November 17, 2025 • 19 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, at the dawn of the twentieth century, radium was hailed as a miracle of modern science. Factories across the country began hiring young women to paint watch dials and instrument panels that lit up in the dark. It was considered a respectable, even glamorous job. No one warned them that the glow they wore on their skin and teeth came with a deadly cost.
Kate Moore, author of Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women, brings to life the story of the women who unknowingly poisoned themselves while doing their jobs. In time, their fight for justice helped build the foundation of modern workplace safety and occupational health standards across the United States.
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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. And because the work
(01:40):
is 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.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
And in fact, one of the.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Instructors who worked at 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,
(02:21):
you'll find adverts for a whole range of radium products
for cosmetics, soaps, and 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
(02:43):
the poor working girls. Dial painters were in the top
five percent of female wager 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
(03:05):
as eleven, and this artistic nature of the work really
appeal to the women. 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.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
So when the.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
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 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'd paint funny
(03:42):
faces with the radium paint.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
So they'd paint a comedy.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Mustage 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 we 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. That is
what was put into the radium water, even the radium
chocolate that was sold. It was just a sort of
(06:06):
smidgen 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.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
The message was that a small amount was safe.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
That's what everyone thought about radium in the nineteen tens
and nineteen twenties. But 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 amount One of the mysteries
of radium poisoning is that it's very insidious. It takes
(07:07):
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 makes our
bones strong. So you drink milk. The human body identifies it,
(07:29):
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 she would begin to
get sick, but the first women began to suffer after
about five years, so in that time. The war is
(07:53):
over now and many of them have moved on to
other jobs, and other people have left to marry and
have children. The 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.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
Katerine Shah, for example, went.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
To the dentist, said to the dentists, it's this tooth
that is hurting, and he pulled it.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
But then she found the next.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
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 noticed that their legs
(08:49):
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.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
The doctors didn't.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Know what to do, because these women work with radium,
the wonder element, this healthful element.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
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.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
They were still seeing each other.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
And so as they talked about their symptoms and they
realized that they were all suffering, even if they were
suffering in different ways, they realized that they're something going on.
And so it was the women initially trying to appeal
to the authorities to investigate. The girls thought and thought
to even find a lawyer who would take their case.
(11:13):
Radium at that time was the most expensive substance on earth.
For a single gram, 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
(11:36):
it was the radium that had hurt them, all those
lucrative industries would come 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
(11:56):
the desire to ensure that no one else would suffer
as they were suffering in the future. 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.
(12:17):
I am thinking more of the hundreds of other girls
to whom this may serve 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
(12:39):
had to fight back against this powerful company that was
still putting workers at risk. 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 and Illinois painter,
(13:01):
gave evidence at home because she was too sick to
get to court. And 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.
(13:21):
Eventually they were believed. 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
(13:42):
girls stand through history as a shining example of courage
and of what you 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
silks and furs, and so they were the best rushed
(14:02):
girls in town.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
They were so lucky, and yet all the time they.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
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
they were doing them a favor, but when the Radium
(14:29):
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 (14:39):
It's two or three, or four or five.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
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 his
tragedy was so widespread amongst communities and amongst families is
(15:04):
partly what encouraged the women to become as inspirational as
they became.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
I went to.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
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.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
They were able to share with me the.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
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 with just one hand. They described
(15:52):
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 chest.
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 Katherine and her life towards
(16:15):
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 made her paint brush and those
(16:38):
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 at the pair who loved
(17:00):
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 in this story, and of course
(17:22):
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 even in their own lifetimes.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
They were bringing about these.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
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
be put at risk. But these women bought about safety
(18:09):
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
this connection with the women, even though I'm from England
(18:29):
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. The fact that
people all across the world are now learning about Katherine
Sharp and Grace Ryer and Katherine Dnahue and all the
women that I write about in the book just feels extraordinary.
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 Moore,
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.
(19:17):
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. And because the work
(01:40):
is 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.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
And in fact, one of the.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
Instructors who worked at 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,
(02:21):
you'll find adverts for a whole range of radium products
for cosmetics, soaps, and 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
(02:43):
the poor working girls. Dial painters were in the top
five percent of female wager 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
(03:05):
as eleven, and this artistic nature of the work really
appeal to the women. 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.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
So when the.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
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 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'd paint funny
(03:42):
faces with the radium paint.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
So they'd paint a comedy.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Mustage 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 we 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. That is
what was put into the radium water, even the radium
chocolate that was sold. It was just a sort of
(06:06):
smidgen 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.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
The message was that a small amount was safe.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
That's what everyone thought about radium in the nineteen tens
and nineteen twenties. But 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 amount One of the mysteries
of radium poisoning is that it's very insidious. It takes
(07:07):
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 makes our
bones strong. So you drink milk. The human body identifies it,
(07:29):
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 she would begin to
get sick, but the first women began to suffer after
about five years, so in that time. The war is
(07:53):
over now and many of them have moved on to
other jobs, and other people have left to marry and
have children. The 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.
Speaker 3 (08:17):
Katerine Shah, for example, went.
Speaker 2 (08:19):
To the dentist, said to the dentists, it's this tooth
that is hurting, and he pulled it.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
But then she found the next.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
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 noticed that their legs
(08:49):
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.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
The doctors didn't.
Speaker 2 (09:04):
Know what to do, because these women work with radium,
the wonder element, this healthful element.
Speaker 3 (09:10):
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.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
They were still seeing each other.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
And so as they talked about their symptoms and they
realized that they were all suffering, even if they were
suffering in different ways, they realized that they're something going on.
And so it was the women initially trying to appeal
to the authorities to investigate. The girls thought and thought
to even find a lawyer who would take their case.
(11:13):
Radium at that time was the most expensive substance on earth.
For a single gram, 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
(11:36):
it was the radium that had hurt them, all those
lucrative industries would come 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
(11:56):
the desire to ensure that no one else would suffer
as they were suffering in the future. 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.
(12:17):
I am thinking more of the hundreds of other girls
to whom this may serve 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
(12:39):
had to fight back against this powerful company that was
still putting workers at risk. 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 and Illinois painter,
(13:01):
gave evidence at home because she was too sick to
get to court. And 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.
(13:21):
Eventually they were believed. 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
(13:42):
girls stand through history as a shining example of courage
and of what you 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
silks and furs, and so they were the best rushed
(14:02):
girls in town.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
They were so lucky, and yet all the time they.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
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
they were doing them a favor, but when the Radium
(14:29):
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 (14:39):
It's two or three, or four or five.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
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 his
tragedy was so widespread amongst communities and amongst families is
(15:04):
partly what encouraged the women to become as inspirational as
they became.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
I went to.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
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.
Speaker 3 (15:26):
They were able to share with me the.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
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 with just one hand. They described
(15:52):
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 chest.
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 Katherine and her life towards
(16:15):
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 made her paint brush and those
(16:38):
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 at the pair who loved
(17:00):
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 in this story, and of course
(17:22):
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 even in their own lifetimes.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
They were bringing about these.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
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
be put at risk. But these women bought about safety
(18:09):
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
this connection with the women, even though I'm from England
(18:29):
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. The fact that
people all across the world are now learning about Katherine
Sharp and Grace Ryer and Katherine Dnahue and all the
women that I write about in the book just feels extraordinary.
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 Moore,
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.
(19:17):
Her body blowed again the story of the Radium Girls
here on our American Stories
Host
Lee Habeeb
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