In the early hours of Boxing Day 1925, at the age of twenty-four, Marguerite followed her sister to that undiscovered country. She died at home on Main Street at 3 a.m. Her bones, Martland later said, showed ‘beautiful concentrations’ on the X-ray films that he wrapped around her in death.
Two days later, for the second time in six months, her parents laid to rest a daughter in the peaceful quiet of Laurel Grove Cemetery. Yet Marguerite had not died quietly: as the first dial-painter to file suit – the first to show it was even possible to fight back against the corporation that killed her – she went out with a roar.
It was a sound that would echo long afterwards: long after she died; long after she was buried; long after her parents made their slow way home from her funeral, and closed their door against the world.
22
All she wanted, Grace Fryer thought, as she flicked through the local paper, was a bit of good news. There had been only one piece of it so far in 1926. Miss Wiley’s new law, to her and the dial-painters’ delight, had been signed into being: radium necrosis was now formally a compensable disease. In many ways, it had been a lot easier to get it through than Wiley had anticipated.
Other than that, however, it had not been a great spring. Grace’s jaw problems had started back up again – she had now lost all but three teeth in her lower jaw and had to see Dr McCaffrey three times a week – while her back was incredibly painful. She hadn’t had it looked at by a doctor in a while though; it was too expensive. Nonetheless, despite her troubles, Grace still commuted daily to her office. She commented simply: ‘I feel better when I am working.’ Indeed, she was said to meet people cheerfully in the bank.
Yet there was another reason to keep on with her job. Quinta remarked that Grace was working ‘so she won’t be a burden in her family’. Grace had incurred medical bills of some $2,000 ($26,800) and her parents certainly couldn’t cover them. Yet even if Grace put all her earnings, which were about $20 ($268) a week, towards her medical treatment, it would take her two years to pay what she owed. She had no idea where she might find the money . . . well, no idea but one. By now she had spent almost a year pursuing different attorneys; pretty much on her own, too. Faced with lawyer after lawyer turning down the case, the other girls seemed to have given up.
Albina was not at all well; she saw only close friends and was unable to leave the house due to her locked hips. James Larice did his best to put a smile on his wife’s face – ‘He cheers me up,’ Albina said, ‘and says I’m a “good sport”’ – but it didn’t help. ‘I’m such a burden,’ she cried despondently. Although her sister Quinta carried on resignedly, her disability was progressing too: the ‘white shadow’ now showed in both her legs, while Knef could do nothing to save her teeth.
As for Katherine Schaub, nobody even saw her anymore: she stayed at home and refused to go out. ‘While other girls are going to dances and the theatres and courting and marrying for love,’ Katherine said mournfully, ‘I have to remain here and watch painful death approach. I am so lonely.’ She left the house only to attend church. While Katherine had not been especially religious before, she now pronounced, ‘You don’t know what a consolation I obtain from going to mass.’ As she was now unable to work, her medical bills fell to her family. Her father, William, who was in his mid-sixties, did his utmost to help, but Katherine’s sister confided, ‘It’s pretty hard on Dad. He can’t work like he used to.’
As time went on, despite these crippling bills, the girls started to doubt that a lawsuit was the right way to go. Perhaps it wasn’t fair to blame the company? For Katherine had eventually consulted Dr Flinn – and his ‘unbias opinion’ was that ‘radium could not and had not harmed her’. Katherine, naturally, told the other women this; and that got them confused. As Albina put it, ‘[We] all thought it significant that of the several doctors who treated [us], only one doctor, Dr Martland, had informed [us] that [our] illnesses were due to radioactive substances.’ With the women in bad health and a question now raised over the company’s culpability, a lawsuit was the last thing on their minds.
The last thing on the other girls’ minds, maybe – but it remained a high priority for Grace Fryer. Still reading the local newspaper, she turned the pages slowly, deep in thought. And then, to her astonishment, she noticed a small piece buried within the paper. Scarcely able to believe her eyes, she read: SUITS ARE SETTLED IN RADIUM DEATHS.
What? She quickly read on – and found the headline did not lie. USRC had settled out of court the suits of Marguerite Carlough, Sarah Maillefer and Hazel Kuser. The women had beaten the corporation – got money for what the firm had done to them. Grace could barely believe it. Surely that was an admission of guilt? Surely this opened the door for her and her friends to bring a lawsuit? She read on in excitement: ‘Mr Carlough [the girls’ father] received $9,000 [$120,679] for the death of Marguerite Carlough and $3,000 [$40,226] for the death of Mrs Maillefer, and Mr Kuser received $1,000 [$13,408] for the death of his [wife].’
It was hardly big money. Theo’s settlement, in particular, barely dented the $8,904 (almost $120,000) debts that he and his father had incurred for Hazel’s care – especially once Mr Kalitsch took his 45 per cent cut. This was a higher-than-usual split with the attorney, but the families did not have much choice but to agree, for he had been the only lawyer to take the case. In the end, Theo was left with just $550 ($7,300), but it was better than nothing.
Grace wondered what on earth had happened to make the company pay out, when it had fought the women for almost eighteen months with no sign that they would concede a single cent. In fact, behind the scenes at USRC, there were probably several reasons – not least of which was that the women, especially the Carlough sisters, had strong cases; the company might well have lost before a sympathetic jury. Even looked at from a basic legal perspective, the cases were promising: the girls had filed within the two-year statute; there was Katherine Wiley’s new law supporting the girls’ claims that they had been killed by such a thing as radium necrosis; and there was also the issue of the Drinker report. Sarah had still been employed by USRC at the time the firm had chosen to suppress it; if it came out that the company had received information that could have saved her – or at the very least mitigated the harm caused – and hadn’t acted upon it, it would look very bad indeed.