The death toll in Ottawa was 35, and 4,000 nation. Some of the girls benefited from the case, but money could never heal their mental and eternal illness. Catherine Donohue was the leader and she was one of the girls who were affected the most.Įven through her illness she still won the case that granted all the girls $10,000 to split amongst themselves and all their medical bills were paid. This started their group “the society of the living dead” the girls were filing for unsafe working conditions. The doctors who saw them knew they had radium in them, but didn’t tell them. They demanded to be seen by doctors, only to be lied to about not having radium in them and they were perfectly healthy. This brings me to my second main point, who were the society of the living dead?Īccording to the book Radium Girls, after a year the girls started to complain about jaw pains and their teeth started to fall out. Unaware of the dangers the girls would paint their teeth, nails, skin, and hair and turn off the lights so they could glow. Their boss knew about the dangers but told them it would only make their cheeks rosy. Their boss failed to mention that radium can cause anything from cancer anemia, bone fractures and necrosis of the jaw, known as radium jaw. To get the dials perfect the girls were told to wet the tip of the brush with their lips.
The paint used was called luna that contained radium to make the watch glow in the dark. My first point is the Radium Dial company, according to the book Deadly Glow, in 1922 the radium dial company moved from Peru Il, to Ottawa and hired hundreds of girls to paint the dials of WWI and WWII clock faces. My three main points will be what the radium dial company was, who the living dead girls were, and the after effects of this tragedy.
This is a topic that I know much about I did my 8th grade history fair project on this, read a few books about it, and even interviewed two of the radium girls. Today, I’m going to share with you something that had a big effect not only as u as a country but us as the Illinois Valley. Isn’t it scary to think that someone could keep a huge secret from you, a secret so big that it could potentially kill you and hundreds of other people? This happened in the 1920’s and changed many people’s lives forever.
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