Radium Girls
Just by reading the title, Radium Girls, you may not know what that means. For the factory women of the early 1900s, it meant death.
Nowadays when you hear the word Radium, you may think of radiation.
You would be correct. Radium is a chemical element and a naturally occurring radioactive material formed by the decaying matter of Uranium and Thorium.
Which kind of screams, DEADLY POISON, right?
While this is common knowledge now, it wasn’t back then.
Radium was originally discovered by Pierre and Marie Currie in 1898 but wasn’t deemed dangerous.
The general public who knew of Radium believed it to be completely safe and went about using it in their work without a care in the world.
Sadly this was not the case and the world would soon know of its dangers as it takes one of its first victims Amelia Maggie.
Life with Radium
At the time, radium was seen as a safe, if not wonderful material. It was used in curing cancer, toothpaste, and even cosmetics.
So the public was in belief that the element was completely safe.
Radium was used in paints, so when added to objects would give them a glow-in-the-dark effect.
The people who painted these objects were women.
Working in factories to sustain their families, handling one of the most dangerous materials of their time without even knowing it.
In their line of work, however, their supervisor implored them to use their mouths to shape their brushes, insuring a clean and sharp look in their work.
These women were given the name “Ghost Girls” due to the glowing effect caused by the radium dust on their clothes and body.
They loved it. Painting their nails and gowns with the material gave them an otherworldly aura.
Amelia Maggie
Amelia Maggie, a painter for the Radium Luminous Materials Corp. of Orange, New Jersey, was one of the first to fall victim to the poison.
The first symptom was a simple harmless toothache.
Due to the pain, the tooth had to be removed, followed by another. In their wake, bloody and puss-filled ulcers developed.
The symptom spread and more of her deteriorated to the point her lower jaw had to be removed.
Amelia died of a hemorrhage on 12 September 1922.
The doctors determined she died of Syphilis.
Many other women soon followed Maggie’s fate.
By 1927, over 30 women perished.
Waterbury’s Radium Girls
Waterbury Clock Company was located in Connecticut, USA 1854.
At the end of the First World War, the demand for clocks and watches skyrocketed.
To keep up with the demands, the company hired women, of low wages to work in their factories.
As with every other company at the time, glow-in-the-dark clocks imbued with radium were all the rage and everyone wanted a piece of the fortune.
Frances Splettstocher was the first victim at the company.
Like Amelia, she suffered from poisoning, ailments like soft teeth, sore throat, anemia, deteriorating jaw, and more.
It was during this time that the company discovered the dangers of consuming the material but still refused to admit that Frances’s death was their fault.
Half a decade later, the factory had to denounce the act of lip-dipping after the death of two women, Mildred Carlow and Mary Damulis. Many women did not see the effects of lip-dipping until many years later when it was too late to get help. Connecticut, New Jersey, and Illinois experienced the death of 30–40 women due to the act.
WWII
At the time of the Second World War the women who survived the original poisoning aided in research to document the repercussions of radium poisoning.
These studies allowed for the safety of scientists as they built the atomic bombs used in the war.
These women who died or suffered painfully for years, aided in the creation of safety regulations which are still used and improved on to this day.
