Miscellaneous protective masks until 1900 – and how they are intertwined.

Plague masks are protective masks, but not every protective mask is a plague mask. This department shows masks and hoods for protection of the respiratory organs and eyes that have been used by artisans, miners and firemen, as well as masks for everyday use – and we learn how medics were late adopters instead of innovators.

Mask types

Contagion was not the first threat that made people cover their nose and mouth. Potters, millers, woodworkers, stone cutters and Native Americans have worn dustmasks from time immemorial. The modern era brought masks against bad air for sewage workers and gravediggers. Arsenic workers wore anti-arsenic masks, workers in lead-white factories covered their faces with all kinds of devices. Similarly, fire-gilders, mirror makers and hatters armed themselves against mercury vapors with a variety of apparatuses.
If they did. Often workers would only use some sort of covering when there was an acute danger of asphyxiation. Masks were found inconvenient or annoying and even the severest afflictions were thought of as ‘part of the job’. As Charles Dickens recorded, needle makers in the town of Redditch, who inhaled buckets full of stone grit on a daily basis, insisted on their right to die early. And they did.

But others showed more concern, among them factory owners, inventors, firemen and doctors. The protective masks* they created, can be divided roughly into two types. One where the air was filtered before inhaling, the second supplied fresh air to the wearer through a tube: a subdivision can be made between air from a place outside, or from a reservoir carried by the professional.

* We define a protective mask as any type of facepiece intended to protect the wearer from physical hazards—ranging in size from molecules, such as those found in gases or viruses, to objects as large as a baseball. For clarity, we will narrow our focus to masks that protect the respiratory tract, mouth, and eyes. When a device protects only the eyes, we refer to it as ‘goggles.’

Diving for masks
Even before disposables came into fashion, masks were disposed of as a matter of course. And where we don’t have to worry about the recognizability (and durability) of the present protectors, archeologists wouldn’t immediately think of an FFP2 mask if they were to unearth a sponge—because sponges were used for many purposes. They are lightweight, inexpensive, absorb moisture well, and are abundant. But sponges grow in the sea, and harvesting them requires an underwater mask.

Early underwater masks were closely related to the hoods and helmets used by miners and firefighters. The idea was that if a device could function where there was no breathable air at all, it might also work in environments where the air was hazardous—such as underground mines or smoke-filled rooms. A clear example of this overlap is Charles Deane, who in 1823 invented a smoke helmet with an attached garment for firefighters, which he later adapted into diving equipment. Similarly, after Colonel Gustave Paulin introduced his smoke-proof Blouse Paulin for firemen in 1837, he repurposed the same single-hose system for use in an underwater suit.

In line with this same reasoning, C.-Antoine Brizé-Fradin promoted his diving apparatus as suitable not only for underwater use, but also for work in mines and sewers, as well as for approaching plague victims and handling their burial.

Mining has long been one of the most dangerous occupations in the world. The numerous and severe risks associated with it were thoroughly examined by Georgius Agricola in his groundbreaking (sorry) 1556 treatise on mining and metallurgy, De Re Metallica.:
‘While the heated veins and rock are giving forth a foetid vapour and the shafts or tunnels are emitting fumes, the miners and other workmen do not go down in the mines lest the stench affect their health or actually kill them.’
And vapors were not the only danger, as Agricola points out:
‘If the dust has corrosive qualities, it eats away the lungs, and implants consumption in the body (…) Therefore, for their digging they should make for themselves not only boots of rawhide, but gloves long enough to reach to the elbow, and they should fasten loose veils over their faces; the dust will then neither be drawn through these into their windpipes and lungs, nor will it fly into their eyes. Not dissimilarly, among the Romans the makers of vermilion took precautions against breathing its fatal dust.’

One scientist who worked to address such dangers was Alexander von Humboldt. His self-contained breathing apparatus was a complete system, featuring a brass mouthpiece connected by a tube to a bag made of varnished silk, filled with atmospheric air. To prevent users from inhaling exhaled air, Humboldt incorporated two one-way valves into the design. The mouthpiece could be worn directly in the mouth or, when conditions required, attached to a protective full-face metal mask with integrated eye-glasses.
Another pioneer in portable air supply was the Hungarian general and engineer Kőszeghi-Mártony. His apparatus was originally developed for soldiers but was also suitable for firefighters and miners. Compressed air from a wrought-iron cylinder worn on the back flowed into a goatskin hood, where it mixed with exhaled air, allowing the wearer to breathe for up to thirty minutes.

John Roberts developed a filtering-type mask “for enabling persons to breathe in thick smoke.” It featured a hood that was strapped around the neck and connected to a tube, which extended downward to end just above the floor, where a small container holding a wet sponge was suspended.

While some of these devices may seem cumbersome or uncomfortable to wear, it’s important to remember that they were not designed with comfort in mind. Their primary purpose was functionality—and if they worked, they significantly increased the chances of survival for both the wearer and those they were trying to rescue. These apparatuses enabled people to enter hazardous environments and remain there for several minutes—something that had previously been impossible.

Occupational diseases

Miners, gilders, healers by inunction, chemists, potters, glass-makers, painters, sulphur-workers, blacksmiths, plasterers and lime-workers, apothecaries, cleaners of cesspits, fullers, oilmen, cheese-makers, lutestring-makers, tobacco-workers, corpseworkers, midwives, nurses, vintners and brewers, starch-makers, corn-sifters and measurers, stonecutters, laundresses, hemp-, flax-, and silk-workers, bathmen, salt-workers, workers who stand, sedentary workers, runners, horsemen, porters, athletes, workers on minute objects, voice-trainers and singers, farmers, fishermen, soldiers, the learned, printers, writers and notaries, confectioners, weavers, coppersmiths, carpenters, razor- and lancet-grinders, brick-makers, well-diggers, sailors and rowers, hunters, and soap-makers: they all suffered from diseases that could be linked to their work.
The classification is drawn by Bernardino Ramazzini (1633-1714), often referred to as the Father of occupational medicine. He was not only one of the first to write about the connection between diseases and occupations, but he also proposed preventive measures such as gloves and masks. The latter were especially useful in environments where workers were exposed to toxic vapors and dust. One particularly hazardous substance was lead white—a pigment widely used by painters and potters, and produced in large quantities in factories.

Mercury vapors and dust posed another serious hazard to workers across a range of industries. Fire-gilders, mirror-makers, and hat-makers were particularly vulnerable, often suffering severe symptoms such as loss of coordination, memory impairment, and mental disturbances—hence the expression “mad as a hatter.” In response to these dangers, Richard Bridgen patented a “leather mask or hood, which is fitted to the mouth and nose of the operator, and communicates with a pipe which turns backwards over his head, so that he breathes the air from behind him, which is not supposed to be contaminated by the noxious fumes of the mercury. (…) A flexible tube of oiled silk may be tied to the end of the tube, and conveyed to the nearest window, so as to give the workman the pure atmospheric air…”
Louis-André Gosse of Geneva improved upon a sponge mask originally recommended by his father in 1783 for use by hatters and gilders. This design involved a sponge soaked in fluid and tied over the mouth and nose. Gosse selected sponges that were conical or sliced into thin layers to better fit the face, securing them with ribbons. When saturated with the appropriate solution, the mask was said to offer protection not only against toxic dust and gases but also against contagious diseases.

Masks for everyday use

In Victorian times, the air in London was not so different from what miners and firemen faced in the most perilous environments. Well, that might be a slight exaggeration. Nevertheless, when Julius Jeffreys—a surgeon who had recently returned from India—arrived in England, he was greeted by a chorus of raucous coughing. A startling number of people, including his own sister-in-law, suffered from pulmonary diseases, which were among the leading causes of death in England at the time. After Jeffreys concluded that the British climate was responsible for these afflictions, he invented a protective device that people could wear when going out or even 24/7 at home, and named it the ‘Respirator’. It consisted of a leather mouth-mask with a grid of fine metal wires that was supposed to ‘abstract the heat from the breath during the act of expiration (…) and give off or transfer such heat to the incoming air which is drawn in during the act of inspiration, and thus to warm the air, and render it unirritating to the bronchial and other pulmonary surfaces, by which means the person using such apparatus will constantly breath warm air.’
Although it was not a filter in the first place, in London, where the smog could be thick as pea soup, the Respirator offered this as a beneficial side-effect, in Jeffreys’ words:
‘There is yet another point connected with the atmosphere of cities, in which the mechanical action of the Respirator is of value. It filters the air from particles of dust, soot, and even smoke...’

William Brown Rooff was one of many entrepreneurs who launched their own Respirators. He added a system of valves to his rip-off, so that ’the vitiated or expired air may be conducted away without mingling with the pure air to be inhaled through metal channels and made to impart heat to the pure air by its passage through them.’
Rooff’s business flourished further when he was authorized by John Stenhouse to manufacture masks based on Stenhouse’s principles. This Scottish chemist had conducted experiments demonstrating the disinfecting and deodorizing properties of charcoal, and in 1854 he introduced a mask containing a charcoal filtering layer.
While Jeffreys aimed simply to warm the air, Stenhouse sought to purify it—making his mask suitable for protection against toxic gases in mines, chemical industries, and sewers, as well as for preventing malaria and contagious diseases. Rooff’s improved respirator combined the advantages of charcoal filtration with one-way respiratory valves.

Meanwhile at the fire department

New inventions were regularly introduced based on one of three methods for providing breathable air: through a hose connected to a remote air source, from a reservoir carried by the wearer, or via filtration.
The first category includes the inventions of Charles Deane and Gustave Paulin (mentioned above). An example of the second type was developed by A. LaCour—featuring an inflatable rubber reservoir—and was used by American brigades.

Filtering masks, however, were the cheapest, quickest to don, and offered the wearer the most freedom of movement. They could be made from materials such as leather, gutta-percha, oilskin, or other airtight fabrics. Often, an outer layer of absorbent fabric was kept wet during use to enhance protection. Filters were either placed beneath the hood or attached directly to it.
One of the more sophisticated filters was invented in 1875 by the Irish physicist John Tyndall. In collaboration with Captain Eyre Massey Shaw of the London Fire Brigade, Tyndall developed a calfskin hood equipped with a brass tube positioned in front of the mouth. This tube was sealed at both ends with wire gauze and filled with layers of dry cotton wool, glycerin-moistened cotton wool, freshly burnt charcoal, and lime—a combination believed to protect against a wide range of hazards.

Every now and then, especially during epidemics, the question arose: if a mask can protect against dust, smoke, and gases, why wouldn’t it also protect against diseases? Of course, to answer that, one first had to understand the mechanisms of contagion—or even grasp what a disease truly was. For a long time, while miners, firemen, factory workers, and disinfectors used masks and hoods with integrated protectors, doctors visiting patients suffering from the plague still carried pomanders or posies near their noses. Even when Pasteur’s and others’ ideas about disease-causing germs began gaining acceptance in the 1870s, widespread use of medical masks did not immediately follow.
A few years before John Tyndall joined forces with Shaw, he had experimented with respirators with cotton-wool filters, ‘to intercept the floating matter of the air’. With this matter he not only meant dust and dirt, but also, since he was an early convert to Pasteur’s theory ‘the germs by which contagious disease is said to be propagated.’
Another mask with a cotton-wool filter that was thought up to protect against dust and diseases (diphteria, cholera and typhus are mentioned) was introduced by Oswald Wolff. His was a fairly simple mask that covered nose and mouth, the cotton-wool being applied between two layers of cotton gauze, held in position by a leather mount.
Where masks such as those by Tyndall and Wolff were designed to protect against dust AND diseases, Henri Henrot’s metal gaze mask with cotton-wool filter aimed specifically at the latter. He claimed that his device was designed ‘specifically in accordance with Mr. Pasteur’s theories and was fabricated to allow doctors and nurses to move to the center of a pestilence, among the sick, the dying and the dead without the least danger’. Until the turn of the century however, advocates of such protective measures met with heavy criticism and were often ridiculed, something we might recognize from the times when everybody still believed ‘miasma’ or God’s wrath to be the cause of epidemics.

Other masks were still solely meant for protection against dust. They were worn by factory workers, artisans and construction workers.

Hutson R. Hurds respirator (1879) was meant to ‘prevent the admission of poisonous or noxious gases, or particles of dust or other matter, into the throat and lungs’. His innovative rubber cup set a new standard for industrial masks, and it looked very much like the models that are still being used today. It had one valve for the outlet of impure, exhaled air, inhaled air was filtered in the sponge chamber.

An example of a mask that offers extra protection by adding medication such as glycerin to the wadding is Reynal O’Connor’s Respirator, which was tested in factories and hospitals and proved functional in protecting workers in factories against dust and of surgeons in operating rooms against the ‘poisonous air expired from the wounds’.

May this overview start to get a bit jumbly, then our point is proven. For there is no lineair development from one early mask to a present one. The history of protective masks is one of adopting and adapting. The history of medical masks, whether they were useful, useless or harmful, can’t be isolated from dust-cloths, smoke-caps and diving helmets. Within this history, the presence of plague masks is not pivotal, but marginal.

Mask gallery

The next room shows a selection of protective masks from our digital treasury. Medical masks, lung protectors, smoke hoods, respirators, hazmat suits etc. They have in common that they’ve all been used at a certain point in time against a certain danger. Sometimes they were even succesful. They are the real masks that remain so often unseen behind the ubiquitus yet imaginary Doctor Beak.