Illinois' law led to the creation of the Illinois Industrial Commission in 1917, and it was this body that sided with one of Ottawa's most well-known dial painters in 1938. The final state to adopt it was Mississippi in 1948," says Russell Lewis, executive vice president and chief historian of the Chicago History Museum. "Illinois was one of the earliest adopters of workers compensation law in 1911. Because of Illinois' progressive workers' compensation laws, some of the Radium Dial workers received financial awards.
Some of the Ottawa painters, despite their long, agonizing illnesses with crippling sarcomas, crumbling jawbones, crushed spines, amputated limbs and other maladies, were among the luckier ones. Besides the Ottawa plant, the women had worked at radium companies in New York, Connecticut and New Jersey. There were likely thousands of dial painters who died from radium poisoning, although there's no definite number, according to Kate Moore, author of the 2017 book, The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women. Luke's Hospital," the AugRockford Register-Republic reported. "The real source of her trouble wasn't found until she was examined at Presbyterian-St. Workman first experienced pain in 1936, but doctors told her it was arthritis. The 54-year-old Park Ridge, Illinois resident had worked in the 1920s at the Ottawa, Illinois Radium Dial Company, which hired women to paint watch and clock dials with radium-laced, glow-in-the-dark paint. On August 25, 1959, Beatrice Workman died of radium poisoning. She was among the last of her kind, but longevity in this club was a mixed blessing.
Part 1: Radium poisoning took the lives of perhaps thousands of female factory workers, many in Ottawa, Illinois, in the last century.
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