Katherine Schaub

by Nicolleta Perna

Katherine Schaub (1902-1933) was a dial painter who played a pivotal role, with her court testimonies and self-documentation, in getting radium recognized as a harmful substance and subsequently phased out of use in manufacturing altogether. She is grouped with various women workers of the early 20th century who were affected by radium poisoning because of prolonged exposure to radium in the workplace due to negligence. These women were often referred to as the “Radium Girls”.

The second oldest of four children, Katherine Schaub was from Newark, Jersey, born to William and Mary Rudolph Schaub. At the age of fourteen Katherine had begun working for Radium Luminous Materials Corporation in Newark, New Jersey as a dial painter, one of many rapidly developing job opportunities for many lower and middle class Americans, specifically young women, after the popularization of wristwatches for WW1 soldiers had caused a boom in the use of radium in many products. In addition to constantly handling radium and breathing in dust particles, Katherine, and many other young women dial painters, had been instructed to wet the radium dipped paint brushes in their mouths in order to keep the hair on the end of the brush a fine texture, a process called lip-pointing. Due to lip-pointing and other forms of exposure such as wiping off radium residue with bare hands–and some girls even decorating themselves in radium powder to give themselves a unique glow–. Katherine had ingested and been subjected to large amounts of radium during her time as a dial painter. Katherine herself had even stated in a court testimony, “I instructed them to put the brush in their mouth to get the best point on it.”; her testimony referred to how she had taught other female workers to lip-point the way she had been taught when she first started working with radium. 

Radium poisoning first appeared in Katherine Schaub in the form of an outbreak of acne in 1917 during her first year of dial painting work, which her Doctor, like many others studying various symptoms of radium workers at that time, had thought to be phosphorus poisoning. Other symptoms began appearing in following years after prolonged and repeated exposure such as a cracking stiffness in her legs. In the summer of 1923 Katherine began experiencing troubles with her teeth, ultimately getting two of them removed; the removed teeth were described as flinty and broke with ease; likewise, her gums had refused to heal much like some of her co workers being afflicted with similar mouth issues at that time. Katherine’s stomach had even begun troubling her, being unable to keep food down, and in the winter of 1924 she had stomach surgery. Additionally, she had been hospitalized for a time because of nervous disorders brought on from the stress of her then-unknown illnesses. Perhaps the most major effect of the radium poisoning was that Katherine’s and some of the other womens’ bones were found to be plated with radium, a serious effect of working with radium that caused many of the girls’ symptoms from joint deterioration and necrosis to anemia and cancer. Later in Katherine’s brief life, her leg had broken due to deterioration caused by necrosis from the radium. She refused to have it amputated.

During the summer of 1923, Katherine’s 21-year-old cousin Irene, who had also worked at the radium corp died of a “terrible mysterious illness” not long after they had both left Radium Luminous Materials Corporation. Schaub started to see the threads linking together her cousin’s death with other women they had both worked with painting radium on watches. On July 18, 1923, days after her cousin’s death, Katherine single-handedly went down to the New Jersey Department of Health and filed a report detailing that many of the women she worked with were suffering from similar ailments. The initial investigation sparked from this complaint had garnered no results as many of the women’s deaths early on had been chalked up to causes such as syphilis or angina. 

It was not until 1924 that an investigation conducted by Katherine Wiley of the New Jersey’s Consumer’s League had found evidence of radiation poisoning in Katherine Schaub and her fellow dial painters. Through these findings The League was eventually able to have radium necrosis added to the list of occupational diseases in 1926; unfortunately, it happened too late to actually benefit women who had suffered from radium poisoning before the law was passed as the statute of limitations on it was 2 years. However, in 1927 Katherine had joined in a court case filed against Radium Luminous Materials Corporation and provided testimony. The case was eventually settled in Katherine and four other women’s favor.

With her settlement money of $10,000 and an annuity of $600, Katherine had helped her family who had continuously supported her while she was sick, also buying herself high clothes like “Cinderella” and a typewriter, as well as investing some of it. Even with her compensation Katherine lived out her final years in a private sanitarium in Roseland, NJ, eventually dying of radium poisoning at the age of 31 in 1933. 

Apart from being a dial painter, Katherine Schaub had an aptitude for learning and writing. Katherine had even continued her education while she was sick via a home course through  Columbia University. She had even written a memoir about her life titled “Gambling With Radium”, although her sister had destroyed it after Katherine’s death. While not religious for most of her life, Katherine had found solace and comfort in religion after initially falling ill and being told radium poisoning was a death sentence.

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References:

Clark, Claudia. Radium Girls : Women and Industrial Health Reform, 1910-1935. Chapel Hill ; University of North Carolina Press, 1997.

“Medicine: Radium Women.” Time, August 11, 1930. https://time.com/archive/6745610/medicine-radium-women/. 

Moore, Kate. The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women. Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks, 2018.

Suggested Citation:

Perna, Nicolleta. (2024, Oct). Katherine Schaub. New Jersey Women’s History, Rowan University Libraries Digital Scholarship Center. https://njwomenshistory.org/biographies/katherine-schaub/