Now she realised: von Sochocky had known. He had known all along. But if he had, why had he let them slowly kill themselves with every dial they painted?
Grace had an opportunity to put that question to the man himself – immediately. For when Martland tested her and Quinta for radioactivity in July 1925, he wasn’t the only doctor present. Von Sochocky sat quietly beside the technical equipment as the girls were told that they were going to die. And as Grace listened to the words fall from Martland’s mouth – ‘all your trouble . . . presence of radioactive substances’ – the memory of that warning came rushing into her mind.
Still reeling from the news, Grace nonetheless jutted out her chin with archetypal resolve and looked levelly at her former boss.
‘Why didn’t you tell us?’ she asked simply.
Von Sochocky must have bowed his head. He stuttered out something about being ‘aware of these dangers’ and said he had ‘warned other members of the corporation without avail’. Earlier that year he’d told Hoffman that he ‘endeavoured to remedy the situation but was opposed by members of the corporation who had charge of the personnel’.
He now said to Grace: ‘The matter was not in [my] jurisdiction but Mr Roeder’s. Since the matter was under his supervision, [I] could do nothing.’
Well, there was nothing the girls could do now about their fatal illness, that was for sure – and there was nothing von Sochocky could do about his. For he also blew into the machines that he and Martland had devised that summer; perhaps just out of interest, or perhaps with deep suspicion, for he had not been well. Von Sochocky’s breath, as it turned out, contained more radiation than anyone they had tested so far.
From the very start, Grace bore her diagnosis bravely. She had a courageous spirit and refused to let Martland’s prognosis affect her life. She had always loved her life and, if anything, she now valued it even more highly. So she tucked the diagnosis away in her mind and then carried on. She didn’t stop work; she didn’t change her habits: she kept swimming, she kept socialising with her friends and she kept on going to the theatre. ‘I don’t believe in giving up,’ was what she said.
As for Quinta, like her friend Grace she was said to have borne the news with a ‘brave and smiling’ demeanour. Far worse than her own diagnosis, in the mind of a kind-hearted woman like Quinta, was seeing her friends suffer. ‘She often worried,’ remembered her sister-in-law Ethel Brelitz, ‘because the others were similarly afflicted.’ At least she had the steadfast Dr Knef to help her with her treatment; Quinta’s teeth grew worse over the summer and she relied on Knef’s attentions more and more.
Almost as soon as they’d received the news, Grace, Quinta and Katherine Schaub hoped to bring a lawsuit against USRC in order to get some help with their crippling medical bills. Knowing that Marguerite Carlough had successfully done so earlier that year, they hoped that it would be straightforward. Isidor Kalitsch, Marguerite’s lawyer, was the obvious place to start their fight for justice; Quinta made the first appointment to see him. With some trepidation – for she had never done anything like this before – she limped into his office and outlined her case. He listened carefully, and then broke bad news: her action was barred by the statute of limitations.
The new girls had run into an old problem. The Workmen’s Compensation Bureau – where the company wanted the existing cases heard – had a five-month statute of limitations in New Jersey; Marguerite, who had filed suit about thirteen months after she’d left USRC, was thus going through the federal court, which had a more generous two-year statute. That was well matched for Marguerite, for she’d stayed with the company long after the other girls had left, so when she first became ill she was still an employee. But Quinta hadn’t worked for the firm since February 1919. She was now trying to start a lawsuit more than six years later; four years too late, according to the law, even though her symptoms hadn’t started until 1923 and she hadn’t received a diagnosis of radium poisoning until a few weeks ago.
But the law cared nothing for the fact that this brandnew disease took several years to manifest. The law was the law – and it said neither Quinta, nor Grace, nor Katherine had any recourse to justice; or, at least, that was the interpretation of Isidor Kalitsch. It fell to Quinta to tell the others what he’d said: ‘Nothing could be done.’
It was galling news for them all. ‘When I realise,’ said Grace Fryer, ‘that I am paying for something [that] someone else is to blame for . . .’ Grace now tried another lawyer, Henry Gottfried, with whom she’d already had some dealings, but Gottfried told her that the case would take ‘considerable money to develop’. He said he could do nothing for her unless she gave him cash upfront. ‘[But] I had no money!’ remembered Grace in frustration. ‘[For] I was compelled constantly to attend doctors. I felt very badly [yet] lawyers did not seem to be interested in the matter without a fee.’
Part of the reluctance of attorneys to take the case was undoubtedly due to the power of the United States Radium Corporation. For not only were the legal issues potentially insurmountable, but the girls’ opponent in court would be a hugely wealthy, well-connected company, with government contacts and the financial resources to eke out the fight for as long as it took. Said Katherine Schaub: ‘Each of the attorneys to whom I appealed felt that it was hopeless to try to collect damages from the radium company.’
Another problem, too, was just how new the disease was; given the longevity of the radium-therapeutics industry, could it really be true that radium had hurt the girls? Perhaps, as Roeder had said, the girls were trying to ‘palm off something’ on the firm.
Now the effects of the company’s suppression of the Drinker report really made themselves felt. Thanks to that concealment, published studies on the link between radium and the women’s illnesses had been available for only a matter of weeks. None of the lawyers had ever heard of radium poisoning. No one knew anything about it – no one, that is, except for Harrison Martland.
Martland was in direct contact with the girls over that summer, offering what assistance he could, and one day Katherine Schaub came to his lab to discuss something very important. She had always wanted to write – well, now she and Martland wrote something together, though its topic was macabre. In time, it would come to have its own name.
The List of the Doomed.
Martland wrote it out on the back of a blank autopsy report. He sketched out a series of pencilled lines to create a neat chart and then picked up his fountain pen and wrote in flowing black ink, on Katherine’s direction:
1. Helen Quinlan
2. Miss Molly Magia [sic]
3. Miss Irene Rudolph
4. Mrs Hazel Kuser
5. Mrs Maillefer
6. Miss Marguerite Carlough . . .