Amelia Maggia Research Paper

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On December 21, 1897, Amelia “Mollie” Maggia was born to Italian immigrants. She had 6 sisters, Louise, Clara, Albina, Quinta, Irma, and Josephine, with her right in the middle. When she was 21 years of age, she started working at the U.S. Radium Corporation, with 3 of her sisters, Albina, Irma, and Quinta as painters.
The U.S. Radium Corporation had sold glow-in-the-dark dial clocks for workers all around the country. They encouraged their painters to lick the tip of their brushes with radium to keep the brushes super fine. Amelia Maggia had been an exceptional painter, which, in the end, had been her downfall. After 4 years of working there, Maggia had begun to demonstrate symptoms. She began to suddenly lose weight and her bones began to ache. A tooth problem popped up, and after an extraction, her gums never healed, and soon her lower jawbone had decayed so much that the dentist had just about lifted it out of her mouth. She later developed an anemia, bled from her mouth constantly, and had died on December 12, 1922, of, “Ulcerative stomachitis.” …show more content…
Martland, of Essex County, New Jersey, had become suspicious of radium poisoning in the dial painters. He soon, with the help of Alexander Gettler, exhumed her body to do some testing, and, sure enough, she had died of radium poisoning, not, “Ulcerative stomachitis.” In 1925, Grace Fryer had decided to sue the U.S. Radium Corporation, but didn’t file the case until 1927, due to her not being able to find a lawyer who would take the case. The U.S. Radium Corporation had appealed the case several times, but in 1939, the Supreme Court rejected the last repeal. Soon, the Radium Girls, as they were called, received their compensation, the people who were still painting with radium had been given protective gear, and the FDA had banned to deceptive use of radium in their products. As of 1968, radium paint has completely been
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Amelia Maggia Research Paper

In the early 20th century, mysterious cases of women dropping like flies sparked an interest in the forensics world. One case in particular, the death of Amelia Maggia, in which her death would be solved five years later. During WWI, Amelia Maggia began to work at a radium-dial factory at eighteen to support her parents. The factory used radium paint for the watches, as it helped the soldiers on the battlefield see the time without being caught by the enemy. Soldiers would open their watches to read…

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