felt like she was being passed from pillar to post, dentist to doctor, and no one offered any answers. ‘Since [my] first visit [to a doctor], it has been nothing but doctors, Doctors, DOCTORS,’ she wrote in frustration. ‘To be under the care of a skilled physician and yet not show any sign of improvement was most discouraging.’ Her illness was affecting her whole life, for though she tried to work, her ailments now made it impossible for her to be engaged in any form of employment.
Grace Fryer, however, was still maintaining her job at the bank. Thanks to Dr McCaffrey’s attentions, the infection in her jaw seemed to have cleared up, but she was very apprehensive that it might come back. And although her mouth was all right, her back still plagued her. Dr Humphries’s strapping treatments no longer had any effect; ‘I have been to every doctor of any note in all New York and New Jersey,’ she said – but not one of them could determine the cause of her ailments; often, they made things worse. Grace’s chiropractic treatments, in the end, ‘became so painful that I was compelled to stop taking them’.
In Orange, Grace’s friend Quinta McDonald was having no better luck. In April 1925, she was finally removed from the constricting plaster cast that had encased her body for nine months. Yet despite the doctors’ best efforts, her condition declined. Now, she could walk only with the greatest difficulty. By the end of the year, her family doctor had been called out ninety times: a bill of some $270 ($3,660).
It was awful timing. She found herself unable to manage the fifteen-minute walk to her sister Albina’s house just at the time when she most wanted to be with her. Highland Avenue sloped sharply down towards the railway station on the way to her sister’s home, and Quinta simply couldn’t get down the hill anymore, even with a stick, let alone back up it. Albina Larice, to the whole family’s delight, was pregnant, after almost four years of trying. It was such good news, and there was little enough of that to go around at the moment.
While the Maggia family at least had a reason to celebrate that spring, just down the road on Main Street, the Carloughs were really struggling. They were still spending money they didn’t have on Marguerite’s care; by May 1925 the medical bills ran to $1,312 (almost $18,000). Sarah Maillefer was distraught by her little sister’s condition. She tried to keep talking to her, soothing words or jokes to lift her spirits, but Marguerite’s hearing was greatly impaired in both ears because of her infected facial bones and she struggled to hear what Sarah said. The pain was awful: her lower jaw was fractured on the right side of her face and most of her teeth were missing. Her head, essentially, was ‘extremely rotten’ – with all the putrefaction that implies. But she was alive, still. Her whole head was rotting, but she was still alive.
Her condition was so bad that, at last, it prompted Josephine Smith to quit her job. Nobody could see what had happened to Marguerite and not be moved. Frederick Hoffman and Dr Knef were still fighting her corner too. Seeing her rapid decline, they now sought aid from a perhaps unlikely source – USRC founder Sabin von Sochocky.
Von Sochocky was no longer part of his company. He had no ties to the corporation and, if anything, may even have felt bitter about the way he had been ousted. Perhaps, too, he felt some responsibility. One of the girls’ allies later wrote of him, ‘I feel absolutely satisfied that there is no prejudice but every desire to assist in a useful way.’