Smith-Clarke "Junior" respirator or Iron lung with crank handle for emergency operation.
Inscription
MANUFACTURED BY/ THE CAPE ENGINEERING COMPANY LIMITED/ WARWICK ENGLAND / [...]
Production date
1954
Production place
Warwick
Production organisations
Cape Engineering Company
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Joan Copley from Bradford spent 4-6 weeks in an iron lung like this in 1950. She volunteered to let us capture her story through an interview in September 2022 - the full transcript is attached to this record. Her memories include:
"All I can remember was that it was warm. They put this rubber collar round your neck so that it seals it, and it smells of rubber… it’s awful. They way they looked after you – the little holes at the side that they used… I can’t remember what they did toilet-wise, but I think they had to change me. I didn’t have any real food – they only fed me liquid paraffin, Lucozade and Wall’s ice cream.
"You could feel it as well – you could feel the pressure. You could feel it sort of pressing on your chest – you felt it go down, like that, and then back, all the time. I would say it was quite noisy – to me it was. I know I just – when I came out of there, I used to say ‘don’t put that collar on me’.
"I remember [that] when they started to take me out, they would put a watch hanging from the mirror or something above my head, and they would say ‘You’re coming out when this hand gets to 2 o’clock’. They would take you out for 30 seconds, [then longer every day after that]." Paul Alexander (born c.1946) was paralysed by polio aged 6 and spent his first few years living with the disease in a child's iron lung like this one. He is one of the last remaining individuals living inside an iron lung, now an adult version. The introduction of the Polio vaccine in 1955 was too late for Paul. Despite spending most of his life inside the machine, he is a successful lawyer and has taught himself to consciously breathe so he can leave the lung for short periods.
