The man behind the mask

How a Newfoundland doctor invented a life-saving gas mask in WW I

On a fine spring afternoon in 1915, a new weapon of war was unleashed near the town of Ypres, Belgium.

The First World War was well underway when — on April 22, 1915 — the German army released more than 136 tonnes of chlorine gas. A greenish-yellow toxic cloud blew toward the unsuspecting French lines.

It was the globe's first large-scale poison gas attack, and it stunned the world.

“The chemical gas was terrifying,” said Tim Cook, chief historian at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa. “Soldiers had died on the battlefield. They were retching, their eyes were bulging out. They were vomiting up liquid. They were dying in horrendous ways.”

The response to this new type of warfare, which left unknown numbers of soldiers dead or incapacitated, was swift. In a moment, the terms of engagement had changed. New gear would be needed to counter the deadly gas attacks.

Among those who found a path first was Dr. Cluny Macpherson, a Newfoundland doctor who devised an early gas mask — known as the hypo helmet — that would go on to save hundreds of thousands of lives. Masks that built on his innovations would save millions.

The invention earned Macpherson considerable acclaim, and he was well known through his lifetime in military, medical and local circles. Gradually, though, since his death in 1966, his story has faded from view.

To find it, you need to dig into archives and history books, where a rich narrative is waiting to be told.

Deep inside The Rooms, a St. John’s cultural complex that includes Newfoundland and Labrador’s provincial archives, a piece of First World War history is safeguarded in an area the public doesn’t often get to see.

Collections manager Wade Greeley kneels low to pull open a drawer. With care and wearing white gloves, he lifts out a large white envelope and lays it on a nearby table. He opens it gently to reveal that inside, lying flat, is a hood made in a woolen-like grey-brown material with a cracked mica eyepiece.

At more than 100 years old, this is a surviving hypo helmet that was Macpherson once owned.

This item is special because it is the only one of its kind, Greeley said.

“More than anything, it's a prototype. So this is him deciding, ‘OK what? How? How can I make that helmet and what materials [am I] going to use?’” he said.

“And then figuring out, ‘Oh, this is not working and then going to another one. So we actually have three or four of these prototypes.”

Greeley said these gas masks kept changing throughout the war, as additional items in the vault’s drawer demonstrate. Also tucked away are two more advanced gas masks, known as PH helmets.

Cook said up to the point of the gas attack on April 22, during the Second Battle of Ypres, the war had largely been static, with armies digging into positions through a system of trenches that resulted in a stalemate.

Then the German army introduced a new weapon to break it: chlorine gas.

“And this enormous gas cloud, six kilometres long, green, yellow tendrils pushing forward over the Allied lines, comes into contact with two French divisions and the Canadian division also in the line. And it causes panic and terror as the soldiers feel the gas burning out their lungs,” said Cook.

The French divisions fled. But the Canadians, who didn’t take the full brunt of the gas attack, were able to rally and hold the line, said Cook.

Immediately, the Allied high command knew it had to come up with some form of protection for soldiers, he said.

Initially, a cloth pad was distributed that needed to be soaked in a water-based solution, but it was mostly ineffective. Then what was called a black veil respirator was sent out to troops, followed by more effective masks, starting with the hypo helmet, said Cook.

He has read through archived letters and diaries kept by soldiers and noticed they didn’t have much faith in the cloth respirators that were initially sent to the frontlines.

“But when the hypo helmet arrives — this large bag that is worn over the head with a mica viewer — it provides a greater sense of protection,” said Cook.

But let's back up a bit, and explain how a St. John's doctor wound up playing a pivotal role overseas in developing a widely used gas mask.

When Britain declared war on Germany on Aug. 4, 1914, the Dominion of Newfoundland was automatically in the conflict as well. At the time, Newfoundland had a population of approximately 240,000. But while the country did not have an army, the government quickly set out to raise a regiment.

All would-be soldiers had to pass a physical evaluation conducted by Macpherson and other doctors before they were sent to nearby Pleasantville on the shores of Quidi Vidi Lake in St. John's for further training.

Maureen Peters, a curator at The Rooms, said the medical examination looked at a multitude of factors to determine if someone would be accepted into the regiment.

“Everybody who enlisted had to go through a physical and had to go through eye tests, physical tests, flat feet. If you didn't have arches, you couldn't join, and you had to have healthy teeth,” she said.

Doctors like Macpherson would have also checked for healthy lungs, Peters added.

When the Newfoundland Regiment’s first contingent went overseas in October 1914, Macpherson was not with them.

Gov. Walter Davidson had asked him to hang back in St. John’s in case a German U-boat appeared in the harbour and attacked.

But in March 1915, Macpherson was given permission for a brief two-month trip to Britain. That journey put him in Europe at a conspicuous moment when, it turned out, his insight and talent were needed.

But how exactly did Macpherson come about creating the hypo helmet? Fortunately, Macpherson's own words can tell us, as he gave a few interviews, including in a sit-down interview with the CBC in the early 1960s.

WATCH | Learn how a Newfoundland doctor became enmeshed in the race to protect soldiers in the First World War:

In late April 1915, Macpherson, 36, found himself in St. Omer, France for what was supposed to be a two-day visit. On his final day in the village, had breakfast with two professors from Imperial College London — William Watson and Herbert Brereton Baker. They were part of a cohort of scientists who were tapped by the British government to study the recent gas attack and devise effective means of protection.

“So getting up, they said, ‘Well, what are you doing today?’ I said, ‘I’m trying to keep out of sight because I'll be sent back to base,’" Macpherson recalled decades later. “'Well, would you like to come down to the lycée with us, to the chemical lab?'"

Macpherson agreed, offering himself as a guinea pig for testing prototypes and ended up volunteering to go to London to retrieve canisters of chlorine gas for tests. While there, he began to think about an improved gas mask design.

“I didn't think much of that German contraption and I thought I could do something better. And I bought a length of Viyella [a twill fabric made from wool and cotton] and some mica and put them in my pocket,” he said.

When Macpherson returned to the lab, the scientists headed to a trench to test the respirator, but it was a disaster. William Watson was so badly gassed that he was hospitalized. While Baker and Macpherson went to visit, Macpherson decided to hang back in the hallway.

“I took this Viyella and mica out of my pocket and got a sheet of paper and cut out the design of the helmet and got the nurse to sew it up for me and put it back in my pocket,” he said.

The next day, Macpherson presented the hood to the scientists to test, this time in the lab’s stink chamber. The hood was doused with a chlorine gas-neutralizing chemical solution and an engineer put it on and entered the chamber, which was filled with chlorine gas.

“After he was in there, about five minutes, he came towards the door pulling it off and they all thought that he was smothering in it. But I knew better and fortunately. I had a sprayer of the solution and threw it right over him and grabbed him and pulled him out,” said Macpherson.

The engineer was confused, and wanted to know why they hadn’t flooded the chamber with chlorine gas.

“We had a job to convince him that we had him in chlorine 10 times stronger than the Germans could ever get it over. So when we convinced him of that — he hadn't smelled anything — and everybody was excited.”

After another successful demonstration for the top military men in the area, Macpherson was then given a new assignment as the head of the War Office in London, where he was put in charge of mass producing the hypo helmet.

Hypo helmets started being sent out to British and Canadian soldiers in late May and eventually 2.5 million gas masks would be produced.

Cook said while the hypo helmet physically protected them, it also gave them a sense the army was looking out for their well-being.

“That this spectre of chemical agents could be protected against and that they would not die like rats in a trench," he said.

However, there were problems with Macpherson’s design.

Cook said it was horrible to wear and some soldiers nearly suffocated in it. They also had to worry whether it would hold up to higher concentrations of gas. In addition, gas masks cut down on a soldiers’ ability to see, breathe and move, all of which inhibits their fighting abilities, Cook said.

“There's always a tension between protecting yourself from gas and chemical agents and the effect on soldiers' fighting performance. The hypo helmet, while useful, will be superseded by other helmets until we get to the small box respirator in late 1916, which is really the best respirator and the type used for decades after that,” said Cook.

Frank Gogos, chair of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment Museum, said the fact that a Newfoundlander developed a gas mask was a big deal at home at the time.

“We're still talking about it, you know, and there were some controversies whether he actually is the first to develop a gas mask as there are other versions prior to that, but not used in the military setting as such,” Gogos said during an interview, surrounded by Royal Newfoundland Regiment artifacts.

“We have to give him credit for the work that he did do — finding a quick and easy solution, reasonably easy solution, I should say. Because there was a bit of work in maintaining the early gas masks.”

Gogos said prior to the hypo helmet, soldiers were being told to urinate on cotton gauze and press it to their faces.

“Of course, that’s not very comfortable,” he said.

Across the street from Bannerman Park in downtown St. John’s, along a row of stately homes, one property has a plaque that declares it was once the residence of Dr. Cluny Macpherson, “gas mask inventor.” A few minutes away by car, Memorial University has named a new student residence in his honour.

Macpherson’s role as the creator of a life-saving device hasn’t been forgotten in his hometown, but Gogos said the story of how he became involved in the project hasn’t been told.

“So it would be nice to see this actually get into the public domain so more people can understand what actually took place and how it unfolded,” said Gogos.

He pointed out that Macpherson did write extensively about his experience in the First World War, primarily in letters now archived at the medical school. But, Gogos said, they were only recently digitized and made available online.

“Some of the more interesting things that happen in life, happen by chance. And so that's really how he gets involved. And I think a lot of soldiers owe them, you know, their lives for coming up with a solution.”

During the war, Macpherson was twice mentioned in dispatches — an honour in which a superior officer told top miitary officials of an important contribution. After the war, Macpherson was made a Companion of the Order of St. Michael and St. George for his invention.

While Macpherson deserves credit for his creation, Cook said, it doesn’t qualify him as the inventor of the gas mask, but rather an inventor of a gas mask.

“He's part of the struggle that happens in times of war, of technological evolution. When a weapon is introduced, often there is a subsequent weapon or device to combat it. So surely we see that with the gas mask and the evolution in design,” said Cook.

“I think what we can say about Dr. Macpherson is that he clearly understood the devastating effects of the gas clouds and that the soldiers needed to be protected with a device, and his clearly intelligent, fertile mind came up with this hood, which was an important step in this evolution of protecting soldiers.”

Sitting in a living room chair in his St. John’s home, Ian Macpherson says he only became aware of his grandfather’s role as inventor of the hypo helmet as a teenager and that in general, inventing it wasn’t something Macpherson spoke about.

“I don't know that he made an effort not to talk about it, it really wasn't something — certainly within the family — which was made a major issue of,” he said.

Since the 1990s, Ian Macpherson said, he’s seen more people interested in the role Dr. Macpherson played in the First World War, and a plaque hangs outside the family home where Macpherson lived most his life.

As a child, Ian Macpherson said, he can remember accompanying his grandfather to visit homebound patients.

He said Macpherson put more emphasis on his role as a doctor in the community, rather than as a wartime inventor.

He pointed to Macpherson’s role of containing outbreaks of infectious diseases in Labrador and working with the Waterford Hospital in St. John's as points of pride.

“But, I think, he will be remembered for the gas mask, yeah.”

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