Sept. 5, 2025
170: Radium Girls of Ottawa: Shining Women, Deadly Glow
In 1920s Ottawa, Illinois, hundreds of young “shining women” painted watch dials with radium-laced paint they were told was harmless. Their luminous craft soon became a lethal sentence—and their fight for justice helped forge modern workplace-safety law. Join host Shane Waters as Hometown History uncovers how the Radium Girls’ courage still lights the path toward corporate accountability.
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WEBVTT
00:04.259 --> 00:13.025
[SPEAKER_00]: a young woman, barely out of her teens, dips a fine-tipped brush into a bowl of glowing paint.
00:13.165 --> 00:24.934
[SPEAKER_00]: It's 1922, inside the old Ottawa High School, and sunlight streams through the tall windows, illuminating moats of dust, the dance and the golden shafts of light.
00:26.695 --> 00:28.657
[SPEAKER_00]: But these are no ordinary dust moats.
00:34.837 --> 00:38.759
[SPEAKER_00]: Before her, it's a tray of small black clock dials.
00:39.939 --> 00:41.480
[SPEAKER_00]: She brings the brush to her mouth.
00:42.480 --> 00:48.523
[SPEAKER_00]: The bristles wet with saliva, feels smooth against her lips, as she twirls the handle.
00:49.523 --> 00:52.764
[SPEAKER_00]: Shaping the tip into a perfect needle-fine point.
00:54.365 --> 00:55.065
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a gesture.
00:55.726 --> 01:01.288
[SPEAKER_00]: She performs hundreds of times a day, lip, dip, paint.
01:02.957 --> 01:05.819
[SPEAKER_00]: She dips the perfect brush into the glowing paint.
01:06.840 --> 01:09.061
[SPEAKER_00]: The tip comes away and condessant.
01:10.062 --> 01:12.584
[SPEAKER_00]: A tiny star she now holds in her hand.
01:13.864 --> 01:18.287
[SPEAKER_00]: With a steady grace she leans over the dial, and traces the number 12.
01:20.989 --> 01:23.731
[SPEAKER_00]: The paint flows from the brush like liquid light.
01:25.132 --> 01:25.792
[SPEAKER_00]: She smiles.
01:26.953 --> 01:30.976
[SPEAKER_00]: Later tonight at the dance hall, she will be the one who shines.
01:32.242 --> 01:38.545
[SPEAKER_00]: her dress, her hair, even her skin, will carry this faint, ethereal glow.
01:40.286 --> 01:46.330
[SPEAKER_00]: Assign to everyone that she is one of the lucky ones, an artist working with a miracle element.
01:47.731 --> 01:52.053
[SPEAKER_00]: She raises the brush to her lips again, the taste, now familiar.
01:56.033 --> 01:57.654
[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome back to hometown history.
01:58.294 --> 02:06.357
[SPEAKER_00]: The podcast that takes a stroll down the main streets and back alleys of the past to uncover how local stories shaped the world.
02:07.798 --> 02:08.578
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Shane Waters.
02:09.678 --> 02:12.820
[SPEAKER_00]: The sound you just heard was a promise being broken.
02:13.880 --> 02:15.481
[SPEAKER_00]: A body betraying itself.
02:16.661 --> 02:21.323
[SPEAKER_00]: Today we're exploring the story of the radium girls of Ottawa and Illinois.
02:23.005 --> 02:32.929
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a story about a miracle element that captivated the world, and the dream jobs had offered 200s of young women in a small industrial town.
02:34.410 --> 02:44.034
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a story of corporate deception on a staggering scale, and of a group of women faced with a death sentence refused to be silent.
02:45.624 --> 02:55.390
[SPEAKER_00]: their fight for justice from their sick beds would not only expose a national scandal, but would also change the laws of our country forever.
02:56.731 --> 03:03.655
[SPEAKER_00]: But to truly understand how our miracle became a poison, we need to go back to the dawn of the atomic age.
03:04.436 --> 03:11.240
[SPEAKER_00]: When a glowing element discovered by Maria Curie, promised a luminous future for all mankind,
03:14.190 --> 03:18.592
[SPEAKER_00]: In the early 1900s, the world was gripped by a radium craze.
03:19.552 --> 03:25.734
[SPEAKER_00]: This new miraculous element, worth more than diamonds, was hailed as a panacea.
03:27.575 --> 03:33.897
[SPEAKER_00]: It was put in everything from toothpaste and butter to cosmetics, sold as a cure-all
03:38.352 --> 03:43.697
[SPEAKER_00]: the public, enchanted by the perpetual glow, embraced it without question.
03:45.178 --> 03:53.485
[SPEAKER_00]: It was in this atmosphere of uncritical enthusiasm that the rating of dial company set up shop in Ottawa, Illinois, in 1922.
03:56.287 --> 04:02.050
[SPEAKER_00]: For a small town hit hard by the coming depression, the factory was a godsend.
04:03.251 --> 04:12.936
[SPEAKER_00]: It offered young women exceptional wages, triple that of a typical factory job, in clean, prestigious studio work.
04:14.397 --> 04:20.600
[SPEAKER_00]: They weren't laborers, they were artists, enduring world war-worn, painting luminous
04:26.725 --> 04:31.448
[SPEAKER_00]: These women became local celebrities, known as the Shining Girls.
04:33.009 --> 04:37.592
[SPEAKER_00]: They left the factory each evening, literally glowing in the dark.
04:38.712 --> 04:41.834
[SPEAKER_00]: Their hair and clothes dusted with the luminous paint.
04:43.455 --> 04:51.100
[SPEAKER_00]: They were told the rainyam was not only safe, but healthy, that it would give them a vibrant rosy complexion.
04:52.757 --> 04:58.624
[SPEAKER_00]: In a world that held Radium as a miracle, they believed they were the luckiest women alive.
04:59.986 --> 05:09.598
[SPEAKER_00]: They had no idea the gilded cage they worked in, was poisoning them with every breath and with every single lick of the brush.
05:11.556 --> 05:23.741
[SPEAKER_00]: The work at the heart of the Radium-Dial Studio was a delicate, almost ritualistic process, governed by a simple but deadly mantra, lip, dip, paint.
05:25.341 --> 05:35.005
[SPEAKER_00]: To maintain the fine point on their camo hair brushes, the women were explicitly trained to use their lips and tongues to shape the bristles.
05:36.485 --> 05:42.189
[SPEAKER_00]: But with every dial they painted, they ingested a small, deadly dose of radium.
05:44.070 --> 05:50.334
[SPEAKER_00]: The paint was a simple mixture of radium powder, zinc sulfide, and an adhesive.
05:52.116 --> 05:55.538
[SPEAKER_00]: The company's chemists and executives knew the dangers.
05:56.699 --> 06:01.442
[SPEAKER_00]: They worked behind large screens, and handled the material with tongs.
06:02.951 --> 06:06.574
[SPEAKER_00]: but this knowledge was deliberately withheld from the dial painters.
06:08.376 --> 06:17.724
[SPEAKER_00]: Providing rags or water for cleaning brushes would have wasted time and more importantly, the incredible, expensive, radiant paint.
06:19.345 --> 06:21.547
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a calculated economic choice.
06:23.177 --> 06:25.858
[SPEAKER_00]: unaware, the women only saw the magic.
06:26.878 --> 06:33.220
[SPEAKER_00]: They playfully painted their fingernails and teeth with a glowing paint to surprise their boyfriends.
06:34.860 --> 06:42.182
[SPEAKER_00]: They were the ghost girls, shining as they walked home at night, a haunting symbol of their youthful innocence.
06:43.802 --> 06:44.703
[SPEAKER_00]: One of these women was
06:47.420 --> 06:55.042
[SPEAKER_00]: quiet and private, she started at Radium Dial in 1922, hoping to build a good life for her family.
06:56.663 --> 07:02.424
[SPEAKER_00]: Another was Paek Looney, who started at just 17 to support her nine younger siblings.
07:03.805 --> 07:14.068
[SPEAKER_00]: They, along with hundreds of others embraced the work, they were artists, painting with light, unaware it was a fire embedding itself in their bones.
07:17.302 --> 07:25.166
[SPEAKER_00]: The glamour of the dream job began to fade as a mysterious sickness crept through the ranks of the dial painters.
07:26.666 --> 07:29.928
[SPEAKER_00]: The vibrant shining girls started to transform.
07:31.628 --> 07:35.510
[SPEAKER_00]: It began with chronic fatigue and deep aching pains.
07:36.591 --> 07:43.274
[SPEAKER_00]: Their bones under constant assault from internal radiation became brittle and honeycombed,
07:47.536 --> 07:52.400
[SPEAKER_00]: But the most gruesome affliction was what became known as radium jaw.
07:54.001 --> 07:55.422
[SPEAKER_00]: It started with a toothache.
07:56.443 --> 08:00.406
[SPEAKER_00]: A dentist would pull the tooth, but the socket wouldn't heal.
08:01.587 --> 08:06.170
[SPEAKER_00]: Instead, it would fester, and to a foul smelling abscess.
08:07.511 --> 08:09.833
[SPEAKER_00]: More teeth would loosen and fall out.
08:11.174 --> 08:14.777
[SPEAKER_00]: And then, the jaw bone itself would begin to crumble.
08:16.483 --> 08:23.458
[SPEAKER_00]: Katherine Donahue suffered this fate, with pieces of her own jaw bone, literally falling out of her mouth.
08:24.890 --> 08:26.511
[SPEAKER_00]: local doctors were baffled.
08:27.411 --> 08:28.972
[SPEAKER_00]: Early deaths were covered up.
08:30.093 --> 08:39.958
[SPEAKER_00]: When peg loony collapsed and died in 1929, the company influenced the doctor to list diphtheria as the cause of death.
08:41.119 --> 08:45.001
[SPEAKER_00]: Forcing her family into quarantine and sealing her coffin.
08:46.082 --> 08:48.163
[SPEAKER_00]: A cruel tactic to hide the truth.
08:49.969 --> 08:57.095
[SPEAKER_00]: as the women in Ottawa began to connect their symptoms to newspaper stories about sick dial painters in New Jersey.
08:58.176 --> 08:59.457
[SPEAKER_00]: They confronted the company.
09:00.678 --> 09:03.041
[SPEAKER_00]: Management flatly denied any connection.
09:04.122 --> 09:09.787
[SPEAKER_00]: Deviously claiming the New Jersey plant used a different, more dangerous element.
09:10.847 --> 09:11.548
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a lie.
09:12.909 --> 09:13.610
[SPEAKER_00]: The company knew
09:15.315 --> 09:22.460
[SPEAKER_00]: As early as 1925, Radium Dial had hired medical experts to examine its employees.
09:23.901 --> 09:30.706
[SPEAKER_00]: Those tests confirmed that women were full of Radium, but the company concealed the results.
09:31.847 --> 09:37.591
[SPEAKER_00]: Telling the women they were in perfect health, while secretly filing over the proof of their poisoning.
09:39.112 --> 09:40.593
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't just negligence.
09:41.373 --> 09:43.395
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a portrayal of the deepest kind.
09:45.293 --> 09:50.498
[SPEAKER_00]: For Catherine Donahoo, the realization hit her like a physical blow.
09:51.719 --> 09:53.440
[SPEAKER_00]: The company had known all the long.
09:54.401 --> 09:59.466
[SPEAKER_00]: They had watched the women get sick, armed with the truth and choosing to lie.
10:01.247 --> 10:11.036
[SPEAKER_00]: The woman who wants left the factory glowing with pride now felt a different fire burning inside her, one of cold, righteous, anger.
10:12.764 --> 10:17.206
[SPEAKER_00]: This profound sense of portrayal galvanized the women into action.
10:18.606 --> 10:28.811
[SPEAKER_00]: A group of the sickest former employees, including Catherine and Charlotte, Perselle, the woman whose arm had been amputated, banded together.
10:30.411 --> 10:37.214
[SPEAKER_00]: They gave themselves a name that was both poignant and defiant, the society of the living dead.
10:38.295 --> 10:41.296
[SPEAKER_00]: They were dying, but they would not be silent,
10:42.772 --> 10:45.434
[SPEAKER_00]: Their fight began in the depths of the Great Depression.
10:46.414 --> 10:49.396
[SPEAKER_00]: Rating him dial was one of Ottawa's biggest employers.
10:50.297 --> 10:54.880
[SPEAKER_00]: In the women's lawsuit, was seen as a threat to the town's economic survival.
10:56.220 --> 11:04.586
[SPEAKER_00]: They were shunned by neighbors, businesses, and even clergy, who urged them to suffer in silence for the good of the town.
11:06.527 --> 11:09.329
[SPEAKER_00]: Isolated and facing crippling medical bills,
11:13.078 --> 11:15.140
[SPEAKER_00]: no one in Ottawa would take the case.
11:16.561 --> 11:21.205
[SPEAKER_00]: Finally, their plight reached Chicago and they found Leonard Grossman.
11:22.626 --> 11:30.793
[SPEAKER_00]: An attorney with a reputation for fighting for the underdog, he took the case pro bono, becoming their fierce advocate,
11:32.799 --> 11:36.180
[SPEAKER_00]: Radiium dials defense was built on delay and denial.
11:37.121 --> 11:51.366
[SPEAKER_00]: Their primary shield was the Illinois Statute of Limitations, which required injury claims to be filed within two years of exposure, an impossible hurdle for a disease that took years to appear.
11:53.027 --> 11:56.608
[SPEAKER_00]: In court, they refused to produce their internal medical tests.
11:57.608 --> 11:58.869
[SPEAKER_00]: Their strategy was simple,
12:03.519 --> 12:06.341
[SPEAKER_00]: but the society of the living dead refused to break.
12:07.802 --> 12:14.888
[SPEAKER_00]: The case was heard before the Illinois Industrial Commission, and the hearings were fought with raw human drama.
12:16.089 --> 12:18.671
[SPEAKER_00]: The climax centered on Catherine Donahue.
12:19.832 --> 12:29.340
[SPEAKER_00]: By the time she was called to testify, she was emaciated, weighing less than 60 pounds and in constant excruciating pain,
12:31.190 --> 12:38.675
[SPEAKER_00]: During one hearing, she collapsed after a doctor revealed for the first time that her condition was fatal.
12:40.310 --> 12:44.913
[SPEAKER_00]: In an extraordinary move, the Commission agreed to continue the hearing at her home.
12:46.194 --> 12:50.937
[SPEAKER_00]: Proped up on pillows in her sick bed, Catherine gave her testimony.
12:52.018 --> 13:01.424
[SPEAKER_00]: Her dying body became the most powerful evidence against the company, forcing the legal system to confront the human cost of its greed.
13:10.921 --> 13:15.463
[SPEAKER_00]: but Radium dial appealed, dragging the case all the way to the U.S.
13:15.483 --> 13:20.105
[SPEAKER_00]: Supreme Court, fighting the verdict for another 18 months.
13:21.966 --> 13:30.770
[SPEAKER_00]: Afterendonna Hugh died on July 27, 1938, one day after the company filed yet another appeal.
13:32.251 --> 13:36.613
[SPEAKER_00]: She never saw the final victory, which came in 1939 when the Supreme Court declined to
13:42.012 --> 13:44.334
[SPEAKER_00]: but she died knowing she had won.
13:44.354 --> 13:59.066
[SPEAKER_00]: At the final victory was hollow, the company president had dissolved radium dial, funneled its assets into a new corporation, and leaving an empty shell to sue.
14:00.928 --> 14:09.095
[SPEAKER_00]: The women received a pintence, their victory wasn't in dollars, but in the powerful legal precedent, they had set.
14:12.110 --> 14:19.853
[SPEAKER_00]: The story of the Ottawa Radium Girls is one of the most important and tragically in marks in the history of workers' rights.
14:21.133 --> 14:27.215
[SPEAKER_00]: Their case was one of the very first in which a company was held legally responsible for the health of its employees.
14:28.748 --> 14:36.312
[SPEAKER_00]: their sacrifice help to establish the fundamental principle that employers have a duty to provide safe work environment.
14:37.312 --> 14:45.676
[SPEAKER_00]: A principle that laid the crowned work for the creation of the occupational safety and health administration or OSHA in 1970.
14:48.087 --> 14:51.528
[SPEAKER_00]: The radio act of echo of their story is still with us.
14:52.508 --> 15:06.011
[SPEAKER_00]: It resonates in modern tragedies of corporate negligence, from the poisoned water of Flint, Michigan, to the ongoing fight for safe conditions, for gay economy workers, who lack basic protection.
15:07.171 --> 15:12.112
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a timeless story about the fight to make corporations see their employees,
15:18.729 --> 15:33.152
[SPEAKER_00]: Though the tools have changed, the burden of disregard still falls on the vulnerable, and it forces us to ask, what protections do we now take for granted that we're bought with someone else's pain?
15:34.772 --> 15:46.595
[SPEAKER_00]: The science they enabled is also part of their legacy, the horrific data from their poisoned bodies helped scientists understand the effects of internal radiation
15:48.351 --> 15:54.672
[SPEAKER_00]: informing safety standards that protected workers on the Manhattan Project and beyond.
15:56.172 --> 15:59.813
[SPEAKER_00]: Radium has a half-life of 1600 years.
16:01.213 --> 16:07.534
[SPEAKER_00]: The bones of the Radium girls buried a century ago are still radioactive today.
16:08.675 --> 16:11.915
[SPEAKER_00]: They will continue to glow faintly in their coffins
16:19.654 --> 16:24.098
[SPEAKER_00]: In 2011, a bronze statue was erected in Ottawa.
16:25.079 --> 16:33.888
[SPEAKER_00]: It depicts a young woman holding a paintbrush, and a single wilted tulip, a symbol of stolen youth.
16:35.149 --> 16:42.597
[SPEAKER_00]: It stands on the ground with a factory once stood, transforming a side of shame into a place of honor.
16:43.957 --> 16:53.042
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a permanent reminder that the true shining came from the women who refused to let their own light be extinguished without a fight.
16:54.742 --> 16:57.764
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Shane Waters, every hometown has a story.
16:58.584 --> 17:02.326
[SPEAKER_00]: This one was a glow that came at too high, a cost.
17:03.607 --> 17:03.987
[SPEAKER_00]: Good night.
00:04.259 --> 00:13.025
[SPEAKER_00]: a young woman, barely out of her teens, dips a fine-tipped brush into a bowl of glowing paint.
00:13.165 --> 00:24.934
[SPEAKER_00]: It's 1922, inside the old Ottawa High School, and sunlight streams through the tall windows, illuminating moats of dust, the dance and the golden shafts of light.
00:26.695 --> 00:28.657
[SPEAKER_00]: But these are no ordinary dust moats.
00:34.837 --> 00:38.759
[SPEAKER_00]: Before her, it's a tray of small black clock dials.
00:39.939 --> 00:41.480
[SPEAKER_00]: She brings the brush to her mouth.
00:42.480 --> 00:48.523
[SPEAKER_00]: The bristles wet with saliva, feels smooth against her lips, as she twirls the handle.
00:49.523 --> 00:52.764
[SPEAKER_00]: Shaping the tip into a perfect needle-fine point.
00:54.365 --> 00:55.065
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a gesture.
00:55.726 --> 01:01.288
[SPEAKER_00]: She performs hundreds of times a day, lip, dip, paint.
01:02.957 --> 01:05.819
[SPEAKER_00]: She dips the perfect brush into the glowing paint.
01:06.840 --> 01:09.061
[SPEAKER_00]: The tip comes away and condessant.
01:10.062 --> 01:12.584
[SPEAKER_00]: A tiny star she now holds in her hand.
01:13.864 --> 01:18.287
[SPEAKER_00]: With a steady grace she leans over the dial, and traces the number 12.
01:20.989 --> 01:23.731
[SPEAKER_00]: The paint flows from the brush like liquid light.
01:25.132 --> 01:25.792
[SPEAKER_00]: She smiles.
01:26.953 --> 01:30.976
[SPEAKER_00]: Later tonight at the dance hall, she will be the one who shines.
01:32.242 --> 01:38.545
[SPEAKER_00]: her dress, her hair, even her skin, will carry this faint, ethereal glow.
01:40.286 --> 01:46.330
[SPEAKER_00]: Assign to everyone that she is one of the lucky ones, an artist working with a miracle element.
01:47.731 --> 01:52.053
[SPEAKER_00]: She raises the brush to her lips again, the taste, now familiar.
01:56.033 --> 01:57.654
[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome back to hometown history.
01:58.294 --> 02:06.357
[SPEAKER_00]: The podcast that takes a stroll down the main streets and back alleys of the past to uncover how local stories shaped the world.
02:07.798 --> 02:08.578
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Shane Waters.
02:09.678 --> 02:12.820
[SPEAKER_00]: The sound you just heard was a promise being broken.
02:13.880 --> 02:15.481
[SPEAKER_00]: A body betraying itself.
02:16.661 --> 02:21.323
[SPEAKER_00]: Today we're exploring the story of the radium girls of Ottawa and Illinois.
02:23.005 --> 02:32.929
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a story about a miracle element that captivated the world, and the dream jobs had offered 200s of young women in a small industrial town.
02:34.410 --> 02:44.034
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a story of corporate deception on a staggering scale, and of a group of women faced with a death sentence refused to be silent.
02:45.624 --> 02:55.390
[SPEAKER_00]: their fight for justice from their sick beds would not only expose a national scandal, but would also change the laws of our country forever.
02:56.731 --> 03:03.655
[SPEAKER_00]: But to truly understand how our miracle became a poison, we need to go back to the dawn of the atomic age.
03:04.436 --> 03:11.240
[SPEAKER_00]: When a glowing element discovered by Maria Curie, promised a luminous future for all mankind,
03:14.190 --> 03:18.592
[SPEAKER_00]: In the early 1900s, the world was gripped by a radium craze.
03:19.552 --> 03:25.734
[SPEAKER_00]: This new miraculous element, worth more than diamonds, was hailed as a panacea.
03:27.575 --> 03:33.897
[SPEAKER_00]: It was put in everything from toothpaste and butter to cosmetics, sold as a cure-all
03:38.352 --> 03:43.697
[SPEAKER_00]: the public, enchanted by the perpetual glow, embraced it without question.
03:45.178 --> 03:53.485
[SPEAKER_00]: It was in this atmosphere of uncritical enthusiasm that the rating of dial company set up shop in Ottawa, Illinois, in 1922.
03:56.287 --> 04:02.050
[SPEAKER_00]: For a small town hit hard by the coming depression, the factory was a godsend.
04:03.251 --> 04:12.936
[SPEAKER_00]: It offered young women exceptional wages, triple that of a typical factory job, in clean, prestigious studio work.
04:14.397 --> 04:20.600
[SPEAKER_00]: They weren't laborers, they were artists, enduring world war-worn, painting luminous
04:26.725 --> 04:31.448
[SPEAKER_00]: These women became local celebrities, known as the Shining Girls.
04:33.009 --> 04:37.592
[SPEAKER_00]: They left the factory each evening, literally glowing in the dark.
04:38.712 --> 04:41.834
[SPEAKER_00]: Their hair and clothes dusted with the luminous paint.
04:43.455 --> 04:51.100
[SPEAKER_00]: They were told the rainyam was not only safe, but healthy, that it would give them a vibrant rosy complexion.
04:52.757 --> 04:58.624
[SPEAKER_00]: In a world that held Radium as a miracle, they believed they were the luckiest women alive.
04:59.986 --> 05:09.598
[SPEAKER_00]: They had no idea the gilded cage they worked in, was poisoning them with every breath and with every single lick of the brush.
05:11.556 --> 05:23.741
[SPEAKER_00]: The work at the heart of the Radium-Dial Studio was a delicate, almost ritualistic process, governed by a simple but deadly mantra, lip, dip, paint.
05:25.341 --> 05:35.005
[SPEAKER_00]: To maintain the fine point on their camo hair brushes, the women were explicitly trained to use their lips and tongues to shape the bristles.
05:36.485 --> 05:42.189
[SPEAKER_00]: But with every dial they painted, they ingested a small, deadly dose of radium.
05:44.070 --> 05:50.334
[SPEAKER_00]: The paint was a simple mixture of radium powder, zinc sulfide, and an adhesive.
05:52.116 --> 05:55.538
[SPEAKER_00]: The company's chemists and executives knew the dangers.
05:56.699 --> 06:01.442
[SPEAKER_00]: They worked behind large screens, and handled the material with tongs.
06:02.951 --> 06:06.574
[SPEAKER_00]: but this knowledge was deliberately withheld from the dial painters.
06:08.376 --> 06:17.724
[SPEAKER_00]: Providing rags or water for cleaning brushes would have wasted time and more importantly, the incredible, expensive, radiant paint.
06:19.345 --> 06:21.547
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a calculated economic choice.
06:23.177 --> 06:25.858
[SPEAKER_00]: unaware, the women only saw the magic.
06:26.878 --> 06:33.220
[SPEAKER_00]: They playfully painted their fingernails and teeth with a glowing paint to surprise their boyfriends.
06:34.860 --> 06:42.182
[SPEAKER_00]: They were the ghost girls, shining as they walked home at night, a haunting symbol of their youthful innocence.
06:43.802 --> 06:44.703
[SPEAKER_00]: One of these women was
06:47.420 --> 06:55.042
[SPEAKER_00]: quiet and private, she started at Radium Dial in 1922, hoping to build a good life for her family.
06:56.663 --> 07:02.424
[SPEAKER_00]: Another was Paek Looney, who started at just 17 to support her nine younger siblings.
07:03.805 --> 07:14.068
[SPEAKER_00]: They, along with hundreds of others embraced the work, they were artists, painting with light, unaware it was a fire embedding itself in their bones.
07:17.302 --> 07:25.166
[SPEAKER_00]: The glamour of the dream job began to fade as a mysterious sickness crept through the ranks of the dial painters.
07:26.666 --> 07:29.928
[SPEAKER_00]: The vibrant shining girls started to transform.
07:31.628 --> 07:35.510
[SPEAKER_00]: It began with chronic fatigue and deep aching pains.
07:36.591 --> 07:43.274
[SPEAKER_00]: Their bones under constant assault from internal radiation became brittle and honeycombed,
07:47.536 --> 07:52.400
[SPEAKER_00]: But the most gruesome affliction was what became known as radium jaw.
07:54.001 --> 07:55.422
[SPEAKER_00]: It started with a toothache.
07:56.443 --> 08:00.406
[SPEAKER_00]: A dentist would pull the tooth, but the socket wouldn't heal.
08:01.587 --> 08:06.170
[SPEAKER_00]: Instead, it would fester, and to a foul smelling abscess.
08:07.511 --> 08:09.833
[SPEAKER_00]: More teeth would loosen and fall out.
08:11.174 --> 08:14.777
[SPEAKER_00]: And then, the jaw bone itself would begin to crumble.
08:16.483 --> 08:23.458
[SPEAKER_00]: Katherine Donahue suffered this fate, with pieces of her own jaw bone, literally falling out of her mouth.
08:24.890 --> 08:26.511
[SPEAKER_00]: local doctors were baffled.
08:27.411 --> 08:28.972
[SPEAKER_00]: Early deaths were covered up.
08:30.093 --> 08:39.958
[SPEAKER_00]: When peg loony collapsed and died in 1929, the company influenced the doctor to list diphtheria as the cause of death.
08:41.119 --> 08:45.001
[SPEAKER_00]: Forcing her family into quarantine and sealing her coffin.
08:46.082 --> 08:48.163
[SPEAKER_00]: A cruel tactic to hide the truth.
08:49.969 --> 08:57.095
[SPEAKER_00]: as the women in Ottawa began to connect their symptoms to newspaper stories about sick dial painters in New Jersey.
08:58.176 --> 08:59.457
[SPEAKER_00]: They confronted the company.
09:00.678 --> 09:03.041
[SPEAKER_00]: Management flatly denied any connection.
09:04.122 --> 09:09.787
[SPEAKER_00]: Deviously claiming the New Jersey plant used a different, more dangerous element.
09:10.847 --> 09:11.548
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a lie.
09:12.909 --> 09:13.610
[SPEAKER_00]: The company knew
09:15.315 --> 09:22.460
[SPEAKER_00]: As early as 1925, Radium Dial had hired medical experts to examine its employees.
09:23.901 --> 09:30.706
[SPEAKER_00]: Those tests confirmed that women were full of Radium, but the company concealed the results.
09:31.847 --> 09:37.591
[SPEAKER_00]: Telling the women they were in perfect health, while secretly filing over the proof of their poisoning.
09:39.112 --> 09:40.593
[SPEAKER_00]: It wasn't just negligence.
09:41.373 --> 09:43.395
[SPEAKER_00]: It was a portrayal of the deepest kind.
09:45.293 --> 09:50.498
[SPEAKER_00]: For Catherine Donahoo, the realization hit her like a physical blow.
09:51.719 --> 09:53.440
[SPEAKER_00]: The company had known all the long.
09:54.401 --> 09:59.466
[SPEAKER_00]: They had watched the women get sick, armed with the truth and choosing to lie.
10:01.247 --> 10:11.036
[SPEAKER_00]: The woman who wants left the factory glowing with pride now felt a different fire burning inside her, one of cold, righteous, anger.
10:12.764 --> 10:17.206
[SPEAKER_00]: This profound sense of portrayal galvanized the women into action.
10:18.606 --> 10:28.811
[SPEAKER_00]: A group of the sickest former employees, including Catherine and Charlotte, Perselle, the woman whose arm had been amputated, banded together.
10:30.411 --> 10:37.214
[SPEAKER_00]: They gave themselves a name that was both poignant and defiant, the society of the living dead.
10:38.295 --> 10:41.296
[SPEAKER_00]: They were dying, but they would not be silent,
10:42.772 --> 10:45.434
[SPEAKER_00]: Their fight began in the depths of the Great Depression.
10:46.414 --> 10:49.396
[SPEAKER_00]: Rating him dial was one of Ottawa's biggest employers.
10:50.297 --> 10:54.880
[SPEAKER_00]: In the women's lawsuit, was seen as a threat to the town's economic survival.
10:56.220 --> 11:04.586
[SPEAKER_00]: They were shunned by neighbors, businesses, and even clergy, who urged them to suffer in silence for the good of the town.
11:06.527 --> 11:09.329
[SPEAKER_00]: Isolated and facing crippling medical bills,
11:13.078 --> 11:15.140
[SPEAKER_00]: no one in Ottawa would take the case.
11:16.561 --> 11:21.205
[SPEAKER_00]: Finally, their plight reached Chicago and they found Leonard Grossman.
11:22.626 --> 11:30.793
[SPEAKER_00]: An attorney with a reputation for fighting for the underdog, he took the case pro bono, becoming their fierce advocate,
11:32.799 --> 11:36.180
[SPEAKER_00]: Radiium dials defense was built on delay and denial.
11:37.121 --> 11:51.366
[SPEAKER_00]: Their primary shield was the Illinois Statute of Limitations, which required injury claims to be filed within two years of exposure, an impossible hurdle for a disease that took years to appear.
11:53.027 --> 11:56.608
[SPEAKER_00]: In court, they refused to produce their internal medical tests.
11:57.608 --> 11:58.869
[SPEAKER_00]: Their strategy was simple,
12:03.519 --> 12:06.341
[SPEAKER_00]: but the society of the living dead refused to break.
12:07.802 --> 12:14.888
[SPEAKER_00]: The case was heard before the Illinois Industrial Commission, and the hearings were fought with raw human drama.
12:16.089 --> 12:18.671
[SPEAKER_00]: The climax centered on Catherine Donahue.
12:19.832 --> 12:29.340
[SPEAKER_00]: By the time she was called to testify, she was emaciated, weighing less than 60 pounds and in constant excruciating pain,
12:31.190 --> 12:38.675
[SPEAKER_00]: During one hearing, she collapsed after a doctor revealed for the first time that her condition was fatal.
12:40.310 --> 12:44.913
[SPEAKER_00]: In an extraordinary move, the Commission agreed to continue the hearing at her home.
12:46.194 --> 12:50.937
[SPEAKER_00]: Proped up on pillows in her sick bed, Catherine gave her testimony.
12:52.018 --> 13:01.424
[SPEAKER_00]: Her dying body became the most powerful evidence against the company, forcing the legal system to confront the human cost of its greed.
13:10.921 --> 13:15.463
[SPEAKER_00]: but Radium dial appealed, dragging the case all the way to the U.S.
13:15.483 --> 13:20.105
[SPEAKER_00]: Supreme Court, fighting the verdict for another 18 months.
13:21.966 --> 13:30.770
[SPEAKER_00]: Afterendonna Hugh died on July 27, 1938, one day after the company filed yet another appeal.
13:32.251 --> 13:36.613
[SPEAKER_00]: She never saw the final victory, which came in 1939 when the Supreme Court declined to
13:42.012 --> 13:44.334
[SPEAKER_00]: but she died knowing she had won.
13:44.354 --> 13:59.066
[SPEAKER_00]: At the final victory was hollow, the company president had dissolved radium dial, funneled its assets into a new corporation, and leaving an empty shell to sue.
14:00.928 --> 14:09.095
[SPEAKER_00]: The women received a pintence, their victory wasn't in dollars, but in the powerful legal precedent, they had set.
14:12.110 --> 14:19.853
[SPEAKER_00]: The story of the Ottawa Radium Girls is one of the most important and tragically in marks in the history of workers' rights.
14:21.133 --> 14:27.215
[SPEAKER_00]: Their case was one of the very first in which a company was held legally responsible for the health of its employees.
14:28.748 --> 14:36.312
[SPEAKER_00]: their sacrifice help to establish the fundamental principle that employers have a duty to provide safe work environment.
14:37.312 --> 14:45.676
[SPEAKER_00]: A principle that laid the crowned work for the creation of the occupational safety and health administration or OSHA in 1970.
14:48.087 --> 14:51.528
[SPEAKER_00]: The radio act of echo of their story is still with us.
14:52.508 --> 15:06.011
[SPEAKER_00]: It resonates in modern tragedies of corporate negligence, from the poisoned water of Flint, Michigan, to the ongoing fight for safe conditions, for gay economy workers, who lack basic protection.
15:07.171 --> 15:12.112
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a timeless story about the fight to make corporations see their employees,
15:18.729 --> 15:33.152
[SPEAKER_00]: Though the tools have changed, the burden of disregard still falls on the vulnerable, and it forces us to ask, what protections do we now take for granted that we're bought with someone else's pain?
15:34.772 --> 15:46.595
[SPEAKER_00]: The science they enabled is also part of their legacy, the horrific data from their poisoned bodies helped scientists understand the effects of internal radiation
15:48.351 --> 15:54.672
[SPEAKER_00]: informing safety standards that protected workers on the Manhattan Project and beyond.
15:56.172 --> 15:59.813
[SPEAKER_00]: Radium has a half-life of 1600 years.
16:01.213 --> 16:07.534
[SPEAKER_00]: The bones of the Radium girls buried a century ago are still radioactive today.
16:08.675 --> 16:11.915
[SPEAKER_00]: They will continue to glow faintly in their coffins
16:19.654 --> 16:24.098
[SPEAKER_00]: In 2011, a bronze statue was erected in Ottawa.
16:25.079 --> 16:33.888
[SPEAKER_00]: It depicts a young woman holding a paintbrush, and a single wilted tulip, a symbol of stolen youth.
16:35.149 --> 16:42.597
[SPEAKER_00]: It stands on the ground with a factory once stood, transforming a side of shame into a place of honor.
16:43.957 --> 16:53.042
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a permanent reminder that the true shining came from the women who refused to let their own light be extinguished without a fight.
16:54.742 --> 16:57.764
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Shane Waters, every hometown has a story.
16:58.584 --> 17:02.326
[SPEAKER_00]: This one was a glow that came at too high, a cost.
17:03.607 --> 17:03.987
[SPEAKER_00]: Good night.
