Today’s Necrotic Yet Truly Morbid Fact!
The Radium Girls were female factory workers who contracted radiation poisoning from painting radium dials – watch dials and hands with self-luminous paint. The incidents occurred at three factories in United States: one in Orange, New Jersey, beginning around 1917; one in Ottawa, Illinois, beginning in the early 1920s; and one in Waterbury, Connecticut, also in the 1920s.
After being told that the paint was harmless, the women in each facility ingested deadly amounts of radium after being instructed to “point” their brushes on their lips in order to give them a fine tip; some also painted their fingernails, faces, and teeth with the glowing substance. The women were instructed to point their brushes in this way because using rags or a water rinse caused them to use more time and material, as the paint was made from powdered radium, zinc sulfide (a phosphor), gum arabic, and water.
Five of the women in New Jersey challenged their employer in a case over the right of individual workers who contract occupational diseases to sue their employers under New Jersey’s occupational injuries law, which at the time had a two-year statute of limitations, but settled out of court in 1928. Five women in Illinois who were employees of the Radium Dial Company (which was unaffiliated with the United States Radium Corporation) sued their employer under Illinois law, winning damages in 1938.
Here is the sad story of three of the Radium Girls.
It was the Roaring Twenties – but Grace Fryer wasn’t in the mood for dancing. It was odd: she had this slight pain in her back and feet; nothing major, but enough to make it uncomfortable for her to walk. Dancing definitely wasn’t on the agenda, even though the girls at the bank were still throwing their parties.
She tried to put it to the back of her mind. She’d had a few aches and pains the year before, too, but they came and went; hopefully, when these latest aches cleared up, they would simply go for good. She was just run-down, she reasoned: “I thought that this was merely a touch of rheumatism and did nothing about it.” Grace had far more important things to think about than an achy foot; she’d been promoted at work and was now the head of her department.
It wasn’t just an achy foot troubling her, however. Back in January, Grace had gone to the dentist for a routine checkup; he’d removed two teeth and, although an infection had lingered for two weeks, her trouble had then cleared up. But now, six months on, a hole had appeared at the site of the extraction and was leaking pus profusely. It was painful, and smelly, and tasted disgusting. Grace had health insurance and was prepared to pay to get it sorted out; the doctors, she was sure, would be able to fix her trouble.
Grace Fryer
But had she known what was happening just a few miles away in Newark, she might have had reason to doubt her faith in physicians. Grace’s former colleague Irene Rudolph was still paying doctor after doctor to treat her—but without relief. She had by now undergone both operations and blood transfusions, but to no avail. The decay in Irene’s jaw was eating her alive, bit by bit.
She could feel herself weakening. Her pulse would pound in her ears as her heart beat faster to try and get more oxygen around her severely anemic body—but although her heart was drumming faster and faster, it felt to her like her life was inexorably slowing down.
In Orange, for Helen Quinlan, the drumbeat suddenly stopped.
She died on June 3, 1923, at her home on North Jefferson Street; her mother Nellie was with her. Helen was twenty-two years old at the time of her death. The cause of it, according to her death certificate, was Vincent’s angina. This is a bacterial disease, an agonizing and progressive infection that begins in the gums and steadily spreads until the tissue in the mouth and throat—swollen and ulcerated—finally sloughs off, dead. Her doctor said he didn’t know if the disease was confirmed by laboratory tests, but it was written on her death certificate, nonetheless.
The “angina” in its name is derived from the Latin angere , meaning “to choke or throttle.” That’s what it felt like when the decay in her mouth finally reached her throat. That’s how Helen died, this girl who had used to run with the wind in her skirts, making boyfriends gaze and marvel at her zest for life and her freedom. She had lived an impossibly short life, touching those who knew her; now, suddenly, she was gone.
Six weeks later, Irene Rudolph followed her to the grave. She died on July 15, 1923 at twelve noon, in Newark General Hospital, where she’d been admitted the day before. She was twenty-one. At the time of her death, the necrosis in her jaw was said to be “complete.” Her death was attributed to her work, but the cause was given as phosphorus poisoning, a diagnosis admitted by the attending physician to be “not decisive.”
Culled from: Radium Girls
Torture Implement Du Jour!
Maiming Stork
Its name is probably suggested by its shape, which resembles that of a stylized stork, its bottom portion being larger than the top, which was used to immobilize the head of the victim.
This was a device of bondage and restraint that inflicted suffering by immobilizing the victim’s neck, wrists and ankles, all at the same time. Without any possibility of movement, the victim suffered a far greater and quicker escalation in psychological damage compared to the actual damage inflicted on the muscles, due to numbness of immobilized limbs.
The name “crippling stork” is attributed to Lodovico Antonio Muratori, an historian and a very important figure in Italian Enlightenment, who mentioned it in the “Annali d’Italia”, in the mid-1700s. The base of the triangle consisted of a rod that acted both as a support to constrain the victim’s wrist and as a means of constraint for the legs, which were completely immobilized, with bent knees, thus making any movement impossible.
Culled from: Torture – Inquisition – Death Penalty
Garretdom!
A Notorious Moonshiner Killed.
NASHVILLE, Sept. 14.—A notorious moonshiner named Chenault was shot and instantly killed at Etna Sunday morning. A party of men employed at the furnace were having their Saturday night spree, and several of them had gone to Chenault’s place and bought half a gallon of liquor. When this was disposed of they bought another gallon and drank that. As they did not return, Chenault came to the cabin where they were and offered to sell them more, which H. McKey, as spokesman of the party, declined, asserting that the last lot was not as good as the first half gallon and made them drunk. Chenault responding that the truth was they were just too poor to buy any more, turned to leave, when McKey drew a revolver and shot him through the brain. He died without a word. McKey fled to the woods and has not been seen since. Both were young men, neither over twenty-five. The verdict of the Coroner’s jury was murder. Neither had any family . Chenault was regarded as a leader in the gang of moonshiners in that wild section.
I couldn’t find out whether McKey was ever captured.
Culled from the collection of The Comtesse DeSpair
1886 Morbid Scrapbook