£2000—AND ONE YEAR TO LIVE.

Auckland Star, Volume LX, Issue 46, 23 February 1929, Page 3

£2000—AND ONE YEAR TO LIVE.

FIVE WOMEN FACING DOOM. WITH SPIRIT AND COURAGE. HOW WOULD YOU FACE IT? "There is no hope for you. In twelve months at the most you will be dead. Here is a cheque for two thousand pounds. Spend the money and the time as you wish." Suppose you were suddenly to be faced with this fantastic problem what would you do? Medical science has told you there is not the slightest hope of a reprieve. How would you spend the last fleeting moments of life? Would you squander the £2000 in a last riotous fling aDd thus probably hasteD the end? Or would the knowledge of inevitable doom make the thought of happiness a mockery? This is no hypothetical problem, it is a real life drama that is bci i faced at this moment by five young women, all of whom are under 30. They are suffering from radium, poisoning, for which no cure has yet been discovered. Eight months ago they were each handed a cheque for £2000 and told that at most they had only a few months to live. Glistening Skin. Thev are now working out their tragic destinies. In a few weeks now two or three of them will be dead. The others will follow in quick succession. This remarkable drama is the result of the work on which the girls were engaged during the war at the pFant of the United States Radium Corporation at Orange (New Jersey). They were employed in applying radium paint to luminous watch dials. Ignorant of the deadly nature of radium, they formed ths habit of "pointing" their brushes between their lips. The Terrible Truth. One night, several years later, one of the women, Mrs. Edna Hussman, happened to glance at her reflection in a mirror in a darkened room. To her horror she saw that her skin glistened with a faint luminosity. Gradually, the others began to discover that some terrible disease was overtaking them. One's leg grew shorter. Another's hair turned white. The two babies of a third were born dead. Doctors confessed themselves baffled. It wasn't till two years ago that it was discovered that radio-activity was the cause of the mysterious sickness. The doomed five—Miss Grace Fryer, Mrs. Quinta McDonald, Mrs. Edna Hussman, Miss Katberine Schaub, and Mrs. Albina Larice —then learned the terrible fauth for the first time. All the dying women 6ued the Radium Corporation for damages. They asked for £50,000 each. In June, last year, a settlement was reached. Each of the unfortunate women received £2000 and the assurance that they would be paid £10 a month as long as they lived. They accepted the knowledge of approaching death in different ways: with courage, with hope, with resignation, and with despair. A Despairing Hope. One clings to the hope that at the last minute science will .find a cure for her fatal illness. This is Miss Grace Fryer. Heroically, she has invested her money and keeps her position with a trust company. She has offered herself to the doctors, eo that they can experiment on her ( and try to find a cure. She keeps in clcee touch with the other girls, writes then; cheery letters, and tells them not to give up hope. When Miss Katherine Schaub received her cheque for £2000 the first thing she did was to use part of the money to pay off the mortgage of her father's home. She afterwards bought a motor car and now awaits her death at a homely farmhouse in the country, where she spends most of her time rewling. "I was only fifteen when I went to work for the company," she told an interviewer. "It was my first job. The first hint I had that I was suffering from radium poisoning was a sore tooth, which became so loose that it dropped out. Since then I have had about twenty operations on my jaw. But I believe that, no matter what a person's troubles are, if they keep on hoping those troubles shrink much smaller." Nobody at the farm where she is staying knows about her affliction. She has told everybody that her lameness is the result of aa accident. A Mother's Dread. Mr*. Quinta McDonald k mora worried about her two children, now two and four year 3 old, than herself. She does not know whether the disease is hereditary and whether they have contracted it. Both seem healthy, but the dread that they, too, may become victims is spoiling her last weeks of life. "It's fate, I guess," she says bravely. "I can't see why we girls should be chosen to suffer, though. My husband is brave. He calls me a good sport. But it is harder on men than women. "I'm happier when I keep busy. I do what housework I can and care for the children. Of course, I can't do much. I can't bend over now. Hip trouble came, and now one leg is shorter than the other. My knees and feet are in bad shape. So are my elbows. And now my teeth are beginning to loosen." Three Sisters. Mrs. McDonald was one of three sisters, Quinta, Albina, and Amelia. Amelia was the first to be struck down by radium. Quinta worked in the plant from March, 1917, till March, 1919. Then she married and had her children. In 1923 she became ill, but it was not until two years later that her sickness was diagnosed as radioactivity. There is a tragic irony about the fact that her cheque for £2000 has only added to her agony. Upon it 6 receipt her husband gave up his job and began to enjoy himself. There were quarrels and fights. Now the two are separated. Part of the money, however, has been invested as a trust fund for the education of her children. Albina—'Mrs. McDonald's other sisteris the one whose Babies were born dead.

She haa purchased a motor car, and with her husband is enjoying a few last weeks of happiness.

Thinking of Her Husband,

Mrs. Edna Hussman, in the brief time that is left to her, is thinking chiefly of her husband. "I do hope there is some way I can be cured," 6he say 6. "All I want is to be able to do things for my husband. He 'helps me so much. I get discouraged sometimes, tihougn. Then, except for him, I don't know what I'd do."

So these brave women faoe their inevitable doom with a heroism that has seldom been equalled. At the back of their minds in the pathetic hope that science may yet perform a last-minute miracle and save them. Their problem may at any time become our problem. It falls to the lot of doctors all too frequently to pronounce sentence of death on one ot other or their patients. Cancer, consumption and a dozen other diseases take their toll. In many cases there is no respite from the doom to come. It is one of the grimmest problems in life—and one that each must solve individually.

When Mrs. Olive Shaw applied to the Coventry magistrates for the custody of her two-year-old daughter Hazel, she said that her husband met with an accident recently and had the nails and the tips of his fingers cut off. He sent these to hia wife with a note saying, "A bit of your husband. Your pound of flesh." Mrs. Shaw's recent application for a separation order on the ground of persistent cruelty failed, and the husband after the hearing took the child away in a taxi. He expressed regret for his conduct, but asked for reasonable access to his child. The bench gave the mother the custody of the girl,