|
The Waterbury Clock Company was formed in Waterbury about 166 years ago as a subsidiary of the Waterbury company Benedict & Burhnam. After World War I, the Waterbury Clock Company enjoyed an increased demand for watches. To increase profits, they hired women at low wages to work seven days a week. Their newest product, and the latest craze, included glow-in-the-dark dial faces. The company sought women with “nimble fingers” to paint the dials and numbers onto watches, as piece workers, in assembly-line fashion; it was important that the dial faces were painted with precision. To speed up the tedious and delicate process, women would “lip-dip,” - that is to say that they would place a paintbrush into their mouths to sharpen the collection of the horse-hair bristles, and then dip the brush into the radium-laced paint - and then back into their mouths for the next stroke. Lingering, accumulated, and ingested radium, which is radio-active and has a half-life* of 1,600 years, caused poisoning which manifested as: anemia, sore throat, deteriorating jaw, soft teeth, spontaneous bone fractures, general aches, tumors, abscesses, necrosis of the mouth, necrosis of the face, necrosis of the throat, dental pain, loose teeth, lesions and ulcers, failure of tooth extractions to heal, Radium Jaw [teeth, jaws, and other bones were reduced to brittle hollow honeycomb-like cavernous remnants of their former stature], and other excruciatingly painful and systemic ailments that afflicted virtually all parts of the body. In fact, many Radium Girls suffered painful and bloody illnesses, which often resulted in body parts literally falling off of them. And, yes, in many cases, they glowed - or, at least, their bones were, literally, radiant. Waterbury-born Mary Ann Martinelli-Ostroski was a victim of corporate greed and cover-up. She had worked in Waterbury, unbeknownst to her, as a Radium Girl. Martinelli was one of 15 children, all who were born in Waterbury, of immigrants. Both her mother and her father were Aviglianesi, born in Avigliano, Potenza, Basilicata, Italia. She married another child of immigrants. His parents were both born in Poland. The couple had three children, the youngest of whom was only 20 years old when the family lost their mother to the ravaging poisons of radium. The first-known death by radium poisoning was in 1923. By 1924, 12 more Radium Girls died, and dozens more were already showing signs of the radium poisoning. It wasn’t until 1926 that the company lackadaisically discouraged the lip-dip practice. That was after paying off doctors to discredit the radium deaths by officiating them as syphilis deaths. |
|
|
Total deaths due to lip-dip painting with radium may have exceeded 4,000 workers from Waterbury and beyond. Still, the company, and all other companies that used the radio-active radium, allowed (and some unofficially encouraged) the lip-dip process. Unfortunately, the use of the deadly radio-active radium went well past the factory workers. Radium was also used in makeup, ceramics, health tonics, jewelry, chocolate, snacks, crocks (to store drinking water), plasters, ointments, syrups, suppositories, spas, baths, saunas, nightlights, children's toys, toothpaste, heating pads, treatment for erectile disfunction, hair creams, et cetera. Radium was touted as a healing and healthful fountain-of-youth. The company continued the use of radium until at least 1947, and other companies still used radium in watches until at least the early 1970s – which was 55 years after the company first knowing that it’s use mal contorted the very innards of the employees. Long after their death, and long after being buried, the Radium Girls still, literally, glow. |
"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 anemia, and ultimately death." - United States Radium Corporation - Wikipedia "The Waterbury Clock Company is now the Timex Group USA Inc.", colloquially known as Timex. - Waterbury Clock Company – New England Victrola and Clock Restorations (nevictrola.com) |
*
Uploaded 20220420. Modified 20220420. © 2022 WaterburyLife.com All Rights Reserved.