{"id":1342,"date":"2010-10-17T09:47:23","date_gmt":"2010-10-17T15:47:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/asylumeclectica.com\/grim\/?p=1342"},"modified":"2010-10-17T09:47:23","modified_gmt":"2010-10-17T15:47:23","slug":"morbid-fact-du-jour-for-october-17-2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/?p=1342","title":{"rendered":"Morbid Fact Du Jour For October 17, 2010"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today’s Glowing Yet Truly Morbid Fact!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Grace Fryer and the other women at the radium factory in Orange, New Jersey, naturally supposed that they were not being poisoned. It was a little strange, Fryer said, that when she blew her nose, her handkerchief glowed in the dark. But everyone knew the stuff was harmless. The women even painted their nails and their teeth to surprise their boyfriends when the lights went out. They all had a good laugh, then got back to work, painting a glow-in-the-dark radium compound on the dials of watches, clocks, altimeters and other instruments. Grace started working in the spring of 1917 with 70 other women in a large, dusty room filled with long tables. Racks of dials waiting to be painted sat next to each woman’s chair. They mixed up glue, water and radium powder into a glowing greenish-white paint, and carefully applied it with a camel hair brush to the dial numbers. After a few strokes, the brushes would lose their shape, and the women couldn’t paint accurately. “Our instructors told us to point them with our lips,” she said. “I think I pointed mine with my lips about six times to every watch dial. It didn’t taste funny. It didn’t have any taste, and I didn’t know it was harmful.” Nobody knew it was harmful, except the owners of the U.S. Radium Corporation and scientists who were familiar with the effects of radium. Those days, most people thought radium was some kind of miracle elixir that could cure cancer and many other medical problems.<\/p>\n

Grace quit the factory in 1920 for a better job as a bank teller. About two years later, her teeth started falling out and her jaw developed a painful abscess. The hazel eyes that had charmed her friends now clouded with pain. She consulted a series of doctors, but none had seen a problem like it. X-ray photos of her mouth and back showed the development of a serious bone decay. Finally, in July 1925, one doctor suggested that the problems may have been caused by her former occupation. Although it meant flying in the face of some medical opinion, Grace Fryer decided to sue U.S. Radium, but it took her two years to find an attorney willing to take the case. On May 18, 1927, Raymond Berry, a young Newark attorney, took the case on contingency and filed a lawsuit in a New Jersey court on her behalf. Four other women with severe medical problems quickly joined the lawsuit. They were Edna Hussman, Katherine Schaub, and sisters Quinta McDonald and Albina Larice. Each asked for $250,000 in compensation for medical expenses and pain. The five eventually became known in newspaper articles carried in papers throughout the U.S. and Europe as “the Radium Girls.”<\/p>\n

Legal maneuvers filled 1927, and the medical condition of the five women worsened considerably. The two sisters were bedridden, and Grace Fryer had lost all of her teeth and could not sit up without the use of a back brace, much less walk. When the first court hearing came up January 11, 1928, the women could not raise their arms to take the oath. All five of the Radium Girls were dying. “When pretty Grace Fryer took the witness stand, she said her health had been good until after she had been employed at the radium plant,” one news account said. Fryer and the others bravely tried to keep smiling, but friends and spectators in the courtroom wept. Edna Hussman told the court about the financial troubles the medical bills were causing: “I cannot even keep my little home, our bungalow,” she said. “I know I will not live much longer, for now I cannot sleep at night for the pains.” She was content, however, because her children would be cared for by relatives.<\/p>\n

With the Consumers League and the newspapers outraged and the legal system shifting in favor of the victims, pressure to settle the case built on U.S. Radium. In early June, a federal judge volunteered to mediate the dispute and help reach an out-of-court settlement. Days before the case was to go to trial, Berry and the five “Radium Girls” agreed that each would receive $10,000 and a $600 per year annuity while they lived, and that all medical and legal expenses incurred would also be paid by the company. In the 20’s and 30’s all five Radium Girls died.<\/p>\n

Culled from: Mass Media & Environmental Conflict<\/a>
\nGenerously submitted by: Elizabeth<\/p>\n

And this is why governmental regulation is *good for you*, kids! <\/p>\n

Alright, that’s it – I’m starting a band called The Radium Girls immediately! We shall perform in glow in the dark outfits. Is there a drummer in the house?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today’s Glowing Yet Truly Morbid Fact! Grace Fryer and the other women at the radium factory in Orange, New Jersey, naturally supposed that they were not being poisoned. It was a little strange, Fryer said, that when she blew her nose, her handkerchief glowed in the dark. But everyone knew the stuff was harmless. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-facts"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1342","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1342"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1342\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1342"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1342"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decidedlygrim.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1342"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}