mrs. donahue victim of radium poisoning dies

Marie was a funny, witty, charismatic woman who was a brilliant storyteller and clearly adored by her friends. She did a variety of jobs before ending up in the dial-painting studio, where she worked for 7 years. Her mother later remarried and Marie’s stepfather sent her to work aged 13. Her father, a bartender, died of dropsy when she was young she sat by his bed at his request as he lay dying.

It was from Mary that Marie said she got her ‘fierce, I-can-do-it’ attitude – and from early on in her tough life, Marie needed every bit of it. Marie Becker grew up in an underprivileged community in Ottawa, Illinois her grandmother, an indomitable German woman called Mary Pfeiffer, used to send her out to pick dandelions for the poor to eat. Her family remembered that she liked to cook chicken and mashed potatoes. They had three children: Donald, Patricia and Jean Ann. This despite the fact that Charlotte dial-painted for only 13 months: she left to become a seamstress and then, aged 22, married Albert Purcell on 12 April 1928 in St Columba their family said they were ‘best friends’. She and Catherine Donohue were ‘spokesmen for the other women’. she spoke her mind about a lot of things.’ That perhaps explains why Charlotte played such an important role in the Illinois lawsuits. She told people what she thought about things. A relative said: ‘She was pretty outspoken. Charlotte was a parishioner of St Columba and very devout. Woolworth Co., where she worked alongside future dial-painter Marie Becker Rossiter, who would later become close friends with Charlotte (the women stayed in touch after the court case for the rest of their lives). She had four sisters and one brother her sister Eva worked at the dimestore F. It seems a fitting final resting place for Catherine’s own record of her momentous fight for justice.Ĭharlotte Agnes Nevins was born on 27 January 1906 in Ottawa, the youngest child of Patrick and Matilda (‘Tillie’) Nevins. The library which holds the Catherine Wolfe Donohue Collection is a beautiful, calm and quiet room, with huge church-like windows, wooden furniture and leafy green plants. When Mary Jane died, her cousins donated her mother’s personal scrapbook of the case to Northwestern University by chance, the alma mater of the wife of George Marvel, the judge in Catherine’s case. She had two children, Tommy and Mary Jane. Catherine is perhaps the most famous of the Ottawa dial-painters, for it was her courage and commitment to give evidence that captured the heart of the nation in 1938. She married Tom Donohue in St Columba on 23 January 1932, with the modest reception held at home the colour scheme was pink and green. Catherine was educated in the Ottawa grade and high schools and was a member of St Columba’s Church and of the Altar and Rosary Society. It seems Mary was the sister of Catherine's mother Bridget the girls had Irish parents. She had three older brothers, John (who died aged 23 in 1917), Frank (known as Pinkie) and Edward, but after both her parents died she alone moved to 520 East Superior Street to live with her elderly aunt and uncle, Mary and Winchester Biggart, who had no living children. Quinta's sister-in-law Ethel cared for the children when Quinta could not.Ĭatherine was born in Ottawa, Illinois on 4 February 1903, the youngest child of Bridget and Maurice Wolfe. Later, James Larice, Quinta’s brother-in-law, reported that the McDonalds had shared a ‘bedside reconciliation’: McDonald ‘came back to her and was forgiven’. When she filed for divorce on the grounds of cruelty, the judge postponed the case in order, he said to James, to ‘give you an opportunity to make up with your wife’.

Her husband told the court: ‘I got into bad company, your Honor, and I got drinking and I guess I was mean to her.’ That was an understatement: he had threatened to kill her and had viciously struck his crippled wife. Newspaper reports from 1928 show that Quinta was a victim of domestic violence at the hands of her husband, James, on ‘several occasions’. Quinta had two children, Helen and Robert, but her home life was not picture-perfect.

Born on St Valentine’s Day, she worked as a stenciller for a music-roll company before dial-painting but, she said, ‘My sisters and I were attracted by the offer of “good pay for a fast worker”’ they felt ‘lucky to find work in the same plant’. Quinta was the fifth Maggia daughter, thus her unusual name she often went by the nickname May instead.

Mrs. donahue victim of radium poisoning dies