DOOMED TO DEATH

Southland Times, Issue 22159, 30 October 1933, Page 7

DOOMED TO DEATH

RADIUM POISONING. WOMEN IN FACTORY. (United Press Assn.—Telegraph Copyright.) New York, October 27. A message from East Orange (New Jersey), states that the third of five women doomed to death through radium poisoning in one of the _ most sensational cases of industrial disease in America, died here to-day. Miss Grace Fryer, aged 35, was 16 when she started work in the factory of the United States Radium Corporation and was until now under intensive treatment in an effort to stave off the inevitable end which came to-day. With a steel brace clamped about her back to lend support to her crumbling spine, she continued work as a clerk to the last. , . Five women brought a suit in 1927 for 1,250,000 dollars against the corporation for radium poisoning, which they contracted as a result of having, after the custom of the operatives in the factory, damped with their lips the brushes with which they applied radium paint to watch dials. The suit was settled with a grant of 100,000 dollars each, and 600 dollars annually. Two of the five are still alive and are awaiting the same end.