Luminous Lives, Remarkable Legacy:
The Radium Girls' Fight for Workplace Rights and Employer Responsibilities

Fighting for Rights

        In 1927, New Jersey workers Grace Fryer, Quinta McDonald, Albania Larice, Edna Hussman, and Katherine Schaub filed a lawsuit against USRC with lawyer Raymond Barry. Scheduled for January 1928, it was postponed until June because the victims were severely ill. 

"It is not for myself I care… I am thinking more of the hundreds of girls to whom this may serve as an example."

​​​​​​​~ Grace Fryer

(Moore 229)

"Apparently hoping that the plaintiffs would die by the time the trial began, the company lawyers tried various delay tactics. They argued that because the women had left the job several years before they fell ill, the radium paint could not have caused their ailments. The judge rejected their claims, and a hearing finally took place in 1928."

"We unfortunately gave work to a great many people who were physically unfit to procure employment in other lines of industry. Cripples and persons similarly incapacitated were engaged. What was then considered an act of kindness on our part has since been turned against us."

~ Clarence Lee (president of USRC)

"In March 1924, the company conducted a covert internal investigation led by Harvard physician Cecil Drinker. The investigation concluded in June, with Drinker informing the company that radium was the likely cause of the dial painters' illnesses and recommending some safety precautions. The company president rejected the findings, and the Drinker report was promptly buried. The USRC submitted a fraudulent report to the labour department with falsified results that exonerated them as not culpable for the women's illnesses."

(Bryan-Quamina 2023)

USRC’s falsified Drinker report (National Archives Catalog 1924)

Condition of Teeth:                       Changes in blood:           Special reccomendation:​​​​​​​

Good                                                       Moderate                      None

Decayed Teeth                                    Moderate                      Attend teeth dust protection

Good                                                      Practically normal    None

Cavities and one abcessed root   Slight                             Repair cavities in teeth 

Cavities, Pyorrhea                            Moderate                     Repair cavities

Fair                                                        Moderate                      None

Good                                                     Practically normal     None

Good                                                     Moderate                Protect vs. gamma rays and emanation

Good                                                     Moderate                      None

Good                                                      Slight                       Protect vs. gamma rays and emanation

I do not believe this table shows a condition any different than a similar examination would show of the average industrial worker.

"He had her admit that she was a housewife with small children and had not worked in the laboratory for the past five years."

"It is admitted that the radio-active constituents contained in our luminous preparations were known since the year 1900, but it is denied that there was common knowledge relative to the destructive effects which might be incurred in the ordinary handling or commercial production of this substance. The first real indication of any such hazard was reported by the Radium Institute of London in their annual report of 1919, and even this report does not strongly predict that there is a hazard existing, although they make certain recommendations for the protection of their employees who are engaged in the handling of relatively large quantities of radium."

USRC stating radium’s dangers were unknown. (National Archives Medical Record)

Lawsuit agreement June 8, 1928. (National Archives) 

USRC Request. (National Archives)

Doctors Report. (National Archives)