![]() ![]() In 1936, a disused mill in Blackburn became a gas mask assembly-plant where, by the Munich Crisis of 1938, more than 30 million gas masks had been manufactured, requiring, amongst other components, a mind-boggling 90 million safety-pins. The result was the General Civilian Respirator, familiar to the Second World War generation and to later generations from films, photographs, and stories of the period. In 1934, the British government asked its scientists at the Porton Down laboratory to design a civilian respirator which could be mass-produced at a unit cost of two shillings (10p today). The German war artist Otto Dix captured the horrors and ironies of the gas mask, which seemed to transform men into monsters on the Western Front. By the end of that conflict, the pattern for modern gas masks had been established, with a face mask, eye-pieces, a chemical filter, and a container. The first gas masks were simple filters of damp cotton (moistened in extremis with human urine), and were soon superseded by cloth bags soaked in chemicals. The first gas masks for use in warfare were developed during the First World War, when the German military pioneered the use of chlorine as a weapon – the original WMD. ![]() ![]() First development Gas masks first became standard military equipment after the Germans pioneered chemical warfare on the Western Front of the First World War at the Second Battle of Ypres in 1915. There were gas masks for adults, children, babies, horses … and even dogs. This ubiquitous mass-produced object has come to symbolise life in Home Front Britain, even though it was never used in action: the much-feared poison gas bomb attacks never materialised. My particular object of interest is the ‘General Civilian Respirator’ issued to the British people in the lead up to the Second World War. Goggles were worn by soldiers fighting in World War I to protect the eyes from chlorine gas, which was fired at soldiers to compromise their vision (think about how much your eyes sting when you go in the swimming pool!).UCL’s Gabe Moshenska muses on the extraordinary iconic significance of the gas mask. These goggles are too fragile to take out of the box or to handle. The first item is a pair of goggles, dating from 1914. The museum holds a selection of gas masks dating from World War I and World War II, which I like to display chronologically to show visitors the progression in design. My favourite session to run is the Gas Masks session. My job is to tell visitors the story behind the objects, help them to handle the objects safely and answer any questions. The Military Studio offers visitors an opportunity to get close to some of the military collections held by the museum, such as gas masks, helmets and military costume, to handle these objects and to find out more about their history. ![]() I have been volunteering in the Military Studio at York Castle Museum for 6 months. The previous post about York Castle Museum was from the perspective of a visitor: this post is from the perspective of a volunteer. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |