'The Radium Girls' Is Haunted By Glowing Ghosts
Kate Moore's account of the sufferings and struggles of the Radium Girls — factory workers who were poisoned by the glowing radium paint they worked with — reads like a true crime narrative.
In 1888, the match girls of London went on strike.
Their reason was a particularly horrifying working condition: ingesting phosphorus. A girl with "phossy jaw" would literally glow in the dark as her jawbone slowly disintegrated. This strike was a fight for their lives. Against expectations, they won — a watershed for Victorian industrial workers. Later strikers invoked the match girls
