Such denials (such outright lies, one might say . . .) comprised its written fightback through the law, yet that was only the start of the firm’s attempt to take control of the situation. Now faced with the women squaring up to it in court, it fought back behind their backs. Miss Rooney, the former forelady of USRC, who was a good friend of Edna Hussman, was surprised when one of her erstwhile bosses suddenly appeared at Luminite and asked to speak to her. At first, she chatted happily with the visiting executive about the girls who had worked under her management, sharing intimate details of how they were getting on. The executive, thrilled, noted she gave him ‘considerable information’.
It seems both the firm and the former forelady totally underestimated the strength of will of Grace Fryer. ‘Miss Rooney says that she feels certain that Grace Fryer was urged into the suit by the lawyers,’ a company memo said. They little knew that, without Grace’s two-year fight to find an attorney, none of this would be happening.
The company, in fact, started to suspect not just the lawyers but a former friend of stabbing it in the back. ‘Miss Rooney seems to have reason to believe that Dr [von] Sochocky was in back of all these cases,’ the memo noted. ‘I certainly think we should get a line on what [von] Sochocky is doing and where he is.’
The executive who conducted these informal chats with Miss Rooney came not once, not twice, but three times to her workplace to grill her about the girls. By the third visit, it seems she had cottoned on to what was happening. ‘Miss Rooney claimed to have no further information this morning,’ noted the executive’s final memo on the subject. ‘Have an idea that she is merely shutting up on information for fear of doing her friend harm.’
But it was of no consequence; the company had got what it needed and there were other sources of information easily to hand. For the firm now paid private detectives to follow the five girls, looking for dirt on them that it could present in court. Berry perhaps suspected that such underhand tactics would be employed, given his decision to lead with Grace’s case.
Yet despite the lily-white innocence of Grace Fryer, it didn’t mean that any dirt kicked up didn’t stick. There was that old rumour – not even a rumour, a cold hard fact in black and white, printed on Amelia Maggia’s death certificate. She had died of syphilis, so who was to say that all these other girls, who had once worked alongside a girl of her sort, weren’t touched by the same Cupid’s disease? The rumours wafted around the streets of Orange, sidling as close to the girls as a second skin; just as the radium dust had once done. ‘You know how in small towns people gossip . . .’ a relative of Grace later said.
USRC had not forgotten that Grace had once proposed a $5,000 settlement. When the firm filed its legal response to Berry, there was a final paragraph included: ‘Kindly let us have your rock-bottom figure in settlement,’ the firm’s lawyers wrote. ‘Do not let us dicker. Give us your very best offer.’
As it was his job to do, Berry put the idea to Grace. One can imagine her response; Berry duly wrote back to USRC’s legal team – which now comprised three separate firms, some of which were representing the company’s insurers, who would have to pay out if the girls won – ‘So far as settlement is concerned, [Grace] does not desire to make any proposition.’ In other words: we will see you in court.
Berry immediately threw himself into building his case. He quickly met the girls’ allies – Wiley, Hamilton, Hoffman, Martland, Humphries and von Sochocky – and spent a lot of time reading their notes and interviewing them. Wiley gave him a damning account of all she had learned: ‘Although its employees were falling sick,’ she said, ‘the corporation did nothing. USRC has done everything it could to obscure the issue and render proper relief to its employees impossible.’
Learning of the cover-up of the Drinker report, Berry immediately grasped the impact of such double-dealing for his case – and wrote to Cecil Drinker to request that he give evidence to help the women. But Drinker responded, via his secretary, that: ‘He does not care to make testimony.’ Berry would spend all summer trying to change his mind but, in the end, he was forced to issue a formal court summons.
Drinker wasn’t the only doctor not keen to testify. ‘While I thoroughly sympathise with the girls,’ wrote Martland, ‘I cannot take sides in a civil suit.’ Martland disliked lawyers and had no desire to get caught up in a legal battle; as much as he enjoyed a Sherlock Holmes mystery, he was not a fan of courtroom drama.
As Martland’s testimony was not certain – Berry would not give up trying to persuade him – Berry started hunting for another specialist who could take new breath tests of the girls to prove they were radioactive. But try as he might, he hit dead end after dead end. He found one specialist in Boston who was willing to assist, but the girls were not well enough to travel.
In the other camp, meanwhile, USRC was having no such problems, as Flinn was still acting as its expert; and not just for them, as Berry soon discovered.
Berry had now learned of the Waterbury Clock Company cases of radium poisoning. Essentially, their existence proved that his clients’ disease was occupational. Consequently, Berry wrote to the Workmen’s Compensation Commission in Connecticut, the state in which the watch firm was based, looking for evidence he could cite in court. But the commission’s response was totally unexpected: ‘Had anybody in this vicinity suffered an occupational disease,’ its officer wrote, ‘I should have [had] it brought to my attention, as occupational diseases have been compensable in this state for several years. No claims have been filed with me. I have heard a number of rumours such as you have, but know nothing about them.’
It was a conundrum. Connecticut law had a much more favourable statute of limitations of five years, which was just about long enough for a dial-painter to discover she had radium poisoning before bringing a lawsuit. By now, at least three dial-painters had died in Waterbury, and others were ill. Had not one of their families filed suit?