Radium Girls is a play by D.W. Gregory based off of a true story. During World War One, the United States Radium Corporation manufactured glowing watches for soldiers in the trenches in Europe. These watches were made using a luminous paint that contained a newly discovered element: radium. Radium was discovered in 1898 by Noble Prize winner Marie Curie, and many people thought that it could be used to cure diseases such as cancer. Little did they know that small amounts of radium would kill several people in the next three decades through radiation poisoning. 

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The Radium Girls were a group of female factory workers based in Orange, New Jersey. These girls were all employed by the United States Radium Corporation (USRC) to paint watch dials for luminous watches. To get a finer point on their brushes, the girls were instructed to place the brush in their mouths and point the tip with their lips. As they did this, they were unknowingly ingesting small amounts of the radium contained in the paint. Because radium was considered a sort of miracle cure, the girls actually thought that the small amounts of radium that they ingested would help their health. They had even been told by the USRC that radium was harmless. 

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After World War One ended, radium dial watches were still in high demand. The girls continued to work until a few people began to notice that their coworkers had to quit because they were becoming sick and dying. Grace Fryer, Katherine Schaub and Irene Rudolph were the first to notice a connection between the sick and the dead, they all worked for the dial company. Soon after a connection was made, Irene became gravely ill and died. Also around this same time, Grace and Katherine began experiencing toothaches and sore joints, but were told by doctors that it was probably just arthritis. However, Grace and Katherine both knew, along with the other living dial painters, that their illnesses were connected. They were experiencing the same symptoms, and the only thing that they all had in common was that they painted watches for the USRC.

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The girls eventually enlisted the help of medical professionals and professionals who studied workplace diseases. A conclusion was made that radium was the cause of the girls illnesses, but the USRC repeatedly denied that this could be the case; radium was a wonder element, wasn't it? The girls were eventually moved to sue the USRC for compensation for their ailments. Officially, five girls were listed on the court documents as a part of the lawsuit: Grace Fryer, Katherine Schaub, Quinta McDonald, Albina Larice and Edna Hussman. Eventually, the girls settled with the company for $10,000 ($138,606 today), a pension of $600 per year ($8,316 today), and all past and future medical expenses. The last of these girls to die was Grace, who died in October of 1933, six months after Katherine.

 

What happened in between? Find out in Cathedral's production of Radium Girls.