Albina Larice, too, had passed away. She died aged fifty-one on 18 November 1946, also of a leg sarcoma. Pictures of her towards the end show her smiling, with no tension in her face. She passed away fourteen days before she and James would have celebrated their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary.
Yet even the deceased dial-painters had something to offer the scientists. Dr Martland had collected tissue and bone samples from the radium girls when he was making his groundbreaking discoveries in the 1920s – and these ended up in the studies’ archives. Those contributing to the world’s knowledge of radiation included Sarah Maillefer, Ella Eckert, Irene La Porte and many more . . . The researchers even went to the Cook County Hospital and brought back Charlotte Purcell’s amputated arm; they found it still in its formaldehyde crypt, saved through the decades due to its never-before-seen symptoms.
In 1963, perhaps at least partly in response to the research on the dial-painters, President Kennedy signed the international Limited Test Ban Treaty, which prohibited atomic tests above ground, underwater and in outer space. Strontium-90, it had been determined, was too dangerous for humanity after all. The ban undoubtedly saved lives and, very possibly, the entire human race.
Atomic energy remained part of the world; it is a part of our lives even today, when fifty-six countries operate 240 nuclear reactors, and more still are used to power nuclear ships and submarines. Yet thanks to the radium girls, whose experiences led directly to the regulation of radioactive industries, atomic power is able to be operated, on the whole, in safety.
The study of the dial-painters did not end when the threat of nuclear war subsided. A leading figure in the research, Robley Evans, ‘forcefully argued that it was prudent, and indeed a moral obligation to future generations, to learn as much as possible about the effects of radiation’. The AEC agreed and so, through the Center for Human Radiobiology, the dial-painters were studied ‘for their full life spans’.
Decade after decade, the radium girls came to CHR to be tested. They agreed to have bone-marrow biopsies, blood tests, X-rays, physical exams; the women were asked to fast before coming and to wear clothes that they could ‘easily slip in and out of’. They were given probing questionnaires about their mental and physical health, they had breath tests and, of course, they had their body burdens measured in the claustrophobic iron rooms beneath the earth. Even after death, some were autopsied; their bodies giving up secrets that the scientists couldn’t learn in life. Thousands of women helped with the study, through their forties, fifties, sixties and beyond; their contribution to medical science is incalculable. We all benefit from their sacrifice and courage, every day of our lives.
And among those women who submitted to examination for the good of humanity were some familiar faces. Pearl Payne was one of them. ‘I believe I was fortunate,’ she once said of her survival, ‘in the fact that [my] radium did not become localised in some of the bones of the body which cannot be removed, as is the case with many of the girls that are dead.’
Instead of death, Pearl embraced life. She made curtains and dresses on her sewing machine and ‘the best homemade pies’, using freshly fallen fruit from the trees in her backyard. Her survival meant she was around when her little sister needed help. ‘At the time my dad walked out on my mom,’ Pearl’s nephew Randy said, ‘there was nobody left. Nobody to help us. And so Pearl and Hobart were the best people in our lives. They would take care of us.’
Another dial-painter who came to the Argonne Laboratory was Marie Rossiter. ‘The state man came and took me and he said, “I hear you’re one of the rare ones,”’ she remembered, ‘and I said, “Rare or bare?” and he looked at me and he said, “No, I mean it.”’
Marie survived to see her son, Bill, marry the girl-next-door, Dolores; and to see her granddaughter Patty grow up to become a dancer. Although for much of her life Marie had ‘huge and spotty’ legs from the radium, which forced her to walk with a limp, she would dance with Patty regardless. ‘She’d always dance with me,’ remembered her granddaughter fondly. ‘It wasn’t that great, but we danced together. She had a wonderful love for life. I used to look upon her like she could do anything.’
Marie simply refused to let the radium rule her life. ‘She was in pain,’ recalled Dolores. ‘Pain to walk. Pain to just stand here, sometimes, it was that bad.’ Yet although Marie had her bad times – ‘I prayed to die and couldn’t die,’ she once said. ‘Why would I want to live, I had so much pain?’ – she added stoically, ‘I witnessed the bad times, but you get through them.’
There was a friend of hers who had gotten through the bad times too: Charlotte Purcell. She’d been told in the 1930s that she was the Ottawa dial-painter most likely to die after Catherine Donohue, but thirty years later, she was still living. ‘She’s a beautiful woman to go on graciously losing an arm, raising a family,’ remarked Marie, ‘and maybe sometimes God looks at people and when they help somebody else [like she helped Catherine], He’s gonna help her too.’
Charlotte had had a sarcoma, back in 1934, but her courage in electing to have an amputation undoubtedly saved her life. She lost all her teeth and had one leg shorter than the other but, like Marie, she refused to let it bring her down. ‘I now feel fine, although I’m bothered a bit by arthritis,’ she said to a reporter in the 1950s. ‘I’ve gone through all that years ago; I don’t like to think about it.’ Although it was a time in her life she wanted to forget, when the scientists invited her to Argonne, she answered their call. The doctors had told her that doing so would help others, and Charlotte Purcell was never a woman to turn down an appeal for aid.