Decidedly Grim

Why oh why do we not have playgrounds like these Eastern European/Chinese beauties here in the States? Why must life be so dreary? Sigh…

Nightmare Playgrounds

Thanks to Sarah for the link.

Sundry

Today’s Glowing Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

Grace Fryer and the other women at the radium factory in Orange, New Jersey, naturally supposed that they were not being poisoned. It was a little strange, Fryer said, that when she blew her nose, her handkerchief glowed in the dark. But everyone knew the stuff was harmless. The women even painted their nails and their teeth to surprise their boyfriends when the lights went out. They all had a good laugh, then got back to work, painting a glow-in-the-dark radium compound on the dials of watches, clocks, altimeters and other instruments. Grace started working in the spring of 1917 with 70 other women in a large, dusty room filled with long tables. Racks of dials waiting to be painted sat next to each woman’s chair. They mixed up glue, water and radium powder into a glowing greenish-white paint, and carefully applied it with a camel hair brush to the dial numbers. After a few strokes, the brushes would lose their shape, and the women couldn’t paint accurately. “Our instructors told us to point them with our lips,” she said. “I think I pointed mine with my lips about six times to every watch dial. It didn’t taste funny. It didn’t have any taste, and I didn’t know it was harmful.” Nobody knew it was harmful, except the owners of the U.S. Radium Corporation and scientists who were familiar with the effects of radium. Those days, most people thought radium was some kind of miracle elixir that could cure cancer and many other medical problems.

Grace quit the factory in 1920 for a better job as a bank teller. About two years later, her teeth started falling out and her jaw developed a painful abscess. The hazel eyes that had charmed her friends now clouded with pain. She consulted a series of doctors, but none had seen a problem like it. X-ray photos of her mouth and back showed the development of a serious bone decay. Finally, in July 1925, one doctor suggested that the problems may have been caused by her former occupation. Although it meant flying in the face of some medical opinion, Grace Fryer decided to sue U.S. Radium, but it took her two years to find an attorney willing to take the case. On May 18, 1927, Raymond Berry, a young Newark attorney, took the case on contingency and filed a lawsuit in a New Jersey court on her behalf. Four other women with severe medical problems quickly joined the lawsuit. They were Edna Hussman, Katherine Schaub, and sisters Quinta McDonald and Albina Larice. Each asked for $250,000 in compensation for medical expenses and pain. The five eventually became known in newspaper articles carried in papers throughout the U.S. and Europe as “the Radium Girls.”

Legal maneuvers filled 1927, and the medical condition of the five women worsened considerably. The two sisters were bedridden, and Grace Fryer had lost all of her teeth and could not sit up without the use of a back brace, much less walk. When the first court hearing came up January 11, 1928, the women could not raise their arms to take the oath. All five of the Radium Girls were dying. “When pretty Grace Fryer took the witness stand, she said her health had been good until after she had been employed at the radium plant,” one news account said. Fryer and the others bravely tried to keep smiling, but friends and spectators in the courtroom wept. Edna Hussman told the court about the financial troubles the medical bills were causing: “I cannot even keep my little home, our bungalow,” she said. “I know I will not live much longer, for now I cannot sleep at night for the pains.” She was content, however, because her children would be cared for by relatives.

With the Consumers League and the newspapers outraged and the legal system shifting in favor of the victims, pressure to settle the case built on U.S. Radium. In early June, a federal judge volunteered to mediate the dispute and help reach an out-of-court settlement. Days before the case was to go to trial, Berry and the five “Radium Girls” agreed that each would receive $10,000 and a $600 per year annuity while they lived, and that all medical and legal expenses incurred would also be paid by the company. In the 20′s and 30′s all five Radium Girls died.

Culled from: Mass Media & Environmental Conflict
Generously submitted by: Elizabeth

And this is why governmental regulation is *good for you*, kids!

Alright, that’s it – I’m starting a band called The Radium Girls immediately! We shall perform in glow in the dark outfits. Is there a drummer in the house?

Facts

So lately I’ve become completely obsessed with the show Dexter (yeah, I know, it took me long enough). So imagine my delight when a friend pointed out today’s TeeFury.Com shirt with its Dexter design! Hurry, it will only be available for another 13 hours, then it’s gone…

Everything except the face mask and plastic wrap.

Trinkets

Here’s a nifty morbid trinket: a L.A. County Coroner’s bag! Wouldn’t that be nice to carry to your local health club?

L.A. County Coroner's Body Bag

Trinkets

Trichotillomania is the compulsive eating of hair. I suffer from a lot of compulsive behaviors, but I must admit that this isn’t one of them. Thank goodness, because you can see what the result of this particular affliction is here:

The Stomach Of A Trichotillomaniac

Thanks to Elizabeth for the link.

Sundry

I received an e-mail of support for my Keddie Murder Cabin travelogue and thought I’d repost the link for those of you who never heard about the controversy. Back in 2001, I read about a group of extremely grisly unsolved murders at the Keddie Resort in the Feather River Canyon of Northern California that occurred in the early ’80s. A friend of mine had grown up in the area and had gone to school with one of the murder victims. We decided to take a drive up to Keddie to find the cabin for ourselves and photograph it. We did so, and my ensuing travelogue (with its typical black humor) didn’t go over so well with the natives. I received a lot of hate mail, which I lovingly share on the site.

In 2006, Cabin 28, where the attack occurred, was demolished, thus taking an irreplaceable piece of morbid history with it. But the travelogue lives on… and the story was recently covered by David Kulczyk in his book Death In California (complete with some of my actually pretty poor photographs).

Cabin 28

Here again is the Keddie Travelogue in all its gorey:
Keddie Resort

And here’s the Hate Mail page:
Fan Mail!

Enjoy!

Sightseer

Today’s DIY Yet Truly Morbid Fact!

Officials are pondering whether to charge a Missouri DIY satellite TV installer who decided that the best way to punch a hole through the wall was with a .22 calibre handgun, and in so doing accidentally shot and killed his wife. Ronald Long was attempting to install said system in the bedroom of his family’s Deepwater home on March 22, 2008. After “several unsuccessful efforts to punch a hole through the exterior wall using other means” he popped two caps into the wall, unaware that his wife, Patsy, was outside the building. The second round hit her in the chest, and although she was “given CPR by neighbors and family until medics arrived”, she was later pronounced dead in hospital. Sheriff’s department spokesman Maj. Robert Hills explained: “He was under the impression that everybody was inside the residence, that he knew where everybody was at.”

Culled from: KCTV5.Com
Generously submitted by: Vickie

Facts

Here’s another ghastly image from the National Institute of Health Otis Archives on Flickr.

Thanks to Twisted Princess for the link.

Ghastly!

Threadless, based here in Chicago, is my favorite t-shirt shop, and here’s a lovely shirt that I simply MUST purchase at my earliest convenience. Adorable, isn’t it?

Guess Who?

Trinkets

I had a Barbie doll when I was a kid. I was more of a G.I. Joe kind of girl, so I threw Barbie in front of a car. She was run over and one of her boobs was permanently pushed inside out. So you can probably imagine my delight when Cat sent me the following link to a delightfully dreadful reimagining of Barbie.

Barbie Of The Undead

Art