OTD in early British television: 8 June 1938
John Wyver writes: Under the bare title of A.R.P., a 14-minute studio programme on the evening of Wednesday 8 June was ‘a demonstration of the use of gas masks’. Sandwiched between a newsreel and the cartoon film Mother Goose Melodies, this had been ‘arranged in co-operation with the Home Office’ and appears to have been the first public information broadcast preparing lookers-in for the anticipated international conflict.
We know little about the broasdcast, apart from that it featured the splendidly named Flight Lieut. Eardly-Wilmot, Mrs Caillard, and Messrs Bowen, Thistle and Radcliffe, and that use was made of two British Movietonews film extracts, ‘Airplanes’ and ‘A.R.P. work street sequence’.
Later in June, the Flight Lieutenant and Mrs Caillard returned to AP to demonstrate how to gas-proof a room, and in October there was a spectacular broadcast showing recommended methods of dealing with an incendiary bomb.
Image: ‘Fitting Anti-gas Clothing’ by Jane Stanton, date unknown; a Sergeant of the Women’s Royal Army Corps helps to fit a gas mask to a recruit; from the collections of the Imperial War Museums. Scanned and released on the IWM Non Commercial Licence. Photographs or artworks created by a member of the forces during their active service duties are covered by Crown Copyright provisions. Faithful reproductions may be reused under that licence, which is considered expired 50 years after creation date.
[OTD post no. 173; part of a long-running series leading up to the publication of my book Magic Rays of Light: The Early Years of Television in Britain in January 2026.]
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