Radium Girls Programme 2024

CAST

CREATIVE TEAM

PRODUCTION TEAM

Jarlath Burns

Toni Dickson

Tiarnán McCarron Bekithemba Mbondiya

Jack McManus

Katie Moore

Ben Purdy

Caleb Shannon

McMullan

Evie O’Sullivan

Eoin Rafferty

Caelan Stow

Harrison Gordon

Bernadette McKeating

Matthew McTeague

Nathalie Parent

Lucy Rafferty

Grace Thompson

Ciara

UNITED STATES RADIUM CORPORATION

The company was co-founded in 1914 by Sabin von Sochocky, who was succeeded as President in 1921 by Arthur Roeder. The company’s luminescent paint (Undark) was a mixture of radium and zinc sulphide; the radiation causing the zinc sulphide to fluoresce. At the time, the dangers of radiation were not well understood.

Some USRC management and scientists took precautions such as masks, gloves, and screens but did not similarly equip their workers. Unbeknownst to the women, the paint was highly radioactive and therefore carcinogenic, resulting in a condition called radium jaw - painful swelling and porosity of the bone that ultimately led to many of their deaths. The Chief Medical Examiner of Essex County, New Jersey, Harrison Stanford Martland, MD, published a report in 1925 that identified the radioactive material the women had ingested as the cause of their bone disease and aplastic anaemia.

Litigation by the so-called ‘Radium Girls’, began in 1926, with suits filed in 1927 by Grace Fryer and Katherine Schaub. Lawyer Edward Markley was in charge of defending the company in these cases. USRC, it was alleged, deliberately delayed settling litigation but eventually settled out of court in 1928.

The right of individual workers to sue for damages from corporations due to labour abuse was established as a result of the action. Industrial safety standards were demonstrably enhanced and the case led to passage of a congressional bill, in 1949, which made all occupational diseases compensable and extended the time during which workers could make a claim.

The victims were so contaminated that radiation can still be detected at their graves today.

DR SABIN ARNOLD VON SOCHOCKY

Von Sochocky was born in Ukraine in 1883. In 1913, in order to finance his medical research, he developed a luminescent paint and the following year co-founded the Radium Luminous Material Corporation in Newark, New Jersey. The plant employed over a hundred workers, mainly women, to paint radium-lit watch faces and instruments. In August 1921, von Sochocky was forced from the Presidency and the name changed to United States Radium Corporation.

During WW1, the Corporation was a major supplier to the military. However, a major setback occurred when a number of dial painters died from what appeared to be a variety of unrelated health causes. It was later learned that the deaths were due to exposure to the radium in the paint. A major route of exposure was ingestion, as the dial painters used their mouths to form a point on the brushes, enabling them to paint the small numbers on the watches.

Von Sochocky died in 1928 (at the age of 45) after a long and difficult illness, with his teeth and fingers all gone. Leading up to his illness, he had been a wealthy man, but the ensuing tragedy as a result of the poisoning of his workers, his colleague and Chief Chemist, Dr Edward Lehman and eventually of himself, (plus the cost of 3 years of medical treatment) swallowed up all of his wealth.

RADITHOR BY TIMOTHY J. JORGENSEN

Maybe you’re one of the millions who lean on energy drinks to put a little extra pep in your step? People have relied on them to combat fatigue for over a century. While today, their “energy” comes from a neurological stimulant or sometimes just sugar, there was a time when the active ingredient in these drinks was radium: a radioactive element that releases a packet of radiant energy with every atomic decay.

One of these products was RadiThor - radium dissolved in water. It was sold in the 1920s in one-ounce bottles costing about US$1 each. Its manufacturer claimed the drink not only provided energy but also cured a host of ailments, including impotence. For many men, in this pre-Viagra era, RadiThor was much sought after. Its most famous user was Eben Byers, an amateur golfer of some repute. He first used RadiThor to help heal a broken arm, but continued to consume large amounts and reportedly downed a bottle or two daily for over three years!

In the end, it killed him. He developed holes in his skull, lost most of his jaw and suffered a variety of other bone-related illnesses, dying a gruesome death in 1932. He was buried in a lead-lined coffin, to block the radiation being released from the bones in his body.

Consumption of these energy drinks never developed into a major public health crisis - for two reasons. Firstly, most energy drinks were total frauds and had no radium in them at all. Secondly, RadiThor, which actually did contain radium, was very expensiveradium was a relatively rare and precious element that was costly to mine and purify. So only the wealthy, like Byers, were able to drink it on a daily basis.

The Curies’ newly discovered element of radium makes gleaming headlines across the nation as the fresh face of beauty, and wonder drug of the medical community. From body lotion to tonic water, the popular new element shines bright in the otherwise dark years of the First World War.

Meanwhile, hundreds of girls toil amidst the glowing dust of the radiumdial factories. The glittering chemical covers their bodies from head to toe; they light up the night like industrious fireflies. With such a coveted job, these “shining girls” are the luckiest alive - until they begin to fall mysteriously ill.

But the factories that once offered golden opportunities are now ignoring all claims of the gruesome side effects, and the women’s cries of corruption. And as the fatal poison of the radium takes hold, the brave shining girls find themselves embroiled in one of the biggest scandals of America’s early 20th century, and in a ground-breaking battle for workers’ rights that will echo for centuries to come.

Written with a sparkling voice and breakneck pace, The Radium Girls fully illuminates the inspiring young women exposed to the “wonder” substance of radium, and their awe-inspiring strength in the face of almost impossible circumstances. Their courage and tenacity led to life-changing regulations, research into nuclear bombing, and ultimately saved hundreds of thousands of lives.

RADIUM GIRLS / 21 MAY - 01 JUN 2024 / A LYRIC DRAMA STUDIO PRODUCTION

THE RADIUM GIRLS BY KATE MOORE

MARIE

CURIE - 1867-1934

The most famous victim of radium was its discoverer, the double Nobel prize winner Marie Curie, born Maria Sklodowska in Warsaw in 1867. Working with her husband Pierre, she was studying pitchblende, a mineral that contained uranium. After the uranium had been extracted from it, the pitchblende proved still to be radioactive.

Marie Curie wrote that ‘the radiation that I couldn’t explain comes from a new chemical element. The element is there and I’ve got to find it! We are sure!’

After working through tonnes of the pitchblende slag, the Curies identified two new elements in the remaining material - polonium and radium. They finally isolated radium in 1902 in its pure metal form. Radium was named for the Latin for a ray and proved to be the most radioactive natural substance ever discovered.

Although Marie Curie lived until 1934, her death from aplastic anaemia is almost certainly due to her exposure to radioactive materials, particularly radium. To this day her notebooks and papers have to be kept in lead lined boxes and handled with protective clothing, as they remain radioactive.

Atomic number 88, radium has four natural isotopes, which vary in half life (the time it takes for half the molecules in a sample to decay) from 1,602 years for the most stable isotope, radium 226, to 11.4 days for radium 223. Radium decays to radon, emitting an alpha particle from its nucleus and in 1909, was used by Rutherford at the Cavendish laboratory in Cambridge. Its main use has been in radiotherapy for cancer - a process started in Marie Curie’s time. The early researchers found they received skin burns from handling the radioactive materials, and when the Curies worked with doctors, they discovered that radiation could be used to reduce or even cure tumours.

RAYMOND BERRY & THE LEGAL ARGUMENT

Grace Fryer, aged 28, with a broken back and a broken foot and a disintegrating jaw, made an appointment for Tuesday 3rd May 1927. Despite being a small law firm, Potter & Berry had its offices in one of Newark’s earliest skyscrapers, completed only the year before.

Raymond Berry was a youthful lawyer, not even in his thirties. He was not long out of Yale and had served his clerkship at USRC’s legal firm and perhaps that experience gave him some insider knowledge.

Berry took a lengthy statement from Grace. He first scrutinized the girls’ claims. Berry went to Martland’s lab, and interviewed von Sochocky. He had conducted his initial investigation and he had seen enough. And then Raymond Berry took their case. He was a married man with three young daughters and perhaps having so many girls influenced his decision. In his agreed terms…Berry contracted to take the then-standard split of one third of any compensation. With Grace, however, she seems to have negotiated him down to just a quarter.

Berry’s tack-sharp brain had been working hard on the statute-of-limitations question. His theory was this: the girls could not possibly have brought a lawsuit until they knew that the company was to blame. As the firm had actively conducted a campaign to mislead the girls, it should not be allowed to rely upon the delay, which it had caused, as a defence. After all, due to the misdirection the girls certain knowledge came only with Martland’s formal diagnosis in July 1925. In Berry’s view, therefore, the two-year clock did not start ticking until that moment.

It was 9th May 1927. They were just in time. On May 18th, 1927 Grace’s formal complaint was filed against USRC. Berry charged that they had ‘carelessly and negligently’ put Grace at risk so that her body ‘became impregnated with radioactive substances… causing great pain and suffering.’ In total, Grace was suing her former firm for a cool $250,000. They kind of had it coming.

Source: The Radium Girls by Kate Moore (abridged)

WOMEN’S CLUBS

150 years ago, Americans believed that a woman’s place was in the home. Bright, curious, and ambitious women found few other places to display their talents. Education and career opportunities were few. Political activism, civic reform, and community involvement were regarded as outside the realm of big-hearted mothers and wives who should focus on loving their families and providing a good example of moral behaviour.

A few brave women in New York and Boston challenged these constraints in the late 1860s and soon persuaded the general population of middle-class American women to form voluntary organisations in their neighbourhoods to defy custom, undertake serious study of intellectual topics and current events, and organise for social reforms at the local, state, and national levels. All this well before they saw the right to vote to effect change at the ballot box!

Although the twentieth century would deliver increasing educational, professional, and business venues for women to make use of their intellect, training, and creativity, hundreds of clubs continued to function in this country into modern times.

Soon women, in small towns and large cities, embraced the club format to bolster their association with likeminded neighbours. Some enjoyed the long overdue study of literature, history, and geography. Others stressed reform and initiated scholarships for girls, improved street lighting, environmental protections, and free milk clinics for impoverished mothers. By 1910, membership totalled 800,000 women, and the numbers would rise until 1926.

Club work did continue, meeting community needs as they arose, notably through charitable efforts during the Great Depression of the 1930s, war relief efforts during World War II in the 1940s, and suburban community building in the 1950s. But clubs did not continue to attract the numbers of women that they had prior to the 1920s.

RADIUM POISONING

Dentists were among the first to see numerous problems among dial painters: pain, loose teeth, ulcers, and the failure of tooth extractions to heal were some of these conditions. Many of the women later began to develop anaemia, bone fractures, and necrosis of the jaw. Some also experienced suppression of menstruation and sterility.

By 1924, 50 women who had worked at the plant were ill, and a dozen had died. At the urging of the companies, medical professionals attributed worker deaths to other causes. Syphilis, a notorious sexually transmitted infection at the time, was often cited in attempts to smear the reputations of the women.

When radium crosses a mucous membrane such as the gums, it gets lodged in the body’s tissues, firing off particle after particle at very close range, eventually mutating and killing the cells around it.

In January of 1922, Radium Girl Amelia Maggia went to the dentist, who told her the molar needed to come out. A few weeks later, she was back to have the tooth next to that one pulled. Neither wound healed, but they grew together and seeped blood and pus into Amelia’s mouth. By May, her dentist thought she needed surgery to remove a fast-growing abscess he’d found on her jaw. When he got the gums open, he gently prodded the bone with his finger. To his shock and horror, it crumbled under his fingertip!

Instead of removing a tumour, he wound up digging Amelia’s jawbone out with nothing but his fingers: the radium had perforated the bone and stripped it of calcium, shredding the collagen inside.

That summer, the rest of Amelia’s jaw came out, followed by bits of her inner ear. By September of 1922, eight months after her first toothache, Amelia Maggia was dead. The tumours had cut into her jugular vein and flooded her throat with blood, choking her to death.