April 19, 2024 • 19 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, in 1898, the chemical element that glows in the dark was discovered. Years later, young women began working in radium factories, which was viewed as a very glamorous, upscale job. Kate Moore, author of “Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women”, shares the story of these women.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
And we're back with our American stories. In eighteen ninety eight, radium,
the chemical element that glows in the dark, was discovered,
and in nineteen seventeen young women began working in radium factories. Today,
these women are known as the Radium Girls. Here is
Kate Moore, author of Radium Girls, The Dark Story of
(00:33):
America's Shining Women, with the story of the women who
worked in these.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Factory Catherine Sharp, a fourteen year old girl from New
Jersey going to work on a February day in nineteen seventeen,
thinks she's lucky to work with this miraculous substance that
is glamorous and healthful. She was a dial painter, which
(00:58):
meant that she painted dials with radioactive luminous radium paint.
Those dials were used for watches and clocks to make
them glow in the dark, but the company also produced
instruments for ships and warplanes the dashboards of these transportation
(01:18):
vehicles that would make them light up in the dark.
And because Katherine is going to work in nineteen seventeen,
America is on the cusp of the First World War,
when demand for these glow in the dark instruments is
about to boom, and so Catherine is employed to paint
these dials with this luminous paint.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
And because the work is.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
So detailed the dials so small, she is taught to
put her paintbrush between her lips to make this fine point.
But Katherine and her colleague, they all asked is it
safe to do this? They didn't accept the technique with
blind faith, but the company assured them it was safe.
And in fact, one of the instructors who worked at
(02:02):
these radium ferns he told the girls that the radium
would put roses in their cheeks and make them beautiful.
And of course, with Catherine reading her magazines and her newspapers,
that was exactly what she thought would happen. If you
look back through magazines and newspapers, you'll find adverts for
a whole range of radium products for cosmetics, soaps, and
(02:27):
face powders that will give you a glowing complexion, for
a radium health tonic. People recommended that you took it
to ward off middle age and tiredness. So dial painting
was known as the elite job for the poor working girls.
Dial painters were in the top five percent of female
(02:48):
wagers and nationally. So Catherine got to work with this glowing,
glamorous substance. She was well paid, and she got to
work with friends, and the studio was full of camera.
They were largely teenagers going out to work. Some of
the Radium girls were as young as eleven, and this
artistic nature of the work really appealed to the women.
(03:10):
When I looked up the Radium girls in their town directories,
I found that next to their names, it didn't say
dial painter as their occupation, it said artist. So when
the companies needed more girls, those lucky enough to already
have a job promoted the vacancies to their sisters and
their cousins and their friends. You ended up with whole
(03:32):
sets of siblings painting alongside each other in the studio.
They used to have a little game with each other
where they'd go into the dark room and they paint
funny faces with the radium paint.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
So they'd paint a comedy.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Mustache or a big eyebrows, or a sort of goaty
beard on their chin, that kind of thing, just to
have a laugh. They mix their own paint so there
was like a luminous dust that they would combine with
the other materials to make the paint, and that dust
got ever wear, so the women would end up looking
like industrious fireflies. They'd be completely covered in this dust.
(04:08):
So they used to wear their party frocks to work,
so that when they went out dancing after work in
the speakeasies and the music halls of the nineteen tens
in the nineteen twenties, the Radium Girls would be the
ones on the dance floor shining and shimmering, and as
they walked home at night through the dark streets, they
(04:28):
would glow like ghosts, and so they had this nickname
the ghost girls.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
Radium was very recently discovered.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
It was only discovered in eighteen ninety eight, and when
scientists realized that it could destroy human tissue, that you
could get a radiation burn, they thought, well, how can
we exploit this power? Radium is highly radioactive. The type
of radium that the Radium Girls were working with has
a half life of one thousand, six hundred years, which
(05:00):
means for centuries it doesn't diminish in its power, and
so scientists wanted to try to harness that power, that
indestructible power, as they thought of it, and they thought, well,
if it's destroying human flesh, can we utilize this in
some way? And they thought, well, let's use radium to
treat cancerous tumors. And it had remarkable results, and we
(05:23):
still use radium today to treat certain cancers because it
was remarkably effective. And because radium was used to treat
cancers successfully, people thought, well, surely it must be a
healthful product. And so people thought, okay, well, a large
amount we know is dangerous. That is what is giving
us the radiation burns. And so they knew very early
(05:45):
on that this substance was dangerous. But the radium girls
were working with a tiny amount of radium, and people
at that time thought a small amount was safe. And
that is what was put into the cosmetics, is what
was put into the radium water, even the radium chocolate
that was sold. It was just a sort of smidgen
(06:06):
of radium just to make you feel, as one advertising
pamphlet said, you could feel the sparkles inside your anatomy.
And people thought that it's indestructible radiation. The fact that
it had this half life of one six hundred years,
they thought that perhaps there was the answer to human immortality.
(06:27):
I found newspaper articles from the nineteen twenties, which was
talking about eat radium tablets because doing so will and
I quote add years to your life. The message was
that a small amount was safe. That's what everyone thought
about radium in the nineteen tens and nineteen twenties. But
(06:48):
it's one of those things that you look at it
now and you think, well, how on earth could they
have thought that when it's so destructible in large quantities,
and as we now know, it's so destructible even in
small amounts.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
One of the.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
Mysteries of radium poisoning is that it's very insidious. It
takes years to show itself, and so it wasn't for
many years until the girls started suffering. Radium is a
bone seeker, so it's very similar biomedically to calcium. We're
advised to drink milk because the calcium in the milk
(07:24):
makes our bones strong. So you drink milk. The human
body identifies it, it deposits it in the skeletons, and
it strengthens the bones. They swallowed the radium and their
bodies deposited it in their skeletons and there it emanated
its immense radioactive power. It varied with each woman when
(07:45):
she would begin to get sick. But the first women
began to suffer after about five.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
Years, so in that time. The war is over.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Now and many of them have moved on to other jobs,
and other people have left to marry and have children.
These symptoms showed themselves in quite an innocuous way.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
To begin with.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
It might just be an aching tooth, or a sore arm,
or a saw leg, maybe a bit of foot pain
that you thought all walking on that a bit funny,
and they didn't think it was that serious at first,
you know, they'd go to the dentist. Katerine Shah, for example,
went to the dentist, said to the dentists, it's this
tooth that is hurting, and he pulled it. But then
(08:24):
she found the next tooth started to hurt, and then
the next tooth, and then the next tooth, until Catherine
didn't have to go to the dentist anymore to have
her teeth pulled because they simply fell out. And women
who found that their legs or their arms were hurting
found that that pain got worse and worse until they
(08:47):
noticed that their legs began shortening, so that one would
end up shorter than the other. And they found too
that their limbs spontaneously fractured because the radium that had
settled in their skeletons. The doctors didn't know what to do,
because these women work with radium, the wonder element, this
(09:09):
healthful element. Surely it couldn't be their work making them sick.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
And you're listening to Kate Moore, author of Radium Girls,
The Dark Story of America's Shining Women. In my goodness,
these young ladies, well, they were doing something they thought
was glamorous and fun. They were getting paid well, heck,
walking home at night, they shone and got the nickname
ghost girls. But lurking inside them was a poison. And
(09:40):
when we come back more of author Kate Moore, and
the book is Radium Girls, The Dark Story of America's
Shining Women. Here on our American stories. And we returned
(10:10):
to our American stories and to keep more with the
story of the Radium Girls. When we left off less,
the Radium Girls had begun feeling ill and were experiencing
all sorts of symptoms. The doctors were confused about what
was causing these women to become sick. Let's pick up
where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
It was the women in the early days that connected
the dots because those family relationships, of course, those sisters
and those cousins and their friends, even though they weren't
necessarily still working together, they were still connected. They were
still seeing each other. And so as they talked about
their symptoms and they realized that they were all suffering,
(10:55):
even if they were suffering in different ways, they realized
that there was something going on. And so it was
the women initially trying to appeal to the authorities to investigate.
The girls thought and fought to even find a lawyer
who would take their case. Radium at that time was
the most expensive substance on earth. For a single gram,
(11:19):
it retailed for the equivalent today of two point two
million dollars. So the companies had a lot of money
at their disposal, and they had a lot of contacts
in high places. And of course they fought back because
if people believed the women that it was the radium
that had hurt them, all those lucrative industries would come
(11:40):
crashing down. So the companies fought back with everything they had.
They tried to cover up what was happening. For me,
what is so remarkable about the girls is that they
were motivated by altruism, by the desire to ensure that
no one else would suffer as they.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
Were suffering in the future.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
And one of my very favorite quotations from the story
comes from Grace Fryer, who's one of the New Jersey
dial painters, and she's asked when she's filing suit, why
are you doing it? And she says, it is not
for myself that I care. I am thinking more of
the hundreds of other girls to whom this may serve
(12:23):
as an example. These women were in such incredible pain.
They were poor, they were disadvantaged, they were silenced and discredited,
called liars and cheats and frauds by the companies, and
yet they used everything they had to fight back against
this powerful company with that was still putting workers at risk.
(12:45):
And so these women gave evidence while they were in pain,
while they're wearing steel backbraces to keep them erect, having
to limp to the stand to give their evidence. Literally,
Catherine Dunnahue, an Illinois dial painter, gave evidence at home
because she was too sick to get to court, and
(13:06):
she's literally using her last breath to speak out because
she's so determined that the world should know that Radian
is dangerous. And Catherine and all the other women just
fought back and they made a difference.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
Eventually they were believed.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Even though they may not have got large settlements, these
women were proved right. They had their day in court
and they won. This groundbreaking legal battle to try and
hold their employer to account. Was one of the first
such cases in America, and the girls stand through history
as a shining example of courage and of what you
(13:47):
can achieve if you fight for what you believe in.
These women thought they were lucky to be dial painters.
They thought it was a fun job, they thought it
was a great job. It was just so glamorous, you know.
The wages enabled them to buy silk and furs, and
so they were the.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
Best rushed girls in town.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
They were so lucky, and yet all the time they
were unwittingly poisoning themselves with every single dial that they painted,
every time they put that paintbrush between their lips. And
for me, what is so heartbreaking is not only that
these women enticed their loved ones into this environment believing
(14:26):
they were doing them a favor, but when the radium
girl's story develops, and time moves on and the tragedy hits.
It's a tragedy that is not just affecting one woman
in a family.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
It's two or three, or four or five.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
And you know, the parents of these girls are having
to see their daughters suffer before them. The women themselves
are having to see their loved ones pass away, to
see their own fate played out before them. And for me,
I think that's suffering, that empathy. The fact that this
hagy was so widespread amongst communities and amongst families is
(15:04):
partly what encouraged the women to become as inspirational as
they became. I went to America to follow in their footsteps,
to go to their homes, to their graves, to the
sites of the dial painting studios. But the primary thing
that I really wanted to do on my research trip
as well was to connect with the families. They were
(15:27):
able to share with me the personal details to learn
from Charlotte Purcell's granddaughter that after her grandma had had
her arm amputated because of the radium poisoning, she wanted
her grandma to teach her how to skip rope, and
so her grandma figured out a way to tie rope
to a chain link fence so she could skip rope
(15:49):
with just one hand. They described Charlotte washing up and
saying she used to wash the frying panther putting their
handle underneath her chin and then scrubbing it as it
sort of rested on her. Yes, that was how she
would do the washing up. One of the most moving
interviews for me with the families was speaking to Katherine Dunny,
Hughes's niece and nephew, and they were able to describe
(16:13):
Katherine and her life towards the end of her sickness,
and they took me into her sick room and they
described the way Katherine liked to keep the shades drawn
so the room was dark. But her nephew said that
even though the room was dark, there was a light
inside it from Katherine herself. The radium that had once
(16:35):
made her paint brush and those dials glow was now
in her bones and in her skeleton. And her nephew said,
as she lay there on the bed in the darkened room,
you could see every bone in her body. And I
wanted to look not only at the women, but about
their husbands who had to bury their wives. To look
(16:58):
at the parents who loved these girls, all these sets
of siblings that ended up painting at the studio, and
these parents having to bury not just one child, not
just one daughter, but several, and the children as well
of these women having to say goodbye to them, knowing
that they were going to die, the children having to
grow up without their mothers. There is so much tragedy
(17:20):
in this story, and of course the biggest tragedy of
all is that it was avoidable. The only way you
can take sort of hope from it is to ensure
that they're not forgotten, and to try and ensure that
the lessons we can learn from their history are not forgotten,
the need for workers' rights, let their sacrifice mean something
(17:42):
even in their own lifetimes. They were bringing about these
legislative changes that could help other workers. Safety standards were
put in place that protected not only radium workers, which
were very necessary because by the time the women win
their case, the Second World War is about to start
and a new generation of dial painters is about to
(18:05):
be put at risk. But these women brought about safety
standards in that field and in all the atomic industries,
and people working today in those industries are protected because
of the Radium Girls, and for me, they inspire me endlessly.
I just became so passionate about their story. I felt
(18:25):
this connection with the women, even though I'm from England
and this was sort of a story that had happened
all the way across an ocean, four thousand miles away
and one hundred years in the past.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
The fact that people all across.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
The world are now learning about Katherine Sharp and Grace
Ryer and Katherine Unnahue and all the women that I.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
Write about in the book just feels extraordinary.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
And I'm glad they got their story in the end.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
And great production and teamwork by our own Robbie and
Madison on the piece. And a special thanks to Kate More,
author of Radium Girls, the Dark Story of America's Shining Women,
and the one enduring scene etched in my mind of
one of the Radium Girls, watching her lay on her
bed at night, you could see every bone in her body.
(19:16):
Her body blowed again. The story of the Radium Girls
here on our American Stories
And we're back with our American stories. In eighteen ninety eight, radium,
the chemical element that glows in the dark, was discovered,
and in nineteen seventeen young women began working in radium factories. Today,
these women are known as the Radium Girls. Here is
Kate Moore, author of Radium Girls, The Dark Story of
(00:33):
America's Shining Women, with the story of the women who
worked in these.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Factory Catherine Sharp, a fourteen year old girl from New
Jersey going to work on a February day in nineteen seventeen,
thinks she's lucky to work with this miraculous substance that
is glamorous and healthful. She was a dial painter, which
(00:58):
meant that she painted dials with radioactive luminous radium paint.
Those dials were used for watches and clocks to make
them glow in the dark, but the company also produced
instruments for ships and warplanes the dashboards of these transportation
(01:18):
vehicles that would make them light up in the dark.
And because Katherine is going to work in nineteen seventeen,
America is on the cusp of the First World War,
when demand for these glow in the dark instruments is
about to boom, and so Catherine is employed to paint
these dials with this luminous paint.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
And because the work is.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
So detailed the dials so small, she is taught to
put her paintbrush between her lips to make this fine point.
But Katherine and her colleague, they all asked is it
safe to do this? They didn't accept the technique with
blind faith, but the company assured them it was safe.
And in fact, one of the instructors who worked at
(02:02):
these radium ferns he told the girls that the radium
would put roses in their cheeks and make them beautiful.
And of course, with Catherine reading her magazines and her newspapers,
that was exactly what she thought would happen. If you
look back through magazines and newspapers, you'll find adverts for
a whole range of radium products for cosmetics, soaps, and
(02:27):
face powders that will give you a glowing complexion, for
a radium health tonic. People recommended that you took it
to ward off middle age and tiredness. So dial painting
was known as the elite job for the poor working girls.
Dial painters were in the top five percent of female
(02:48):
wagers and nationally. So Catherine got to work with this glowing,
glamorous substance. She was well paid, and she got to
work with friends, and the studio was full of camera.
They were largely teenagers going out to work. Some of
the Radium girls were as young as eleven, and this
artistic nature of the work really appealed to the women.
(03:10):
When I looked up the Radium girls in their town directories,
I found that next to their names, it didn't say
dial painter as their occupation, it said artist. So when
the companies needed more girls, those lucky enough to already
have a job promoted the vacancies to their sisters and
their cousins and their friends. You ended up with whole
(03:32):
sets of siblings painting alongside each other in the studio.
They used to have a little game with each other
where they'd go into the dark room and they paint
funny faces with the radium paint.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
So they'd paint a comedy.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Mustache or a big eyebrows, or a sort of goaty
beard on their chin, that kind of thing, just to
have a laugh. They mix their own paint so there
was like a luminous dust that they would combine with
the other materials to make the paint, and that dust
got ever wear, so the women would end up looking
like industrious fireflies. They'd be completely covered in this dust.
(04:08):
So they used to wear their party frocks to work,
so that when they went out dancing after work in
the speakeasies and the music halls of the nineteen tens
in the nineteen twenties, the Radium Girls would be the
ones on the dance floor shining and shimmering, and as
they walked home at night through the dark streets, they
(04:28):
would glow like ghosts, and so they had this nickname
the ghost girls.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
Radium was very recently discovered.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
It was only discovered in eighteen ninety eight, and when
scientists realized that it could destroy human tissue, that you
could get a radiation burn, they thought, well, how can
we exploit this power? Radium is highly radioactive. The type
of radium that the Radium Girls were working with has
a half life of one thousand, six hundred years, which
(05:00):
means for centuries it doesn't diminish in its power, and
so scientists wanted to try to harness that power, that
indestructible power, as they thought of it, and they thought, well,
if it's destroying human flesh, can we utilize this in
some way? And they thought, well, let's use radium to
treat cancerous tumors. And it had remarkable results, and we
(05:23):
still use radium today to treat certain cancers because it
was remarkably effective. And because radium was used to treat
cancers successfully, people thought, well, surely it must be a
healthful product. And so people thought, okay, well, a large
amount we know is dangerous. That is what is giving
us the radiation burns. And so they knew very early
(05:45):
on that this substance was dangerous. But the radium girls
were working with a tiny amount of radium, and people
at that time thought a small amount was safe. And
that is what was put into the cosmetics, is what
was put into the radium water, even the radium chocolate
that was sold. It was just a sort of smidgen
(06:06):
of radium just to make you feel, as one advertising
pamphlet said, you could feel the sparkles inside your anatomy.
And people thought that it's indestructible radiation. The fact that
it had this half life of one six hundred years,
they thought that perhaps there was the answer to human immortality.
(06:27):
I found newspaper articles from the nineteen twenties, which was
talking about eat radium tablets because doing so will and
I quote add years to your life. The message was
that a small amount was safe. That's what everyone thought
about radium in the nineteen tens and nineteen twenties. But
(06:48):
it's one of those things that you look at it
now and you think, well, how on earth could they
have thought that when it's so destructible in large quantities,
and as we now know, it's so destructible even in
small amounts.
Speaker 3 (07:01):
One of the.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
Mysteries of radium poisoning is that it's very insidious. It
takes years to show itself, and so it wasn't for
many years until the girls started suffering. Radium is a
bone seeker, so it's very similar biomedically to calcium. We're
advised to drink milk because the calcium in the milk
(07:24):
makes our bones strong. So you drink milk. The human
body identifies it, it deposits it in the skeletons, and
it strengthens the bones. They swallowed the radium and their
bodies deposited it in their skeletons and there it emanated
its immense radioactive power. It varied with each woman when
(07:45):
she would begin to get sick. But the first women
began to suffer after about five.
Speaker 3 (07:50):
Years, so in that time. The war is over.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Now and many of them have moved on to other jobs,
and other people have left to marry and have children.
These symptoms showed themselves in quite an innocuous way.
Speaker 3 (08:03):
To begin with.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
It might just be an aching tooth, or a sore arm,
or a saw leg, maybe a bit of foot pain
that you thought all walking on that a bit funny,
and they didn't think it was that serious at first,
you know, they'd go to the dentist. Katerine Shah, for example,
went to the dentist, said to the dentists, it's this
tooth that is hurting, and he pulled it. But then
(08:24):
she found the next tooth started to hurt, and then
the next tooth, and then the next tooth, until Catherine
didn't have to go to the dentist anymore to have
her teeth pulled because they simply fell out. And women
who found that their legs or their arms were hurting
found that that pain got worse and worse until they
(08:47):
noticed that their legs began shortening, so that one would
end up shorter than the other. And they found too
that their limbs spontaneously fractured because the radium that had
settled in their skeletons. The doctors didn't know what to do,
because these women work with radium, the wonder element, this
(09:09):
healthful element. Surely it couldn't be their work making them sick.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
And you're listening to Kate Moore, author of Radium Girls,
The Dark Story of America's Shining Women. In my goodness,
these young ladies, well, they were doing something they thought
was glamorous and fun. They were getting paid well, heck,
walking home at night, they shone and got the nickname
ghost girls. But lurking inside them was a poison. And
(09:40):
when we come back more of author Kate Moore, and
the book is Radium Girls, The Dark Story of America's
Shining Women. Here on our American stories. And we returned
(10:10):
to our American stories and to keep more with the
story of the Radium Girls. When we left off less,
the Radium Girls had begun feeling ill and were experiencing
all sorts of symptoms. The doctors were confused about what
was causing these women to become sick. Let's pick up
where we last left off.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
It was the women in the early days that connected
the dots because those family relationships, of course, those sisters
and those cousins and their friends, even though they weren't
necessarily still working together, they were still connected. They were
still seeing each other. And so as they talked about
their symptoms and they realized that they were all suffering,
(10:55):
even if they were suffering in different ways, they realized
that there was something going on. And so it was
the women initially trying to appeal to the authorities to investigate.
The girls thought and fought to even find a lawyer
who would take their case. Radium at that time was
the most expensive substance on earth. For a single gram,
(11:19):
it retailed for the equivalent today of two point two
million dollars. So the companies had a lot of money
at their disposal, and they had a lot of contacts
in high places. And of course they fought back because
if people believed the women that it was the radium
that had hurt them, all those lucrative industries would come
(11:40):
crashing down. So the companies fought back with everything they had.
They tried to cover up what was happening. For me,
what is so remarkable about the girls is that they
were motivated by altruism, by the desire to ensure that
no one else would suffer as they.
Speaker 3 (12:00):
Were suffering in the future.
Speaker 2 (12:02):
And one of my very favorite quotations from the story
comes from Grace Fryer, who's one of the New Jersey
dial painters, and she's asked when she's filing suit, why
are you doing it? And she says, it is not
for myself that I care. I am thinking more of
the hundreds of other girls to whom this may serve
(12:23):
as an example. These women were in such incredible pain.
They were poor, they were disadvantaged, they were silenced and discredited,
called liars and cheats and frauds by the companies, and
yet they used everything they had to fight back against
this powerful company with that was still putting workers at risk.
(12:45):
And so these women gave evidence while they were in pain,
while they're wearing steel backbraces to keep them erect, having
to limp to the stand to give their evidence. Literally,
Catherine Dunnahue, an Illinois dial painter, gave evidence at home
because she was too sick to get to court, and
(13:06):
she's literally using her last breath to speak out because
she's so determined that the world should know that Radian
is dangerous. And Catherine and all the other women just
fought back and they made a difference.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
Eventually they were believed.
Speaker 2 (13:24):
Even though they may not have got large settlements, these
women were proved right. They had their day in court
and they won. This groundbreaking legal battle to try and
hold their employer to account. Was one of the first
such cases in America, and the girls stand through history
as a shining example of courage and of what you
(13:47):
can achieve if you fight for what you believe in.
These women thought they were lucky to be dial painters.
They thought it was a fun job, they thought it
was a great job. It was just so glamorous, you know.
The wages enabled them to buy silk and furs, and
so they were the.
Speaker 3 (14:01):
Best rushed girls in town.
Speaker 2 (14:03):
They were so lucky, and yet all the time they
were unwittingly poisoning themselves with every single dial that they painted,
every time they put that paintbrush between their lips. And
for me, what is so heartbreaking is not only that
these women enticed their loved ones into this environment believing
(14:26):
they were doing them a favor, but when the radium
girl's story develops, and time moves on and the tragedy hits.
It's a tragedy that is not just affecting one woman
in a family.
Speaker 3 (14:38):
It's two or three, or four or five.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
And you know, the parents of these girls are having
to see their daughters suffer before them. The women themselves
are having to see their loved ones pass away, to
see their own fate played out before them. And for me,
I think that's suffering, that empathy. The fact that this
hagy was so widespread amongst communities and amongst families is
(15:04):
partly what encouraged the women to become as inspirational as
they became. I went to America to follow in their footsteps,
to go to their homes, to their graves, to the
sites of the dial painting studios. But the primary thing
that I really wanted to do on my research trip
as well was to connect with the families. They were
(15:27):
able to share with me the personal details to learn
from Charlotte Purcell's granddaughter that after her grandma had had
her arm amputated because of the radium poisoning, she wanted
her grandma to teach her how to skip rope, and
so her grandma figured out a way to tie rope
to a chain link fence so she could skip rope
(15:49):
with just one hand. They described Charlotte washing up and
saying she used to wash the frying panther putting their
handle underneath her chin and then scrubbing it as it
sort of rested on her. Yes, that was how she
would do the washing up. One of the most moving
interviews for me with the families was speaking to Katherine Dunny,
Hughes's niece and nephew, and they were able to describe
(16:13):
Katherine and her life towards the end of her sickness,
and they took me into her sick room and they
described the way Katherine liked to keep the shades drawn
so the room was dark. But her nephew said that
even though the room was dark, there was a light
inside it from Katherine herself. The radium that had once
(16:35):
made her paint brush and those dials glow was now
in her bones and in her skeleton. And her nephew said,
as she lay there on the bed in the darkened room,
you could see every bone in her body. And I
wanted to look not only at the women, but about
their husbands who had to bury their wives. To look
(16:58):
at the parents who loved these girls, all these sets
of siblings that ended up painting at the studio, and
these parents having to bury not just one child, not
just one daughter, but several, and the children as well
of these women having to say goodbye to them, knowing
that they were going to die, the children having to
grow up without their mothers. There is so much tragedy
(17:20):
in this story, and of course the biggest tragedy of
all is that it was avoidable. The only way you
can take sort of hope from it is to ensure
that they're not forgotten, and to try and ensure that
the lessons we can learn from their history are not forgotten,
the need for workers' rights, let their sacrifice mean something
(17:42):
even in their own lifetimes. They were bringing about these
legislative changes that could help other workers. Safety standards were
put in place that protected not only radium workers, which
were very necessary because by the time the women win
their case, the Second World War is about to start
and a new generation of dial painters is about to
(18:05):
be put at risk. But these women brought about safety
standards in that field and in all the atomic industries,
and people working today in those industries are protected because
of the Radium Girls, and for me, they inspire me endlessly.
I just became so passionate about their story. I felt
(18:25):
this connection with the women, even though I'm from England
and this was sort of a story that had happened
all the way across an ocean, four thousand miles away
and one hundred years in the past.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
The fact that people all across.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
The world are now learning about Katherine Sharp and Grace
Ryer and Katherine Unnahue and all the women that I.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
Write about in the book just feels extraordinary.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
And I'm glad they got their story in the end.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
And great production and teamwork by our own Robbie and
Madison on the piece. And a special thanks to Kate More,
author of Radium Girls, the Dark Story of America's Shining Women,
and the one enduring scene etched in my mind of
one of the Radium Girls, watching her lay on her
bed at night, you could see every bone in her body.
(19:16):
Her body blowed again. The story of the Radium Girls
here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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