The conference didn’t confirm that radium poisoning existed or even that radium was dangerous, it simply agreed that further study should continue via two committees – yet there is no record the committees ever met. As the New Jersey girls’ stories became yesterday’s news, no one was championing the dial-painters’ cause anymore. ‘The Radium Corp.,’ Berry wrote in frustration, ‘is playing a game.’ And, it seemed, the radium companies were winning.
There were two other delegates worthy of mention at the national radium conference: Joseph Kelly and Rufus Fordyce, of Radium Dial – the executives who had recently signed their names beneath the company statement in the Ottawa press. They appear only to have listened, and not contributed to the debate. They listened as one specialist said, ‘My advice to anyone manufacturing watches today would be to cut out the brush because you can paint on in another way.’ They listened as the New Jersey girls’ deaths and disabilities were debated. They listened, as the industry got away with murder.
And then they went home.
34
Ottawa, Illinois
1929
On 26 February 1929, radium-poisoning investigator Swen Kjaer made his way to the LaSalle County courthouse in the little town of Ottawa. He was surprised by how quiet it was; today, there was a hearing in the Ella Cruse case and given the cacophony caused by the radium lawsuits out east, he had expected more fuss. Yet nobody was around; not an eyelash flickered in the sleepy town.
Inside the courthouse, during the hearing, it was equally undramatic. Here there were no throngs of journalists, no star witnesses, no duelling attorneys. All that happened was that the Cruse family’s lawyer, George Weeks, simply stood to request a postponement. With momentum provided by the New Jersey lawsuits, Kjaer was surprised he wasn’t pushing it through more quickly.
Afterwards, when Kjaer questioned Weeks, he discovered why he wasn’t. The lawyer had needed to ask for postponements several times because he knew nothing about radium poisoning – and could not find any physician in Ottawa who could give him information. The family was claiming $3,750 ($51,977), which wasn’t avaricious, but at this rate they would not see a cent. Weeks couldn’t find anyone to tell him what radium poisoning was, let alone if Ella had died from it. Her parents were informed that the only way to get proof would be to exhume her body for an autopsy, but it would cost $200 ($2,772); money they simply didn’t have. The case was left high and dry.
Kjaer continued on his pilgrimage around town. He called on the doctors and dentists who had promised to alert him should any dial-painters present symptoms of radium poisoning. As before, they all reported no cases.
He also visited the Radium Dial studio. It was still bustling, filled with women painting dials. He met the manager and requested that the company-test data be shared with him. Radium Dial was now conducting regular medical exams of its employees – though the girls had noticed, as before, that they were separated prior to being tested. Catherine Wolfe even remembered, ‘Only once [was I] called to report for a physical examination [in 1928], whereas other girls apparently in good health were examined regularly.’
Catherine was not in especially good health; she still had a limp, and just recently she had started suffering from fainting spells. Concerned, she’d asked Mr Reed if she could see the company doctor again, but he’d refused. She told herself she was worrying over nothing. The company had assured her that expert tests showed she was healthy and vowed to close the studio if there was any hazard; yet it was busier by the day. As time passed after the furore in New Jersey, orders swiftly rose again to 1.1 million watches a year. Business was back on track.
However, Kjaer’s inspection of Radium Dial troubled him. Two lab workers from Chicago showed changes in their blood, demonstrating that the firm’s safety precautions were insufficient. The girls were also still eating in the studio without washing their hands. Kjaer concluded: ‘Further steps should be taken to protect the workers.’
He met Joseph Kelly; the president promised him that the firm’s ‘intention’ was ‘to assist you in every way possible’. Having now perused the test results, Kjaer wanted to discuss two employees in particular; one was Ella Cruse. Kjaer declared, ‘I feel that this case should not be left out [of my study].’ He requested further information on both girls.
Yet when Kelly sent him the data, all he enclosed were employment dates; hardly enlightening. Kjaer’s time was limited, so he didn’t grill the company further; he thought he had enough to go on anyway.
And so, in his report, which was never seen by the Radium Dial girls, he wrote:
One dial-painter, ML, a twenty-four-year-old female, employed in a studio in Illinois, had been found radioactive in 1925 by electroscopic test. In 1928, another test was made, and she was found still radioactive . . . Complete information was not obtainable, and the firm protests against calling the diseased condition radium poisoning, but it seems well indicated by the test.
ML. Margaret Looney. She had been told by the firm she had ‘a high standard of health’. She had been told that her tests showed nothing to worry about.
She had no idea of what was coming.
Peg Looney smiled up at Chuck Hackensmith. ‘Thank you,’ she said.
Chuck threw a golden grin over his well-muscled shoulder and picked up the handle of the red metal wagon that Peg was sitting in. ‘Here we go . . .’ he cried with typical verve to his fiancée. And then the cold marble athlete leapt to life . . .
‘Chuck used to put Peg in a little wagon when she got so bad,’ remembered Peg’s sister Edith, ‘and pull her up to where we used to have a picnic. She couldn’t walk so he just pulled her, put her in the wagon and away we went . . . He was a wonderful fella, Chuck.’
‘Chuck felt awful bad about [her illness],’ added her sister Jane.
The whole family did. By the summer of 1929, red-haired Peg Looney was not at all well. The teeth extractions that never healed had only been the start of it; she’d developed anaemia and then this pain had settled in her hip so that now she could barely walk – thus the little red wagon that Chuck had commandeered to take her up to the Shack or along to Starved Rock. He was awful kind, but then he loved her fiercely. They were going to be married next June.
Chuck and his red wagon couldn’t be there all the time though. When Peg went to the radium studio, she had to walk. Her sister Jean remembered the way that she and all the Looney siblings would look out for her coming home.
‘We’d all be sitting out on our porch just watching for her because she looked so bad walking,’ said Jean. ‘[She’d be struggling] all the way home. We’d run to meet her, each one would have an arm to help her.’
When she reached home, borne along by her siblings, Peg could no longer assist her mother with the housework as she once had. She would simply have to lie down and rest. Her mother felt terrible watching her daughter’s decline; Peg was wasting away and her family watched in horror as she pulled teeth and parts of her jaw from her mouth.