The Society of the Living-Dead
- Library Zest Team
- Nov 25, 2020
- 8 min read
Updated: Jan 5, 2021
The Society of the Living-Dead sounds like an awesome zombie enthusiast fraternity; it isn’t, but the name is definitely catchy. This society is made up of a group of women who at one time worked for Luminous Processes Inc., formally the Radium Dial Corporation, located in Ottawa, Illinois. Over a span of about fifty years, forty of the members had died of cancers resulting from their work with luminous paint, which contained radium. Many more faced years of health problems, including cancer and anemia and the medical bills were staggering. Some families went broke trying to find a cure or even relief for their loved ones.
Marie and Pierre Curie in their Paris laboratory.
In 1898, Marie and Pierre Curie discovered the element, radium, in pitchblende, and were able to successfully isolate radioactive radium salts on April 20th, 1902, in their lab in Paris. The name they chose for the glowing substance Pierre scribbled down in his workbook, which is still radioactive to this day, radium, named for the Latin word Radius meaning ray. The Curies' research went on for many years, they won a Nobel prize and Marie went on to win another Nobel prize in chemistry making her the only person at the time to have won twice. The Curies also saw medical potential in radium. Pierre had tested the radium salts on himself by placing a small amount in a rubber band to hold the salts against his arm for ten hours. The result was a wound that looked like a burn, and over the course of fifty-two days that burn healed into a grey scar. The implication was that this newly discovered substance could be used to treat cancers. Unfortunately, the radium was making both Pierre and Marie sick. Pierre was diagnosed with neurasthenia, a type of chronic fatigue, and Marie died of leukemia on July 4, 1934, at the age of 67. For all of their hard work and contributions to science and the physics community, both Marie and Pierre were made ill by the very substance they discovered.
Radium went on to be touted as a cure-all, a miracle substance that could be used to relieve any ache or pain. As the turn of the century brought the world into the heroic age of medicine, it was widely believed that if a substance “did something” then it must be good for you. You could take radium baths, buy radium-infused toothpaste, drink radium water and enjoy creamy radium butter. That’s right...butter. Some of these products, of course, didn’t contain radium as it is an expensive substance, but many did. Makers and manufacturers of these products advertised them as nothing but healthy, safe items for the whole family. You could even get prescriptions from your local doctor or pharmacist for radium-anything to cure every ache and pain. American socialite, athlete, industrialist and Yale College graduate, Eben Byers died from drinking too much Radithor, a radium-infused tonic. Byers ultimately died of cancer, but his body emitted so much radiation that he had to be buried in a lead-lined coffin.
Left: a bottle of Radithor tonic. Right: Eben Byers playing golf in 1920 before becoming ill.
The Radium Dial Corporation got its start in 1917 and opened its doors in Ottawa, Illinois in 1918. The factory hired many young women, teenagers, and girls as young as thirteen to work as dial painters. These ladies painted dials for airplane instruments, numbers on clock and watch faces, anything really that you’d want to see in the dark. The girls literally glowed with the radium powder from their work stations. And Radium Dial, well, they told the girls on the factory floor there was nothing wrong with radium, that it was good for you. However, the same sentiments weren’t being shared up in the office or in the testing labs of the company. No, workers there weren’t to touch the stuff with their bare hands. They used gloves, had tongs and tweezers, glass tubes and beakers and wore aprons lined with lead. Even though they took these precautions, many technicians still suffered from burns to their fingers and hands and their hands would shake. And the girls on the floor? Lip. Dip. Paint. That was their motto, and that’s what they were told to do.
The Lip-Dip-Paint method has been used for ages. Painters and artists even now will make use of the method to give their paint brush a fine tip; using non-toxic paint, of course. The dial painters needed to be precise in their work. Some of the dials and watch faces were very small, so the painters needed a fine-pointed paint brush to make the numbers. The problem was that the paint dried quickly and the bristles on the brush separated and frayed, making their work untidy. The dial painters couldn't afford unfinished or unpolished work. They were paid for each piece they finished. So the more you painted the more money you made, a novel idea for a time when factory workers didn’t make very much. Dial painting was seen as a good job, you were paid well for your work and Radium Dial was a large company that employed many in the community, and you even helped the war effort painting dials for airplanes. So to make their brushes fine-pointed they would point the brush end with their lips, dip it into their paint pots and begin painting. Lip. Dip. Paint. What the painters didn’t know was that they were ingesting something that would make them sick, then make them sicker, and eventually kill many of them. They’d have to stop working because just walking to work was exhausting. They’d go to the dentist in unbearable pain from broken teeth and wounds in their mouths that just never seemed to heal. The dentist would try and alleviate their suffering by removing teeth, performing surgeries to remove pieces of jaw bone, but these women didn’t get better. Some had joints fuse together making them bedridden. They became anemic and the wounds in their mouths would bleed unexpectedly. Worse, they were often misdiagnosed on purpose by company doctors with “Phossy-Jaw”, also known as phosphorus necrosis at the time, and some were told they had syphilis and arthritis.
As time went on, over forty of these women died, their lives needlessly cut short. Many more suffered from home, unable to work or care for their children. Families defaulted on loans they couldn’t pay back from their growing medical expenses, some even remortgaged their homes in an effort to pay off the mounting medical bills--from treatments that didn’t make the girls better. Part of the problem was that local doctors and those provided by Radium Dial denied that the dial painters' ill health was because of radium; it was good for you after all. However, a doctor in Chicago examined Catherine Donohue, who had been sick for over six years, and he confirmed it was radium; there was nothing else that could make Catherine or the other women that ill. After one failed attempt, Catherine and several other women who became The Society of the Living Dead found a lawyer who would take them on and file a lawsuit against Radium Dial. Leonard Grossman from Chicago believed that workers' rights were important so he took on The Radium Dial Corporation. As the trial began, Catherine and several other dial painters provided testimony of their experience and what they’d been told by Radium Dial. At one point, Catherine was so ill that her testimony had to be taken from her living room.
The former Radium Dial workers were truly facing an up-hill battle. Any examination results from the doctors provided by the company were kept from the women; they were told their illnesses weren’t caused by radium--because in their opinion it wasn't possible. Misdiagnoses meant they never really saw relief for their suffering. The financial toll burdened them and their families for the rest of their lives. Further, Radium Dial was relying heavily on the statute of limitations on workers compensation claims. If a worker filed a claim that they’d been injured or made ill by the work they did, the company was liable. But those claims had to be filed within a specific time frame. Several of the women, who later became sick, had only worked for Radium Dial for a short amount of time and some had moved on to other jobs by the time they became sick. That’s the problem with radium: the women weren’t exposed to large amounts of the radioactive and toxic material, but even small amounts made them sick. The human body doesn’t process or break down radium like other minerals. It treats it like calcium and the radium attaches itself to bones, weakening them, destroying red blood cells and bone marrow, and making bones brittle. Since the dial painters weren’t using large amounts of radium, it didn’t make them sick right away. Once the radium entered their bodies, it never left. What would start as fatigue and a sore jaw ended much worse.
Left: Lawyer Leonard Grossman and the "Radium Girls". Right: Radium Dial workers in 1922
By the end of the trial against Radium Dial in 1938, the women’s lawyer Leonard Grossman, described the company as a predator in his closing argument. The company knew radium was harmful and yet they not only showed a complete disregard for their workers by having them use it without any protection but they ignored sound scientific evidence that proved it was harmful, and they actively hid valuable medical information from the dial painters. The result for the Society of the Living Dead? They won. The women were awarded various sums depending on their time spent working for the company and the extent of their ailments. Radium Dial appealed the ruling multiple times but never succeeded. The dial painters faced some backlash at first from other residents of Ottawa because Radium Dial had employed a lot of people and had been in the community for some time. Radium Dial’s president, Joseph Kelley, had been ousted from the company in 1934 but set up shop a few blocks away doing the same thing; he called his company Luminous Processes, Inc.
The company remained in Ottawa for several more decades but closed in 1978. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission found the site had radiation 1,666 times higher than what is considered safe. During the Cold War, the United States Atomic Energy Commission began to study the effects of radiation on the human body and the former dial painters assisted in this work. Their trial also opened the door to changes to workers' rights and compensation laws.
For more information about the dial painters and their story, I recommend the book The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women by Kate Moore. Place a hold on a paper copy from the Essa Public Library here or get a digital copy for our eBook collection here.
This book is also featured as a Staff Pick for our 10 to Try digital program available right now through Beanstack. To find out more about this program and see what other staff book selections have been made, sign up or sign in to Beanstack now.
Dawn has worked in library services for over fifteen years; her background is in art and design but books have always had their pull. She is a dog-mom to a Bernedoodle. She does not have a green thumb but is trying her best. She thinks there is no greater joy than the calm of a good book and hot cup of tea. She thinks libraries have come a long way since her childhood and is happy to be along for the journey.
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