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Judge William Clark was a hugely respected man. Born with a silver spoon in his mouth—he was the grandson of a senator; the family estate was called Peachcroft—he was thirty-seven years old, with auburn hair, gray eyes and a large nose. He was also Berry’s old boss, back when Berry had been a clerk; for Clark had once been a partner in the law firm Lindabury, Depue & Faulks.

“To Judge Clark’s office,” read Berry’s diary for May 23, 1928, “and talk re: radium cases with him.”1 His former boss had a suggestion to put to him.

“Would it not be possible,” Clark perhaps inquired lightly, “to settle the suits out of court…?”

Berry wasn’t the only party with whom the judge was conferring. On May 29, Clark met with President Lee and the legal team of USRC; Berry was not asked to attend. When a reporter questioned Berry about the meeting, he commented, “I know nothing of any such arrangements. I am not even considering a settlement out of court.”2

Though he professed to the reporter that he was “more determined than ever [that the case] will be fought now to [the] bitter end,”3 privately he was starting to have his doubts. It wasn’t that he didn’t think he could win; it was whether any verdict would come in time to benefit the girls. Every time he saw them, they seemed weaker than before; Humphries had already told him they were “not physically or mentally able”4 to attend the upcoming trial. Even Grace Fryer, who was normally almost effervescent compared with her friends, seemed quieter and less demonstrative. “I don’t dare do much with my hands,” she confided, “for fear of being scratched. The least scratch will not heal because of the radium.”5 The girls were becoming like china dolls, wrapped up in the cotton wool of their medical care. Berry wanted them to get justice, but most of all he wanted them to be comfortable in their final days. Perhaps, he thought, he should give Clark’s suggestion due consideration, as long as any settlement was fair.

Berry’s musings were compounded just a day or so later, when Katherine Schaub collapsed in church. “Pains like streaks of fire through my whole body!” she cried out. “I can’t go on this way. I wish I wasn’t going to live another month.”6

It seems Berry made his mind up: it would be inhuman not to try to get the girls a settlement if an offer might be forthcoming. Any legal case could take years to fight and, as Berry well knew from the four sworn statements in his files, the women might not live until September.

On May 30, Judge Clark was reported as an unofficial mediator. It was a move that provoked considerable comment within the legal profession, for the judge was intervening in a case over which he had no jurisdiction. Clark, however, said he resented criticism. “Just because I am a federal judge,” he asked rhetorically, “does that mean that I cannot have a heart?”7 His motives, he said, were entirely humanitarian.

The following day, USRC held a board meeting to discuss what possible terms it might offer in settlement. Vice President Barker now declared that “the directors wanted to do what was fair.”8 He added, however, “We absolutely deny any liability.”9

The company had very good reason to want to settle. Thanks to what it called a “cleverly designed campaign of publicity”10 (in which, it said—without any sense of irony—“the human aspect of live women doomed to die was played up in an appealing manner”11), the groundswell of support for the women’s case was overwhelming. Settling this famous case out of court would not only make both it and all the negative publicity go away, but it meant the firm could choose when to fight its battles in court. Inevitably, there would be future lawsuits from other dial-painters, and the firm no doubt foresaw that it might get an easier ride in a few years’ time, when Grace Fryer and her friends were not still plastered all over the papers. A settlement suited the company just fine.

With USRC now happy for the cogs to turn quickly, a meeting between Berry and the firm’s lawyers was held the next day, Friday, June 1, at four p.m. in Judge Clark’s chambers. Two hours later, Clark made a quick statement to the excitable press waiting outside as he ran to catch his evening train: “There is no definite news but I am confident that the matter will be definitely settled at a conference [on] Monday.”12

Everybody seemed happy—everybody but the girls. They were not impressed. RADIUM VICTIMS REJECT CASH OFFERS: WILL PUSH CASES; PARLEYS NOW OFF!13 yelled one headline. The firm had offered them $10,000 ($138,606) each in settlement, but all the girls’ medical bills and the costs of litigation were to be deducted from that sum, leaving only a pittance.

“I will not grab at the first thing that comes along,” exclaimed Grace fiercely. “I will not knuckle down to them now after all I’ve suffered.”14 Quinta McDonald simply said, “I have two small children. I have to see to it that they are provided for after I’m gone.”15

No, the women said, we do not accept. Grace, as ever, seemed to lead the fight: she declared that she would “absolutely refuse to accept the company’s offer.”16 Instead, after discussion with the girls, Berry pitched alternative terms to USRC: $15,000 ($208,000) as a cash lump sum for each woman, a pension of $600 ($8,316) a year for life, past and future medical expenses, and USRC to cover all court costs. The firm would have the weekend to think it over.

Monday, June 4, would prove a hectic day. At 10:00 a.m., negotiations continued with the world’s press camped outside. When, after forty-five minutes, the lawyers exited Clark’s chambers, they had to use a rear stairway to escape the massed media.

They were leaving to draw up formal papers. That afternoon, Berry summoned five brave women to his office. They dressed for the occasion: all wore smart cloche hats, while Grace slipped a fox fur around her shoulders. Even Albina made it to this most exceptional meeting; she had barely left her bed in the past month. But better than any outfit, more dazzling than any jewels, were the smiles that wreathed all their faces. For they had done it. Against all the odds, after a phenomenally hard battle—fought while they were in the most fragile health imaginable—they had nonetheless held the company to account.

They spent three hours with Berry and, in that time, the women signed the settlement papers. The company had kept the lump sum in the final agreement at $10,000—but it agreed to all their other terms. It was a quite extraordinary achievement.

The media flashbulbs glared as the women posed for a photo to mark the moment. Quinta, Edna, Albina, Katherine, and Grace. They stood all in a row: the dream team. The “smiling sorority”17—and, for this one day, not sadly smiling, but beaming, false teeth and all, in pure delight and not a little well-deserved pride.

The formal announcement of the settlement came from Judge Clark himself at 7:00 p.m. By now, a crowd of perhaps three hundred had gathered; “all aisles and passageways to the elevators were jammed.”18 Clark fought his way through the crowds to a good vantage point, from which he could break the news. He cleared his throat and asked for silence, which fell in a soft hush, broken only by the pop of flashbulbs and the papery whisper of pen on pad. Once he had the full attention of the press, the judge announced the exact terms of the deal. “You can say, if you want to,” he added unctuously, “that the judge did a good job.”19

The settlement specified that the company admitted no guilt. Markley added purposely, “[The firm] was not negligent and the claims of the plaintiffs, even if well-founded, are barred by the statute of limitations. We are of the opinion that [USRC’s legal] position is unassailable.”20 The corporation itself, meanwhile, released a statement proclaiming its motivation in settling was purely “humanitarian.”21 The statement ended: “[USRC] hopes that the treatment which will be provided for these women will bring about a cure.”22

And therein lay another crucial part of the settlement. The company had insisted that a committee of three doctors be set up to examine the girls regularly: one physician would be appointed by the girls, one by the company, and one mutually agreed. “If any two [doctors] of this board should arrive at an opinion that the girls are no longer suffering from radium [poisoning],” Berry noted, “the payments are to cease.”23

It was obvious what the company officials planned; they didn’t even try to hide it from Berry. “I fully believe,” Berry wrote, “that it is the intention of the corporation, if possible, to work out a situation in which they will be able to discontinue payments.”24

It all sat extremely uneasily with him, especially because, while he knew his former boss to be “a very honorable man,”25 he now heard rumors that Clark “was friendly with certain of the [USRC] directors.”26 Worse than that, he “possibly had some indirect business relations with some of the directors of [a company with] a controlling interest in [USRC] who were schoolmates of his,”27 and Berry even learned that Clark “is, or was, up to a very recent time, a stockholder in USRC.”28

“I have,” Berry said with trepidation, “a great fear in the situation.”29

In the Essex County courthouse in Newark, its elaborate murals are dedicated to four things: Wisdom, Knowledge, Mercy…and Power. In this case, Berry mused, the last seemed cruelly apt.

Clark himself wrote to the women: “I want to express to you my very great personal sympathy, and my earnest hope that some way will be found of helping your physical condition.”30 And it was the women, at the end of the day, for whom this settlement was everything. They had come out on top; they had never thought they would live to see the day.

“I am glad to have the money,” commented Albina with a smile, “because now my husband will not have to work as hard.”31 Her sister Quinta added, “The settlement will mean so much, not only to me, but to my two little children and my husband.”32 She went on: “I want to rest after this ordeal I’ve been through. I’d like to go with them to some seaside resort.”33 Though Quinta pronounced herself “dissatisfied with the terms,”34 she concluded: “I am glad to be free from the worry of the court and am pleased with the thought of receiving the money right away.”35

“I think Mr. Berry, my lawyer, has done wonderful work,”36 Edna enthused gratefully. “I’m glad to get the settlement; we couldn’t have waited much longer. It will mean a lot of the things we want, for as long as we can appreciate them.”37

Katherine simply said: “God has heard my prayers.”38

It was really only Grace who expressed a more muted response. She said she was “quite pleased”39: “I’d like to get more, but I’m glad to get that. It will help in so many ways; it will alleviate some of the mental anguish.”40 She added, of their courage in bringing the lawsuit in the first place and of what they had achieved so publicly, “It is not for myself I care. I am thinking,” she said, “more of the hundreds of girls to whom this may serve as an example.”41

“You see, it’s got us—so many more of us than anybody knows yet…”42