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Poison gas identification kit, United Kingdom, 1935-1945

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Poison gas identification kits were issued to civil defense personnel during World War II. These individuals were usually ARP (Air Raid Precaution) wardens, and the kits trained them to identify a range of dangerous gases. This kit contains eight small, labeled, glass bottles and some sachets of chemicals in a leatherette case. The wider civilian population was issued gas masks as protection against potentially fatal gas attacks. They were also given pamphlets describing characteristic smells of different gases. Gas attacks were to be signaled by air raid wardens using large wooden rattles that produced a loud “clacking” sound. In the post-war period, many of these were used by football (soccer) fans around the country. Poison gases (eg, mustard gas) were used to great effect during World War I (1914-1918). They were outlawed in the Treaty of Versailles, which formally ended the conflict. Nevertheless, because the British expected the Germans to use chemical weapons against civilians during World War II, poison gas identification kits were developed, and the general public was supplied with gas masks. (Source: Courtesy of The Science Museum, London, UK, and the Wellcome Collection, London, UK. Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International [CC BY 4.0] license, creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0.)