She was not alone. When the five women, on a frosty January day, arrived at the Court of Chancery, they found themselves surrounded. Newspapermen crowded around, flashing cameras in their eyes, and then packed the seats of the gallery inside.
Berry hoped the girls would be ready for what lay ahead. He had prepped them all he could, calling the five women together two days ago to go through their testimony. Yet the women’s mental strength was only part of the equation; and anyone could see that their physical health was failing. The past six months had not been kind to them. ‘The condition of certain of the girls,’ Berry wrote, ‘is truly deplorable.’
He was most concerned about Albina Larice. She could not extend her left leg more than four inches; she could not even put on her own shoes and stockings, because she could not bend over. Her medical prognosis, along with Edna Hussman’s, was now deemed the worst. Yet it was not the loss of her health that plagued her . . .
‘I have lost,’ Albina mourned, ‘two children because I’m this way.’ Only the previous fall, Berry knew from what the doctors had told him, she’d lost a third baby; a baby who, if things had been different, might well have lived. She’d been so delighted when she found out she was pregnant – but Albina’s happiness did not last long. For when her doctors discovered her condition, they would not permit development of the child, due to her health. They ordered her to have a ‘therapeutically induced’ abortion.
‘I’ve been so discouraged at times,’ Albina confided, ‘that I’ve thought about taking gas and ending it all.’
Dr Humphries had said that radium poisoning ‘destroys [his patients’] will to live’. Berry could only hope that the women, on this day, could find the will to fight.
Edna Hussman was the first to give evidence; Louis almost had to carry his wife to the witness stand. His beautiful blonde Edna, when seen in snapshot, looked as modelesque as ever, striking a pose with one leg casually crossed in front of the other. But appearances were deceptive: she could no longer move her legs apart, for her hips had locked in place at that ‘abnormal angle’. She had also lost the use of her right arm; she could not even raise it to take the oath.
The judge overseeing proceedings was Vice Chancellor John Backes, a very experienced man in his mid-sixties. Berry must have been hopeful for a sympathetic hearing, for Backes’s own father had died after being injured in a rolling mill. Backes wore a bushy moustache and glasses; he looked kindly on Edna as she prepared to give her testimony.
Berry eased her in slowly, just as they’d rehearsed. Edna concentrated on him, answering simple questions about where she lived and how she was now a housewife; although, as she said outside the court, ‘I cannot keep my little home. I do what I can, but my husband does most of the work.’
Edna was tired. ‘The worst thing I have to put up with is not being able to sleep at night because of the pain in my hips,’ she revealed. So it didn’t help when, only eight questions in, as she began to outline the nature of her work at USRC, the lawyers for the corporation cut in with the first of their many objections.
Berry was expecting it. On 4 January, he’d taken another three-hour deposition with the company lawyers present, this time from the Newark dentist Dr Barry; once again, they’d questioned everything. Irene Rudolph’s dental file had a note that read: ‘Recovery? OK’, which Barry explained meant that she had recovered from the anaesthetic; the lawyers, however, said tartly, ‘Isn’t the “Recovery” here recovery from the treatment?’ They asked the same question, in different permutations, at least eight times before moving on.
Edna Hussman, however, was not a professional man like Dr Barry – she was a twenty-six-year-old crippled housewife, and the company lawyers’ aggressive tactics did them no favours. As they harangued her to remember dates and how frequently she had stumbled when her pains began, Backes interrupted their incessant questioning. ‘Of what importance is it?’ he asked pointedly. Sympathy for Edna increased as her testimony continued. ‘I suffer,’ she told the court, ‘all the time.’
Berry’s inexperience in court sometimes showed itself. Despite his brilliant mind, he was still in the early stages of his trial career – but he found the judge was willing to help him out. When Hoffman took the stand after Edna, Backes assisted Berry by helping him to phrase his questions (‘What did he do to get the information and what did he learn?’ he prompted) and even stepping in to help when he anticipated an objection.
On their cross-examination of Hoffman, the company lawyers tried the same tactic they’d used with the Drinkers.
‘Is this the first time that you had occasion to consider the question of radium necrosis?’ Markley asked the statistician, his tall frame pacing the courtroom as he fired off questions.
‘Yes, sir; entirely new venture.’
‘. . . You had no knowledge, did you?’
‘Or nobody else . . .’ pointed out Hoffman.
‘I am asking you,’ Markley said sternly, ‘to speak for yourself. [Was this] the first time you ever had anything to do with the subject?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Hoffman had to agree.
Markley then tried to get Hoffman’s evidence dismissed entirely. ‘I submit, Your Honour,’ he said with a condescending sneer, ‘that a mere statistician is not qualified in court to pass judgement.’
Yet Markley found that Backes was not playing ball.
‘I think he is a little more than that,’ retorted the judge. ‘I think you curbed him down some.’
All this time, the five women watched the drama unfold. They were flanked by the witnesses for the company too; the ‘chameleon-hued’ Dr Flinn sat across from them in the courtroom. Grace felt calm inside, knowing she was up next. ‘Grace is so accustomed to talking of disease and decay,’ wrote a journalist of Miss Fryer, ‘that she can tell you of these deaths without flickering an eyelash.’
Still, there must have been a few butterflies as the court sergeant-at-arms tenderly assisted her to the witness stand. This was it, Grace thought. This was her chance to tell her story.
She sat somewhat awkwardly in the chair: her metal back brace chafed her skin and a fresh bandage clung to her jaw, following a recent operation. Yet the slim young woman with neat dark hair and intelligent eyes now composed herself as she began her testimony. ‘We were instructed to point the brush with our lips,’ she said.
‘Did [all the girls] do it that way?’ asked Backes.
‘All I ever saw do it,’ answered Grace.
‘Were you ever told at any time not to put the brush in your mouth?’ queried Berry, cutting to the heart of the matter.
‘Only on one occasion,’ she said. ‘Dr von Sochocky was passing through and when he saw me put the brush to my lips he told me not to do it.’
‘What else did he say?’