WEARING face masks is nothing new...as these images from 1919 reveal.
Office workers wearing masks
Nurses in face coverings
Historian Andrew Bolt recently came across them doing some research. The photos, cartoon and medical advice reflect the period after the First World War when Britain was gripped by the global Spanish Flu pandemic. From February 1918 to April 1920, it infected 500 million people.
Says Andrew: “These photos demonstrate that we’ve been in this situation before and lived through it. People adhered to it until it was over. We need to be patient so we don’t become patients.”
Medical advice from the Spanish Flu period
Autumn 1918 saw a second wave in Bradford. By December it had abated; picture houses opened and sports events drew crowds. But February 1919 saw a third wave. The Bradford Telegraph reported insufficient hospital beds, with hundreds dying waiting for beds. The ‘medical profession is experiencing a strenuous time’. Mask wearing was enforced. Bradford’s MoH recommended homemade ones: ‘It would become a common custom to wear this form of protection if some strong-willed persons would set the fashion’.
Face masks worn on the streets in 1919
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