For that company, the Byers case was a disaster. USRC supplied the radium for many of the products that had now been banned. The whole radium industry collapsed. It may or may not have been connected, but in August 1932, having failed to find a buyer for the old Orange plant, the firm had it razed to the ground. The dial-painters’ studio was the last building to come down.
The women had mixed feelings, seeing it gone. It was a bittersweet triumph of sorts; except, for them, erasing the studio and all it had done was not as simple as covering the site with anonymous asphalt. Lying in her hospital room in February 1933, Katherine Schaub forced herself to look at what the radium had done to her. Her leg was a mess. Finally, after much consideration, she decided to have it amputated.
It was a decision for her future. ‘It is my ambition to continue writing,’ she said. She could do that, she thought, with or without a leg.
But Humphries had bad news for her. ‘There is no question of an amputation,’ he now said. Katherine and her leg had worsened of late and both were now in far too serious a state for such a major operation to be performed. Subsequently, Katherine took another slide downhill. On 18 February 1933, at 9 p.m., she died at the age of thirty.
Two days before her funeral, perhaps distracted by grief, her beloved father, William, fell down a flight of stairs at his Newark home. He was rushed to hospital, but just one week after Katherine died she was joined on the other side by her dad. His funeral was held in the same church as Katherine’s, and they were both buried in the Holy Sepulchre Cemetery. They were together, in the end, at the close of Katherine’s long journey; of her ‘adventure’ as she herself put it.
Katherine Schaub was just fourteen when she’d started work with the radium company on that long-ago February day. She had dreamed of writing and of fulfilling her potential – and she did publish her work and she did fulfil that potential; it was just that her destiny was not quite the one she’d dreamed of as a girl. In taking on the company, she became a celebrated example of standing up for your rights.
40
It could be worse, Grace Fryer thought, it really could be a lot worse.
Just lately, in this July of 1933, Grace had become bedridden, unable to get about at all. But, as she kept telling herself, it really could be a lot worse. ‘I feel better when I’m at home,’ she said brightly. ‘I guess it’s because I like home better than anything else.’
Grace’s friend Edna shared her feelings about that. ‘Home always makes me feel better,’ Edna commented. ‘I have my good and bad days, but I can endure them when I’m home.’
Edna was doing very well, all things considered. Despite her crossed legs, she still managed to move about with the aid of a cane, calling on friends and even hosting bridge parties. She’d taken up crochet; it was something she could do for hours on end without leaving her chair. Although her spine was now affected by the radium, she kept her spirits up and even believed she would live ‘quite a few years yet’. Her optimistic attitude had a lot to do with Louis: ‘He helps me so very, very much,’ she said quietly.
Edna declared she never thought about her illness being fatal. ‘What good would that do?’ she exclaimed. She was leaving things to fate.
Albina Larice, meanwhile, found herself feeling surprised. She’d been expected to die before all the others; but here she was, six years on, still living. Katherine Schaub had died and so had Albina’s little sister Quinta – but she was still here. It was a peculiar, confusing thing.
As with Edna, Albina’s spine had become affected and she now wore a steel corset, but she was able to hobble about with her mouse-size steps as long as she had a cane. Though she was only thirty-seven, Albina’s hair, like Edna’s before her, had turned entirely white. She was known to be less cheerful than Edna, but then she had lost far more. Three children. Two sisters. It was a terrible, tragic tally.
But, thanks to her husband James’s careful attentions, she was much happier these days than she had once been, when she’d taken only to her bed and thought of how she might end the half-life she’d been given. ‘I know they say,’ Albina said shyly, ‘there is no hope of being cured – but I’m trying to hope there is.’
By September 1933, Grace was clinging to the same hope; but it seemed to fade with every passing day. Though her mother kept her home as long as she could, Grace was eventually admitted to hospital under the care of Dr Humphries.
He was worried, he said, about the growing sarcoma in her leg.
‘I am not going to live much longer,’ Grace had once said. ‘No one has ever been known to recover from this trouble. So, of course, I will not either. But why worry?’
‘It was not death of which Grace was afraid,’ said her mother. ‘It was the dread of the suffering – the eternal suffering – the years of torment. She was brave, until the last.’
The last came on 27 October 1933. She died at 8 a.m., a somewhat typically helpful time, ready for the doctors who were starting their day. It meant Dr Martland was able to attend her autopsy, to conduct his final careful consideration of this most special of patients. Grace’s death certificate stated she was killed by ‘radium sarcoma, industrial poisoning’. It was a fact, black and white: it was the radium industry that killed her. It was the company.
Grace was buried in Restland Memorial Park; her grave marked with a stone that had a gap beneath her name. When her mother passed away, fourteen years later, her name was added to her daughter’s, so they could both rest in peace.
Her death was reported by the local papers. The family supplied a photograph of Grace to accompany the news; a picture from before the poisoning had set in. She looked forever young: her lips smooth and shining; her eyes piercing, as though she could see into souls. She wore a conservative set of pearls, a lace-shouldered blouse. She was beautiful and bright and unbroken, and it was how she would always be remembered by those who’d loved her.
‘The family all just seemed so sad,’ her nephew Art remembered. He’d been born after Grace had died, the son of her little brother Art, who used to take her to hospital appointments. ‘My father really did not talk about it. But I think he was affected his whole life by this. This was his big sister, who was a beautiful girl.’
And Grace Fryer was not just beautiful. She was brilliant. She was smart. She was determined and forthright and strong and special.
Her little brother did once speak of her, when his grandson had asked him to. ‘I will never forget her,’ he’d simply said. ‘Never.’