Grace Fryer was born on March 14, 1899, in Orange, New Jersey, one of eleven children in a working-class family. When the United States entered the First World War in April 1917, two of her brothers were sent to fight, and Grace, eager to support her family and the war effort, found work just four days later as a dial painter at the United States Radium Corporation in her hometown. The company mass-produced a revolutionary glow-in-the-dark paint called Undark, invented in 1902 by William J. Hammer.
It was widely used by soldiers who could now read their military dials and wristwatches at night, and it also appeared in household goods such as light switches, house numbers, and doll eyes. Despite growing health concerns, U. S. Radium insisted the paint was harmless in such minute quantities.
That may have been true for customers, but the same could not be said for the workers who handled it constantly. Unlike many companies of the era, U. S. Radium actively recruited women.
Its painting staff consisted almost entirely of teenage girls, whose steady hands were considered perfect for delicate work. Their wages were roughly triple that of a standard factory job, placing them among the highest-paid female workers in the country. The position was described as the elite job for poor working girls. Many young women worked in the studio alongside friends and siblings; Grace briefly worked with her younger sister Adelaide, who was eventually dismissed for talking too much.
The work required precision. To paint the fine lines of tiny dials, workers were taught a technique called lip-pointing. After a few strokes, a brush would lose its shape, so the women were encouraged to use their lips to keep the tips sharp and clean. Every time they placed the brush between their lips, they swallowed a small amount of flavorless, glowing paint.
Some young women asked whether the paint could hurt them. Managers assured them it was not dangerous, telling them not to be afraid and claiming the only side effect of consuming small amounts was rosy cheeks. At the time, many people genuinely believed that small quantities of radium were good for you, and the substance was even marketed as a medical elixir able to treat all kinds of ailments. For fun, many girls painted their dresses, fingernails, and even their teeth with the luminous paint so they could shine at night and stand out from the crowd.
Eventually, many workers began to glow in the dark. It was a terrible sign, but they had no idea. The scientific community and U. S.
Radium knew the dangers of the substance, yet they did nothing to correct the misinformation or improve the conditions facing the workers. The company had sponsored research suggesting the positive effects of small amounts of radium, allowing papers to claim it would add years to their lives. While scientists at U. S.
Radium took precautions when working with the paint, using lead screens, tongs, and lead aprons, the girls were completely neglected and left exposed to the effects of radium poisoning. After years of work, things seemed normal. Then in 1922, Molly Magia, one of Grace’s colleagues, became ill and had to leave her job. She had no idea what was wrong.
It began with a toothache, then various teeth started falling out. Soon she experienced agonizing pains that left her unable to walk, yet doctors claimed nothing was wrong. Eventually she lost all her teeth along with her jawbone, which her dentist simply lifted out of her mouth. Her body was being destroyed by radium poisoning, and by September 1922, just eight months after her initial toothache, she died.
Molly was the first of the dial painters to pass away, but her case was not unique. Shortly after her death, Grace, like many other dial painters, began suffering from serious bone problems, particularly in the jaw. Other dial painters died in quick succession. These mysterious deaths led to a downturn in business for U.
S. Radium. Frightened, the company created a disinformation campaign and concealed the cause of the illnesses and deaths. They cooperated with doctors so that causes of death would be blamed on syphilis, which undermined the women’s reputations and allowed U.
S. Radium to deny any responsibility. Hoping to disprove any link between dial painting and the mysterious illnesses, in 1924 the company commissioned Harvard physiology professor Cecil Drinker to study working conditions at the factory. Drinker’s findings were the exact opposite of what the company expected.
He confirmed a link between radium and the mysterious deaths. The company’s president was outraged and tried to hide the findings to protect the company’s name. He then financed new studies that reported no link between dial painting and the deaths. In 1925, Grace’s health problems worsened.
Her jaw became increasingly weaker, she suffered more pain, and her spine crushed, forcing her to wear a steel back brace. Her doctor believed her serious health issues might be connected to her former employment. Grace was highly intelligent, and after seeing what had happened to many of her colleagues, she explored the potential link. She consulted a specialist named Frederick Flynn to examine her condition.
Despite all the clear signs, Flynn stated that her condition had nothing to do with her previous job. There was good reason for this: Flynn was not a specialist, nor even a doctor. He was a toxicologist working for U. S.
Radium. That same year, the company’s first male employee died of unknown causes, just like many of the radium girls. At last, experts took charge and investigated what was going on. Drinker’s original report had been suppressed and was limited to the scientific community.
Because of this, the radium girls had trouble disproving the widespread belief that small quantities of radium were safe. Then a doctor named Harrison Martland proved once and for all that these strange illnesses and deaths were indeed caused by radium poisoning. Through testing, he discovered the serious irreversible damage caused by radium when it was inside the body. Ingested radium constantly emitted radiation, creating holes inside the bones and destroying workers from within.
Martland soon realized the poisoning was fatal. The girls who had found themselves glowing at night now knew their death was certain. Grace Fryer became the driving force behind a lawsuit against U. S.
Radium. Despite the serious health risks now being widely known, dial painters were still being employed across the country. Grace believed she did not have long left, but she had a clear reason for the lawsuit. She said it was not for herself she cared, but for the hundreds of girls to whom this might serve as an example.
The radium industry was powerful and even tried to discredit Martland’s discovery. For two years, many lawyers turned down the case. Despite these setbacks, Grace’s persistence and intelligence eventually came to the attention of a young attorney named Raymond Berry, who was willing to take it on. He filed suit against U.
S. Radium on behalf of Grace and four other dial painters, demanding two hundred and fifty thousand dollars each in damages. A legal battle ensued. Grace and her colleagues made national headlines and soon found themselves in the center of an international courtroom scandal.
Their health was rapidly declining, and the slow-moving court system did not help. In January 1928, they made their first court appearance. By then, Grace had lost all her teeth, could not walk, and wore a back brace. Reporters still described her as pretty.
The other radium girls were in similar or worse conditions; two were bedbound. The following hearing was set for April, but all the radium girls were too sick to attend. The judge then adjourned the case until September, owing to many witnesses being on vacation in Europe. The decision met huge backlash, with one newspaper editor calling it a damnable travesty of justice.
The outrage helped the radium girls, and the hearing was rescheduled for early June. Time, however, was running out. U. S.
Radium played a waiting game and tried to drag out the legal proceedings. Some of the women had been given just four months to live. Days before the hearing, Berry secured an out-of-court settlement. Desperate, the radium girls reluctantly accepted.
They had little choice and not long left to live. Each woman received ten thousand dollars and had all her medical and legal expenses paid. Though the sum was considerably less than they had hoped, Grace had accomplished her main objective just as she had planned. She brought attention to radium poisoning and the exploitation within the radium industry.
On October 27, 1933, Grace Fryer died in her hometown in New Jersey at the age of 34. Although the New Jersey radium girls’ legal battle had ended in what could be seen as a loss, it provoked enormous changes in the radium industry and labor rights nationwide. The New Jersey radium girls inspired others. One dial painter who read their story in the paper was a woman named Catherine Wolf Donahue from Illinois.
Seeing what had been accomplished, she started her own legal battle in the mid-1930s against the Illinois firm Radium Dial. Like U. S. Radium, the company denied responsibility, lied, and attempted to cover up any link between employment and radium-related deaths.
They even went so far as to interfere with autopsies to hide the truth. Although Catherine sought justice because of her terrible health problems caused by conditions at Radium Dial, she was shunned for suing one of the few companies still standing during the Great Depression. In 1938, her case finally went to court, and thanks to her giving evidence from her deathbed, she won. The victory was not just for herself but for exploited workers nationwide.
Catherine died soon after, on July 27, 1938, at the age of 35. These cases led to life-saving regulations. Finally, companies had to take responsibility for the safety of their employees. Thanks to the courage, determination, and sacrifice of Grace Fryer, Catherine Donahue, and the other radium girls, industrial safety standards in the United States were significantly tightened, saving countless others from a similar fate.
To this day, the radium girls are still glowing in their coffins due to the radium embedded in their bones, and their story lives on in books, documentaries, and film.