The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women

Katherine Schaub was first up.

‘I ascended the steps to the witness stand one by one,’ she wrote. ‘I felt quite strange to be on the stand; more strange than I had anticipated . . . I took the oath.’

As Berry had done with her friends, he eased her into her testimony. She cast her mind back to 1 February 1917, to a cold winter’s day when she had excitedly made her way to work for her first day. ‘The young lady instructed me,’ she recalled, ‘told me to put the brush in my mouth.’

Berry took her through her suffering; she revealed she had grown ‘very nervous’. The USRC lawyers undoubtedly saw her mental-health issues as a weakness – and that probably explains why they gave Katherine hell.

She had just said that she lip-pointed ‘sometimes four or five times [per dial], perhaps more than that’, when Markley stood to begin his cross-examination.

‘Sometimes more,’ he began.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Sometimes less.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Sometimes you wouldn’t put the brush in your mouth at all, would you?’ he exclaimed, spinning round to deliver the line. She must have hesitated. ‘You don’t know?’ he said incredulously.

‘I am trying to remember,’ replied Katherine nervously.

‘. . . Depend on your brush too, wouldn’t it? [. . .] The brushes were supplied there, weren’t they?’

‘They were supplied, yes, sir.’

‘You could get all the brushes you wanted.’

‘No.’

‘. . . You would go to [the forewoman] when you wanted a brush, wouldn’t you?’ he asked, closing in.

‘Yes, sir,’ Katherine replied, ‘but you were not supposed to waste them.’

‘Of course you weren’t supposed to waste them, but you were supplied amply with them, weren’t you?’

The questions came thick and fast. Markley didn’t miss a beat and would have his next line of attack prepared even as Katherine stuttered out her answer.

As they had done with Grace, the company lawyers questioned Katherine extensively about her initial dental treatment and whether any connection had been made in the early 1920s between her illness and her job. Perhaps inevitably, under such heated cross-examination the nervous Katherine slipped up. Thinking back to the meeting she and some of the other girls had had in Dr Barry’s office, when the condition was considered to be phosphorus poisoning, she revealed, ‘There had been some talk about industrial disease . . .’

Markley seized on it. ‘What do you mean, “There had been some talk”?’

Katherine realised her error. ‘I had never connected myself with it in any way,’ she said hurriedly, but he wasn’t going to let it go that easily. He brought up Irene, who had died in 1923.

‘You know Dr Barry told her he thought it might be industrial disease, don’t you?’

‘Well, he had a slight suspicion that something was wrong,’ Katherine conceded weakly.

‘He told you he had a slight suspicion?’ Markley asked.

‘He never told me that directly . . . I only know what my folks told me.’

‘When was it that they told you that?’ Markley jumped in, probably hoping for an answer that would kill the case dead.

‘Well, I don’t know,’ retorted Katherine, back on track. ‘My cousin was ill so long and I don’t remember.’

It seemed never to end. She felt worn down by it – so much so that Backes, keeping an eye on his vulnerable witness, interjected at one point to ask, ‘Are you tired?’

But Katherine replied firmly. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I try to sit up as straight as I possibly can, because my spine is a little weak.’

She would have been gratified to note that the gathered reporters scribbled down that detail of her suffering as they followed her account.

As at the January hearing, the courtroom was packed with journalists; even more than before, for the women’s story was now beginning to reach international shores. The reporters would later write moving descriptions of their testimony, as Katherine, Albina and Quinta all gave evidence. The press called them a ‘sadly smiling sorority’ and said they ‘maintained an attitude of almost cheerful resignation’.

Their composure was in direct contrast to those observing the trial. ‘The [women] listened,’ a newspaper reported, ‘with pensive stoicism, while ordinarily hard-boiled spectators had constant recourse to handkerchiefs to check tears of which they seemed unashamed.’

How could anyone not cry, as Berry took Quinta McDonald through the fate of her friends?

‘Were you ever acquainted with Irene Rudolph?’ he asked her.

‘Yes, sir, while I worked in the radium plant.’

‘Hazel Kuser?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Sarah Maillefer?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Marguerite Carlough?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Eleanor Eckert?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘. . . Are all these people dead?’

‘Yes, sir.’

It seems Grace may have indicated to Berry that she wanted to be recalled, for she now retook the stand. She had been staring across the courtroom at the gathered USRC executives, and her sharp memory had snagged on one of their faces in particular.

‘Miss Fryer,’ Berry began, after a quick consultation with Grace, ‘you were examined in the summer of 1926 by Dr Frederick Flinn and there was another doctor who you did not know who was present at the examination. Have you seen that assisting doctor since that time?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Is he here in the court today?’

Grace looked across at the executives. ‘Yes, sir.’

Berry pointed at the man she had specified. ‘Is that the gentleman, Mr Barker?’

‘Yes, sir,’ said Grace assuredly.

‘Do you know he is the vice president of the United States Radium Corporation?’

‘I didn’t know it then,’ she said pointedly.

Barker had been there on the day that Grace had been told by Flinn she was in better health than he was. He had stood by as Flinn had issued the diagnosis there was nothing wrong with her. Barker’s presence showed just how involved the company was with Flinn’s activities: its own vice president had attended the girls’ medical tests.

Elizabeth Hughes, the breath-test specialist Berry had employed, was on the stand next; she testified that it was well known ‘that all operatives and all workers should be protected from the radium rays’ as ‘almost everyone in the field has hand burns’. The newspapers noted of Mrs Hughes, ‘She exhibited a thorough knowledge of the subject and convinced Vice Chancellor Backes, at least, that she knew what she was talking about.’

That, of course, was anathema to the company lawyers. They quickly tried to discredit Mrs Hughes, despite her great experience.

‘What is your occupation now?’ Markley asked her, well knowing the answer.

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