In today’s blog, we’ll be discussing how a company knowingly poisoned young women for profit from 1917 to 1935 in the name of helping a war. We’ll also be discussing England's first female serial killer who went unnoticed for several years.
Radium Girls
Now I will warn you most of this blog is going to be about death as we will be discussing poisoning. If you’re still with us, let’s start today by discussing the Radium Girls. At the onset of World War I, many women went into the workforce. Including several young women who began working at radium factories painting military and watch dials. The paint they used contained radium which was discovered by Marie Curie 20 years earlier. At that time, radium had been known to be successful in cancer treatments. Many products began to use it including cosmetics and toothpaste. Radium is a radioactive element and can make things glow. Of course not much research had been done as to how dangerous radium could be.
These young girls in these watch making factories were instructed to use their lips to make the paint brush tip into a thin line. They liked how it glowed so they often used the radium dust on their clothes, teeth and hair. The young women were often seen wearing their dancing dresses on Fridays so they would glow with the dust when they went out that night. They were often referred to as “ghost girls” because of this. Before they began working the women had asked the companies if this was all safe and were assured it was.
We now know today that radium poisoning is bad. In large part to Marie Curie but also because of the toll it took on the radium girls. Many of the radium girls became gravely ill as time went on. In most cases, it started with broken teeth and reduced bone growth. It got worse from there.
When the women began to experience extreme symptoms of radium poisoning, the employers of the radium companies denied responsibility claiming that radium was completely safe. There were 3 main places this occurred, Orange, New Jersey, Ottawa, Illinois, and Waterbury, Connecticut. One company was being sued by several girls and hired an independent consultant who concluded the girls were in fact poisoned by the radium. The company still denied it and hired another consultant, this one found no correlation between the girls’ symptoms and radium.
Several of the girls sued the companies, but the companies tried to push the court dates off as long as they could. Any guess as to why? They pushed off the dates in hopes the girl would die and then there would be less money and less of a chance for the court case to make it all the way to court. Sadly a lot of lawyers didn’t want to go up against these big companies either. The most commonly reported case took place in Illinois.
There were 5 women suing the company, and by the time the case reached the court, all 5 were dying. About 5 days before the trail reached court, they came to an agreement. They would each receive $10,000 (about $170,000 in 2022) and another $600 annually ($10,000 in 2022). All their medical and legal bills would be paid by the company also. These Radium girls went on to help create safer working conditions and ultimately led to the start of OSHA.
Mary Ann Cotton
This part of the episode can be considered Gina’s macabre moment as we move into our discussion on England’s first female serial killer. While she was convicted for only one poisoning, it is believed that Mary Ann Cotton left behind many bodies over the years, but let’s start at the beginning of her story.
Mary Ann Robson was born in 1832 in Durham county of England. It is believed that she left home at the age of 16 to become a nurse or possibly a housekeeper. At the age of 20 Mary married her first husband, William Mowbray in 1852. Now due to poor record keeping during this time, it is unsure how many children the couple had. Most research points to about 8 kids, 5 of whom died young due to what is believed to be gastric fever, all my research in gastric fever kept leading my back to Typhoid Fever (if you want to know more, check out our podcast on Mary Mallon.) Remember in that episode we talked about how typhoid fever was usually only deadly to very young children. So no one really thought much of these young children dying from it.
Then in 1856 William took out a life insurance policy for him and his 3 surviving children. Nine years later in 1864, William passed from gastric fever and 2 of the children passed shortly after from the same thing. Remember that insurance policy…the money went to Mary and their last surviving child. Mary took the money and dropped her last living child with her mother.
In 1865, just 1 year after the death of her husband and 2 children, Mary married a patient at the hospital she worked at, by the name of George Ward. Sadly he died a year later and Mary collected another life insurance policy. Mary decided to become a housekeeper for James Robinson. According to reports, one of his five children died in 1866, just weeks after Mary’s arrival. Any guesses what from? Gastric fever. In 1867, Mary returned home for a brief period of time to care for her ailing mother, who died shortly after. She collected the insurance money and went back to James Robinson’s home with her daughter.
In April of 1867, the daughter and two of Robinson’s children died. By August, Mary and James were married. They had two children, but only 1 survived. Robinson accused Mary of stealing from him in 1869 and then became extremely suspicious of her continued requests to take out a life insurance policy. He either kicked her out or she left, the records weren’t sure.
She was homeless for a time. In 1870, Mary met another widower who was a brother of a friend of hers. His name was Fredrick Cotton. In that year, one of Fredrick’s children died along with his sister. In September of 1870, Mary married Fredrick Cotton, but she was still technically married to James Robinson because remember that was one husband she didn’t kill. By the end of 1871, Fredrick Cotton and 2 more of his children had died from suspected gastric fever. Mary then took up with an old lover named Joseph Nattrass, but became pregnant with another man, John Quick Manning.
In 1872, her lover Joseph Nattrass died of gastric fever and left all his belongings to Mary. She told an official that she could not marry John Quick Manning due to her step son from her marriage to Fredrick Cotton, but told him “I won’t be troubled long”. Shortly after her 7 year old stepson Charles Edward Cotton died of gastric fever. It’s at this point I should probably mention that gastric fever and arsenic poisoning have very similar symptoms which leads us into Mary’s demise.
That official she told she wouldn’t be troubled for long, well he got suspicious of her shenanigans and reported it to the police. Charles Edward Cotton’s body was exhumed and an autopsy performed. The autopsy revealed arsenic in the child’s stomach. Mary was charged with his murder. Officials also exhumed the body of Joseph Nattrass and two of Cotton’s other children. They found evidence of arsenic in them as well. Mary’s defense team claimed that young Charles Edward Cotton had inhaled the arsenic from the wallpaper glue, which was a real issue during this time. However due to the evidence from the other exhumed bodies Mary was found guilty and sentenced to death.
On March 14, 1873, Mary was hanged in a public execution, however, the trapdoor was not positioned correctly which resulted in Mary hanging for 3 minutes while the executioner pushed on her shoulders to try to snap the neck with the rope. Mary never did confess to any of the deaths she was accused of. Before her hanging, she birthed a child in prison. She and 1 other child survived their mother out of the 13 children Mary had throughout her life. The number of her victims is uncertain, but they know at least 22 people were killed via arsenic poisoning by Mary Ann Cotton.
And there you have the hi-story of the Radium Girls and England’s first female serial killer. Thank you for reading! If you liked to hear our humorous spin on the facts, be sure to check out our podcast on all major streaming services. https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/izjL8ACRXub
Comments