102 life.9 The company did its best to hide their involvement in the sicknesses and eventual deaths of the dial painters. For example, when Peg Looney died in 1929, the company tried to bury her body before the family could have it analyzed. Looney’s brother was able to stop them and get them to do an autopsy that was supposed to be overseen by the Looney family’s doctor. However, when the doctor got there, the company had already performed the autopsy and destroyed all of the parts of Peg’s body that showed signs of radiation poisoning.10 In July 1934, after years of lies and deceit from the company, seven brave women each filed a lawsuit for $50,000 in damages against the Radium Dial Company. This suit alleged that the company violated occupational health standards and subjected the women to a dangerous working environment. However, this was not the end of their sad story, but rather the beginning of a brutal legal fight. After victories in two lower courts, the women lost in the Illinois Supreme Court due to a ruling that the state’s Occupational Disease Act was unconstitutional on the basis of its vagueness. The women were, at this point, out of money and their lawyer would not help them when a new Occupational Disease Act was passed in 1936. Eventually they found a lawyer sympathetic to their plight and he brought a case against the company on behalf of Catherine Donohue; a test case.11 After years of appeals, brutal court hearings including some at her own home when she became too weak to go to the courthouse, and continued delays on the behalf of the company she died in 1938. However, in 1939 she won for the final time, a hollow victory that awarded her only $6,000 and left only $4,000 to be distributed among the rest of the 9 Tara McClellan McAndrew, “Illinois Issues: The Radium Girls - an Illinois Tragedy,” Illinois Public Media (National Public Radio, January 30, 2018), https://will.illinois.edu/news/story/illinois-issues-the-radium-girls-an-illinois-tragedy. 10 Kate Moore, “The Girls: The Radium Girls,” The Radium Girls, accessed November 1, 2022, https://www.theradiumgirls.com/the-girls. 11 Ross Mullner, Deadly Glow: The Radium Dial Worker Tragedy (Washington, D.C.: American Public Health Association, 1999).
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