The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2017

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Part 3, Chapters 41-47Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 3: “Justice”

Chapters 41-43 Summary

The company’s ad in the paper has convinced the town that Radium Dial’s intentions are good, and with the depression worsening, the town is grateful to the company for providing employment.

Catherine Wolfe Donohue married her husband Tom in January 1932, and now in 1933, her health was suffering. She has consulted several doctors in Ottawa, but they were unhelpful. Several girls who worked at Radium Dial have died, but the diversity of ailments has made doctors think that their shared employment was unrelated. Furthermore, they were unqualified to diagnose radium poisoning, having had no experience with it. Catherine and her friends Marie and Charlotte share their experiences. Charlotte has developed pain and swelling in her left arm. The women grow suspicious that it was indeed the paint.

Tom Donohue recruits a Chicago doctor, Charles Loffler, to examine Catherine. Loffler runs tests to try to diagnose her, while the bills soar. Charlotte and others soon seek his care, too, and an informal clinic was is up in a local hotel. After some time, Charlotte’s pain grows excruciating, and a doctor helps her decide to amputate her right arm.

Not long after, the Donohues receive notice that Loffler had finally found a diagnosis: X-rays showed evidence of radium poisoning. Tom confronts Mr. and Mrs. Reed when he sees them in town one day, but Reed denies responsibility and that the paint could do harm. Loffler contacts Vice President Fordyce, who is expecting the call. After all, the firm had known since 1928 when they had run the tests that over half the women tested positive for radium poisoning. Fordyce, too, denies responsibility.

With Loffler’s help, the women contact Jay Cook, a lawyer familiar with workers’ compensation claims. He helps them file a claim, which would if granted give them financial aid, but they do not hear back from Radium Dial. When Catherine and Charlotte confront Reed, he again denies that the claim is substantiated. Even when former dial-painter Mary Robinson’s bones reveal radioactivity, Ottawa doctors refuse to believe it.

A group of women, including Catherine, Charlotte, Marie, and Inez Vallat file a claim for $50,000 ($884,391) each. Jay Cook will represent them. But the town has turned against them, angered by the threat to a company which supplies many in the town with wages during the economically difficult period. Catherine ignores them, however. She has just become pregnant.

Chapters 44-45 Summary

By learning of the women’s suit, other dial-painters reason that they, too, have radium poisoning. This includes Pearl Payne, who has had tumors and strange swelling in her head and abdomen. After several operations, she has a full hysterectomy.

Meanwhile in Chicago, a corporate takeover by executive William Ganley ousts President Kelly. Kelly immediately opens his own radium painting studio, Luminous Processes, across the street from Radium Dial. Many of the painters are invited to a restaurant, where a manager of Radium Dial under Reed invites them to work at Luminous Processes, without mentioning that Kelly and Fordyce will run the plant. The women are told that though lip-pointing caused radium poisoning, they would not have to worry about it because lip-pointing is now banned.

Cook files two suits, “one in the normal law courts and a second with the Illinois Industrial Commission (IIC)” (337). Radium Dial exploits several loopholes: For one, the statute of limitations poses an issue. Moore explains that “Inez had filed suit years after she left Radium Dial, and her disability did not occur while she was employed” (337). In addition, radium is a poison, and poisons are not covered under workers compensation claims. The wording of the law, too, is “vague, indefinite, and did not furnish an intelligible standard of conduct” (377) according to Radium Dial.

On April 17, 1935, the court rules that the law was not clear enough for Radium Dial to be found guilty. The women had lost on this “legal technicality.” Though Cook takes the case to the supreme court, the law itself is at fault, and Cook has to drop it due to financial strain. They still have a claim filed with the IIC, but no one to take the case.

Meanwhile, Catherine has given birth to her daughter and tries to live bravely, while continuing to seek cures and treatments. At the end of the year, she and the other women learn of Irene LaPorte’s case ruling. The case is dismissed, because it is conceivable that the company had not been negligent because less had been known about radium at the time.

Chapter 46 Summary

In February 1936, Inez Vallat dies from a hemorrhaging sarcoma in her neck. There is some press coverage of her death, and the Illinois Occupation Diseases Act is amended to include industrial poisoning. But politicians are doubtful that the women will find justice. Mary Doty, a journalist with the Chicago Daily Times, interviews the women about their difficulties. Tom also seeks help from the Secretary of Labor, and three federal investigations are initiated.

One day, Tom meets Mr. Reed in the street and demand that he hands over the tests results. In response, Reed begins to swing at Tom, who fights back. The fight ends in Tom’s arrest and charges of assault, disorderly conduct, and insanity.

Chapter 47 Summary

Fortunately, Tom’s “trumped-up charges” (388) are not taken very far. In December 1936, Radium Dial very suddenly leaves Ottawa, and no one left behind knows where they had gone. The Reeds move away the year after. This leaves Luminous Processes the sole radium dial producer in Ottawa.

With the Depression in full swing, the husbands of former dial painters Al Purcell and Tom Donohue are laid off from the glass factory where they had worked. The Purcells and Donohues struggle financially, as did so many others in the town. They have hearings set with the Illinois Industrial Commission for later that year, but their lawyer has dropped the case and they have no one to represent them. As Catherine continues to deteriorate, Tom reaches out to Marie, and asks her to see if any of the other dial-painters are interested in hiring a lawyer to take on the case. Few are interested, but Marie manages to pull together a small group. They contact Clarence Darrow, a famous lawyer who is known for taking “impossible cases.” He is sympathetic but unable to take the case, and promises to refer them to a good lawyer. They reach out to the media to publicize their plight, including in the articles that they have no lawyer to represent them in the upcoming hearing. Unfortunately, Jay Cook explained to the women that Radium Dial has left, and that Luminous Processes, although identical in many respects, is “a ‘new’ corporation. Under the law, the ‘new’ company isn’t liable for any of the acts of the ‘old’ concern” (394). They won’t be able to sue unless they locate the old company.

Soon enough, Radium Dial is found in New York City, operating as it had in Ottawa. The new president, William Ganley, is confident that the women will lose. In desperate need of a lawyer, the women, “Marie Rossiter, Pearl Payne, and the two Glacinski sisters, Frances and Marguerite” (397) take a trip to Chicago to meet with attorney Leonard Grossman.

Part 3, Chapters 41-47 Analysis

These chapters detail the specific ailments of the Ottawa dial-painters and document Irene LaPorte’s court case defeat. The judge’s sympathies are with her, but the law is not allowing for a moral decision. This is another example of the failure of the legal systems to administer just compensation for the women’s suffering, but it also indicates the complexities of industrial law and the difficulty of pinning down the companies for their wrongdoings.

Despite their worsening illnesses, the women show great strength in their determination to continue their lives, such as Charlotte learning to take care of her three children with only one arm. The women also show great strength in their determination to pursue another legal case by contacting Clarence Darrow. Instead of giving up, the women double down on their efforts to seek justice.

The women use allies in the media to drum up support from the public, as well as to find out where Radium Dial moves to after the situation worsens in Ottawa. This approach helps the women find their next lawyer, Leonard Grossman. The jarring headlines that the newspapers use to draw readers’ attention also refer to the women as “ghosts,” continuing one of the book’s motifs.