November 6, 2018 • 39 mins
War masks were made for soldiers in WWI who had horrible accidents that left their faces sometimes unrecognizable. Though it may seem rudimentary today, they went a long way in restoring their dignity. Learn all about them today.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles to be, Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry over there,
and this is stuff you should know. The It's so
(00:23):
I don't know what addition this is. It's a good one, though,
I predict. Yeah, I didn't. I didn't know much about this,
so I was when I found out. I was like, wow,
this is this is right up our alley. Yeah. This
is UM part of what's very frequently called UM a
hidden history of World War One. This is not something
(00:44):
that a lot of people have known about for very long,
although it seems to be picking up kind of academic interests.
But this idea of people who were disfigured in the
war UM facial suffered facial disfigurements UM. And I should
I say, I want to say now before at the
outset UM facial differences is the preferred term. And there's
(01:06):
like a whole there's a whole sea change going on
in perception UM and you know, just being out there
with facial differences, it's like the antithesis of what we're
about to talk about. So hats off to that, um.
But this was a time when there was a huge
sudden uptick in facial disfigurements is what they call them,
(01:30):
from being at war. Yeah, I mean World War One
was a brand new war. Uh. The Industrial Revolution brought
on new horrific ways to kill people, like the machine gun.
The machine gun uh in trench warfare, they point out
and in both of these articles that I read that, UM, people,
(01:53):
the soldiers at the time still didn't have a full
understanding of just what machine gun meant, and that you
don't have time to go pook your head above the
trench and look real quick, like those bullets are faster
than you, right, and you're not dodging one bullet. There's
a bunch of them comings. Maybe you get out of
the way of one, but there's three more headed your
(02:13):
way to. Yeah, so there wasn't I mean, it sounds
weird to think of that now, but there was not
that full understanding, and a lot of men in World
War One had a lot of bad things happened to
their face. Yeah. So not just from machine gun fire,
from sticking their head up above a trench, but also
from those mortar shells they've been around for a little while.
(02:33):
But they just prior to World War One, had really
been perfected into like really destructive instruments. Um, they blew
up and they created a totally different type of wound
than a bullet hole does because they're jagged pieces of metal, iron, steel,
and they could say, tear your lower jaw completely off, um,
(02:56):
take off half of your face like they just did
all sorts of really weird, horrible things. And that that
advancement in UM weaponry, I guess you'd call it, combined
with some advancements in UM battlefield emergency medicine, so that
saving lives. Yeah, So that there were worse wounds than
(03:18):
ever before, but the potential of surviving a wound like
that was also greater than ever before, which culminated in
a huge uptick in people who whose faces had been
disfigured by either bullets or shrapnel. UM, more than anyone
had ever seen before. And as far as numbers went. Yeah,
there are a couple of doctors in these articles that
(03:39):
have quotes, and one of them talked about like, you
don't we didn't see a broken bone. We saw bones
that were just shattered UM. At the time, I think
another quote talked about the weaponry was outpacing medicine um
and like you said, they would may be able to
save lives more, but it was outpacing like, well, now,
(04:02):
what do we do right? We don't have the means
to do facial reconstruction like they will in the future.
And in a very weird but also really real way,
World War One pushed reconstructive surgery to to advance by
leaps and bounds, just by all of a sudden having
a bunch of people to practice on and trying new
(04:22):
techniques on, but also having to do that all of
a sudden, you know, rather than slowly taking your time.
It was like, no, you need to figure this out now.
And a lot of surgical techniques advance. But a lot
of people point to World War One as like kind
of the dividing line between anything that came before as
far as plastic surgery goes, and modern plastic surgery really
(04:47):
started in World War One. But people have been doing
stuff as far as plastic surgery goes for more than
a thousand years before World World War One, or no,
about almost three thousand years, hundred years at least. That's
that's as far as I'm going I'm the worst at
figuring out Uh, time spans over centuries, as you know.
(05:10):
That's why I never do it. Um, you always leave it.
I usually just say the year and you're like, you
can figure it out how long ago that was? Um?
But about six is when we have evidence on paper
or papyri peppery of actual repairing things on the face
(05:32):
like that and suturing things on the face. Um. And Uh,
I believe there was a Hindu doctor named Sasarata who
developed the first rhino plasty. Yeah, because in India, especially
during this time, like I think this is about this
is five BC, so about years ago. Um, if you
(05:53):
were caught stealing, you would get your nose lopped off.
You could also get it lopped off in war and
happened frequently enough that it was an Indian doctor at
that time who who created the technique of like building
a new nose. Uh. Your nose could also just fall off.
If it was the seventeen hundreds and you had syphilis, yes,
(06:13):
can you imagine something like that? No, syphilis sounds awful.
I mean it would drive you in crazy to attack
your spine. But there were also these necrotic lesions called
gummos her gummas then an awful name for something that
eats your face away, a gumma. Oh I got a
new gumma today. Look at this thing, um. But it
(06:35):
would eat your nose clear off, It would eat your
eye out of its socket, It would eat your mouth away. Um.
And the prevalence of syphilis actually was something that kind
of pushed um plastic surgery along as well. Yeah, they
started experimenting with skin grafting U in the early eighteen hundreds. Um.
(06:55):
The turn plastic surgery didn't actually come about until the
eighteen hundreds, but they were you know, I can't imagine
the results were great, but they you know, they were
leading the way all over the world with some things
like skin graphs and plastic surgery. Very rudimentary and crude,
but it did pave the way. Yeah, they were figuring
(07:15):
out techniques, but again they didn't have they didn't have
something like World War One to push things for. They
had syphilis, which is something um. But the they had
like cleft palates was one that was a surgery that
that had been not perfected or anything like that, but
it was a surgery you'd frequently see if you were
a surgeon you might be asked to do. But um,
(07:39):
World War One again just brought on a drove of
totally different cases that no one had ever seen before.
So they had to get clever. And there were a
couple of people who kind of came to the fore
just as far as the plastic surgery went. There was
a guy from New Zealand named Gillies. What was his
first name, Chuck Mickey, You know I was going to
(08:02):
say that right now. His name was Sir Harold Gillies. Uh.
There were a few people there were, and we'll talk
about all of them kind of as we go here,
but Sir Harold Gillies. Uh, there was a gentleman name
Francis Derwent Would and then there was a woman named
Anna Coleman Lad and they all contributed greatly to this
(08:27):
new cause of this really really sad cause of these
men coming home with these really terrible things that have
happened to their face. And not only like I'm shunned
by society, but like my kids can't look at me,
My wife wants to leave me, and some of these
soldiers are like and she rightfully should want to leave me,
(08:50):
Like how can she even look at me, and it
was just such an awful thing to have to live with.
And they all chipped into um I mean I call
them war masks basically like these wound masks. And they
would make and if you see the pictures of these,
it's amazing. They these before and after photos. They would
make masks and we'll get into the nitty gritty, but
(09:12):
essentially masks to cover these what what they called then disfigurements,
whether it was a missing I a missing nose, the
lower half of your jaw, so it wouldn't be something
you wore over your entire face, it would just be
the part that they needed. Right. So initially it was um, okay,
we can advance plastic surgery. And that's where Harold Gillies
(09:33):
came in. He founded a hospital at sid Cup, which
is outside of London from what I understand, and it
was um that was where you would go if you
were British to get your to get plastic surgery. And
you could go stay there for like two years basically
getting a series of surgery and a series of surgery
just one after the other, um recovering new surgery, recovering
(09:56):
new surgery. And if they couldn't quite do it. Um,
they would send you over to Francis de Wentwood. We'll
talk about in a second, But there were there were
limits to plastic surgery. And when plastic surgery reached its limits,
and I guess the soldier's face was still uh disfigured
(10:20):
to the point where he didn't feel like he could
return to society, or society was like, damn, you stay
over there. Then Francis der went would an anneet Anna
Coleman lad came into play. Yeah, he wrote, Gillies wrote
of and he he pioneered a lot of work that
they still say is still important to modern plastic surgery. UM.
(10:41):
And he ended up writing a book and he he
was the guy that said, you know, before this, we
were doing things like cleft palates, and all of a
sudden we were getting two thousand patients a day coming
in with the most horrific injuries you could imagine. And
he ended up writing a book called A Plastic Surgery
of the Face. And if you look at this book,
(11:01):
and this article rightfully points out it's um, it really
demonstrates how far they had come and what they were
able to do, but also what they weren't able to
do at all at the same time. Yeah, like their
limitations even though he was doing for the time really
really advanced work. Yeah, I mean stuff we're like you
cut out a piece of skin and so it to
(11:24):
another part of your skin so that there's blood flow,
and then you cut off where it was originally connected
and then so that part down and basically you just
inchworm skin down the face to where you want it.
Like they were figuring out things like you have to
keep it a blood supply going or else it's gonna
just rot and fall off, like like really advanced stuff.
(11:46):
And like in a lot of cases, they they were
able to restore the soldier's face basically back to or
some close simularity similarity to what it was prior to
the injury. But again there were plenty of them where
it was just like, we can't do anything for you, man,
And that's when they would go that. It was when
(12:07):
those cases started to build up, Francis to Wentwood and
Anna Coleman lad stepped in. So we take a break. Yeah,
all right, we'll take a break right now. So one
(12:39):
thing I want to mention real quick is I don't
think we talked about was outside sid Cup or in
Sidcup where Gillies had his hospital. Uh, they had there
were so many men coming through there. They had in
the town they had certain benches painted were they painted blue? Uh?
And if there was a bench painted blue, it was
sort of a I guess you are, lack of a
(13:00):
better word, of warning to society, like here's where these
patients will be sitting, and you might want to not
sit there and look at them. Right. It was like
a horrible thing to do, but it was just sort
of emblematic of like what these men had to go through,
like children terrified in public of these people, Like they
(13:21):
wouldn't put mirrors in these hospitals. Well yeah, and it
was supposedly it was an enormous shock to see yourself.
I can't even imagine it, Like I can't imagine what
it what it would be like to see your face
like missing major features because and this was a recurring
(13:43):
theme that I saw in a lot of the um
like academic coverage of this is like, on the one hand,
what these people were doing, it was like really great
and noble and they were trying to help these people
regain their identity. But at the other it's kind of like, um,
what does it say about society that, like these people
couldn't come back because they were missing like an eye
(14:03):
or a mouth or or something like that. You know,
it's like stay in your house, like we don't. I
don't want my kid to see this second thing. Yeah,
there's a complicated thing going on here. It's complex. It's
not just cut and dry like that was right. This
guy was missing a face. Gotta have a face. They
made him a mask to cover up his deformity. Um,
it was. There's more to it than that, you know.
(14:25):
I mean we're at a place now where we're making
great strides and acceptance of of stuff like this. But
imagine it's still bad. Imagine what it was like back then.
Have you seen that movie Wonder? No, it's so good?
What is it? So sweet? It's like put a little
boy with facial differences and like him going from home
(14:45):
school to school year. Um, it's heartbreakingly sweet. Owen Wilson's
dad doing his own Wilson think Julie Roberts plays his
Mom's great. It's a great movie we're seeing. Um. But yeah,
there's a there's a whole movement go going on. I
follow this this account. I think there might be British
called changing faces, and they're all just like out, I'm proud,
(15:09):
like this is my face, Like I'm sorry, I'm I
can't do anything about it. I'm not gonna do anything
about it. Um, you know, let's let's move from there.
And uh, it's neat. It's neat to see just that.
That change a huge shift from hugo stay over here
out of society, Like society doesn't really feel like it
(15:30):
can ask that of people any longer, whereas before it
was like my wife can't even look at me. She's
repulsed by me, and she she deserves to be. That's
a huge change, you know, and I think that's wonderful. Well,
and it was also at the same time where you
would uh, where Kennedy would get lobotomized and stuffed in
a a insane asylum forever never to be talked about again,
(15:53):
or you know, people committed family members, like a dark
time for humanity. Yes, and we're just now coming out
of it a little bit. Well, we we've come a
long way since then, obviously, but it's just amazing how
many I don't know how much of the stuff still
goes on. Sad Should we talk about the masks. So
(16:13):
if if Harold Gillies couldn't do anything for you, um,
you would move on to Francis derwent Wood, who was
an artiste if there ever was one. Yes, So he
had a shop, uh called the Tin Knows a Shop. Yeah,
he didn't call it that, he didn't, I don't know.
(16:35):
He may have facetiously, but it was the Tommy's the
wounded British soldiers who called it that. Yeah, t I
n as in you don't have a nose, here's one
made of tin. So yeah, they called it the Tin
Knows a Shop. Yeah, but technical. But the official name
was the Masks for Facial Disfigurement Department. Yes, and it was.
(16:58):
It was founded by Francis to White would who um
he was, like I said, he was an artist and
he um and enlisted as a private in the medical
core at age forty four, Yeah, which is obviously, especially
back then, kind of old to do something like that. Uh.
He found pretty quickly that he didn't get a great duty.
(17:20):
He was, um he described as errand boy chores and
he had a knack though. He was an artist, so
he had a knack for coming up with some pretty
ingenious things. At first it was splints that were apparently
pretty creative and sophisticated. Then those chattering teeth that just
made everybody laugh because we're his Why was that everything?
(17:41):
I don't know, is that supposed to be funny? I guess,
look at those teeth chatter seventies, I guess. So I
was in the pet rock, which, by the way, I
want to do a show on that. Is there shows
worth of material or is that like a short stuff?
Do you think? I don't know, we'll find out. Yeah,
that's a nice tease. Um, maybe we'll come up with
the third podcast. It is called Somewhere in Between Stuff
(18:03):
exactly twenty three minutes exactly. Um, so, yeah, he was
doing Aaron Boy stuff. Had a lot of creativity. I
guess he caught the eye of the people there and
as an artist they said, you know what, you could
actually be very useful and constructing this kind of new idea.
Which are these uh these and again that's what they
(18:25):
call them back then, like disfigurement masks. Right, they had stuff.
They had prosthetics before facial prosthetics, but they were made
of rubber. They weren't very good they aesthetically they were
they were utilitarian. They were They were meant to maybe
help you chew again if you were missing your lower jaw,
um whatever. They were meant to solve the problem of
(18:49):
the missing function. This is the opposite of that. Yeah,
this is cosmetic. I guess you would call very much
so aesthetic cosmetic. Francis to Wentwood said like, I'm like,
I'm not trying to restore function. That's not the point
of what I'm doing. Um, what I'm doing is restoring identity.
Somebody put it that he was making portraits out of
(19:12):
metal they called them portrait masks, right, yeah, and then
putting them on to the person to to basically restore
their look back to what it was pre war. Yes,
and they were also very intent at at Wood's shop
of um treating these men with dignity and respect um too.
(19:33):
I think one of the nurses even talked about how
beautiful a face without a nose was. She was, Yeah,
it was Kathleen Scott, who was the widow of Robert Scott,
Robert Falcon Scott, who died in Antarctica on an expedition.
But she was a she was a sculptor who helped
out And it's like these are people still and they're
(19:56):
beautiful in their own way. Yeah. Her quote was men
without noses are very beauty full, like antique marbles, which
I have seen antique marbles all the time, so you
know exactly what she meant. They also said it would
shop to always look a man straight in the face. Remember,
he's watching your face to see how you're going to react.
So it started when they first would come in there
(20:18):
with being treated like a human being, which really is great.
So uh. He would establish his unit in March nineteen sixteen,
and by June of the following year he appeared in
the Lancet, the great legendary British medical journal that's still
(20:39):
around today. And then eventually at the end towards the
end of nineteen seventeen, there was a Boston based sculptor
in the United States, obviously in her previously to being married.
She was Anna Coleman Watts, and she was very talented
as a sculptor and eventually married a man named Maynard
lad who was a physician, and he moved to France
(21:02):
with him because he got a gig with the Red Cross. Yeah,
he was like the injured Children's core leader something like that.
Man um and yeah. So they moved to France and
she found out what Francister went Wood was doing back
in England and she's like, I'm going to try that here.
So with the Red Cross she set up something called
(21:24):
the Um Studio for Portrait Masks in Paris in the
Latin Quarter and she went to work doing the same thing. Again,
this is all pioneering stuff, Like these people were making
this up as they went along. There were a couple
of trained sculptors who turned during the war, turned their
talents to restoring facial identity to men whose faces have
(21:50):
been disfigured by shrapnelan bullets. Yeah, and by all accounts, Um,
the lad Studio was very much the same way of
like trying to set them up for success as humans
and treating them with dignity or place in the Latin
Quarter was very beautiful. It was described as a large,
bright studio Uh, plants and ivy on the walls and
(22:13):
flowers everywhere, and she wanted to make it like I
think it's a it's significant that these were artists and
not from the medical establishment, because they wanted to set
up these beautiful places for these men to come and
feel good about what's going on there? And I think
at the time, like hospitals were grim and any kind
of treatment you got was just I mean, we've talked
(22:35):
a lot about old medicine. It was not a sunny
experience in any way. Then those horrid like wicker wheelchairs
that are the creepiest things anyone's ever seen. Yeah, so
Lad tried to set up a really lovely, cheery, welcoming
space for her patients to come in, which is just great.
And there's news real footage from that era of Lad
(22:56):
working in her studio with one of her patient clients.
I don't know what you'd all him, but I think
he's missing a substantial part of his lower face, maybe
his lower jaw. And she attaches the prosthetic the mask
and like tucks it behind his ears, like it hangs
on behind his ears right, and um, it's it's the
(23:17):
neatest thing. Like he smiles, like he goes from not
sad but neutral, but then all of a sudden he
smiles and it's like it was a warm, genuine smile. Um.
And it's it's really moving because you can read about it.
It's like we did all you want and like, oh,
here's this quote from this person, and this person said
this was an amazing thing too. And here's a letter
(23:38):
of somebody. We're seeing that guy smile when when um,
when Anna Coleman lab puts the prosthetic on his face,
says it all like all comes into to focus what
everybody in the articles are talking about. Yeah, and there
are a lot of great before and after photos of
the end. We'll get in, you know, in a few
(23:59):
minutes on how what they made these things. But there
are a lot of great before and after photos. And
when you look at these because initially in today's in
two thousand eighteen, is you think about, well, these people
had a horrific thing happened to their face, and so
now they wear a mask like attached by either eyeglasses
or hooked over their ears to to mesh with the
(24:21):
rest of their face. And your first thought is like,
how unbelievable did that look? But when you look at
these photos, they look really good. And you can only
imagine that just that sense of uh normalcy for lack
of a better word, meant so much to these men,
even covering it up, not fixing it cover to to
(24:46):
blend in, Yeah, I think is what they were looking
for pretty extraordinary. You want to take another break, Yeah,
let's do it. We're gonna take a break, everybody. We
just decided, I don't know if you heard or not,
and here we go. All right, So let's talk about
(25:21):
how these masks were made. Again. They were revolutionary. These
people were making it up as they were going along. Um,
but they hit upon it pretty well right out of
the gate. And the big one of the big differences
was that these weren't rubber prosthetics that were meant to
restore function. They were metal masks that were meant to
restore identity. Yeah, and a little dignity maybe. Um. So
(25:45):
the first thing would happen is LAD or you know
whoever is working on this, because they all LAD and
would both had people they worked with on their teams.
So the first thing they would do is get a
photo obviously more than one photo of pre war and
what they look like. Because the whole thing is, I
don't want to make you look like you looked before,
(26:05):
not just well let me just fashion you a nose.
It's like, I want your nose to look like your
old nose. And so they would get these photos that
the people, the patients and soldiers would have to heal
completely in order to undergo this process at all. Like
it's not the kind of thing they could do, you know,
as they're healing. Uh. And so they made a plaster cast,
(26:27):
and then after that they would make what's called a squeeze,
which is like a clay version of that cast. And
then eventually that would end up in a galvanized copper
mask about the thickness of like a playing card, right,
And the plaster cast that they would make of your
face was supposedly just an awful, awful process, Like they
(26:48):
would give you a little straw to put in your
mouth and like that's how you breathe for as long
as they were they took to make the plaster cast. Yeah,
it's pretty bad. It would be bad anyway, but after
you've suffered that trauma right to your face, imagine anything
near or around your face would be really uh. Yeah,
And let's talk about that what led up to that.
(27:09):
First of all, you were shot in the face or
hit was trapnel in the face. Sometimes you would be
laying there if you went down in no man's land
for hours days before somebody came and got you. You
were taken to a Field Hospital and then flown over
to England or driven over to England or by boat.
Be quiet, everybody, um or taken to Paris um and
(27:33):
you underwent possibly two years of surgical reconstruction, and finally,
once all your surgeries were healed, you would find yourself
in Mrs Ladd's studio or Francister went Wood studio getting
plaster coated over your disfigured face, holding a little straw
in your mouth. So, yeah, it was. It was probably
not the greatest thing that they've ever experienced. It was
(27:55):
probably tied for first with a couple of those other
ones along the way for being terrible. Yeah, and like
you said, this is after um, noble but not great
result attempts at you know, doing it the plastic surgery way.
So these people are desperate there. I mean, if you've
gone in there to get a portrait mask, you're that's
(28:15):
your last stop to try and resume, you know, your
previous life. Basically suppose as you can get to it.
All right, So if you had facial hair, if you
had a mustache, which a lot of men did back then, um,
they would use real hair and add that into the mask. Her.
I think it took her about a month to make
(28:36):
one of these. Yeah. I don't know if you said
or not, but she was credited as by far being
the better artist, Like the result was really talented, much
better coming out of the Lad studio than the Woods studio. Yeah,
but he was faster and more prolific. Yeah, he had
a lot more. I think he served a lot more patients. Uh.
In the end, I believe her shop was only up
in about a year and with four assistants, created a
(28:58):
hundred and eighty five man asks, which UM, again in
the grand scheme of things, is not very many people,
but changed all of those lives, you know. So they
so they're from the plaster cast. You said they made
a squeeze. The cast is a negative, the squeeze is
a positive. And then they would use the squeezes the
model for making the cast that or the mask that
(29:21):
they needed UM and then they would they would cast
it into UM copper one thirty second of an inch
thick and then it like you said, it would attach
by UM spectacles or around the ear. And Mrs Lad
you said she used hair, Yeah, but would use like
(29:45):
he painted his on. Yeah. So when you go to
look up these photos. They'll have the before and after
and on the left. You know, it's sometimes you can't
even tell what this man might have previously looked like,
and so you look at the right and then it
looks you know, it's a mask, but you're like, you
can tell that that's what this guy looked like, and
it's like, it really is true. The loss of identity
(30:07):
that must happen have happened at least back then, um,
and I'm sure now too. Where if you undergo a
facial trauma, it's amazing what how drastically it can change
how you look your face. It just changes from what
it was before. When you see some of the before
before pictures, so before the injury, then after the injury,
(30:29):
and then after the mask that before the injury, and
then after the injury picture, sometimes you're like, how, like
I I don't see that person in there at all.
So yeah, I can imagine, like we said, they kept
mirrors out of the ward because seeing yourself like that,
especially if you were in the process of undergoing surgery,
I'm sure they were like, you don't need to see
(30:49):
this at all, buddy, just just let us keep working
on you. You know. Yeah, one of the tougher parts
of this process too, and um, and also most important
was matching the skin tone. So obviously, if you have
a mask that doesn't look like your other you know,
skin tone on the rest of your face, then it's
going to stand out more. And your whole point was
(31:10):
to blend in. So she would save it that for
last and actually fit the mask on the man and
and paint it while it was on their face so
she could match it as exactly as possible. I think
used a couple of different oil paints at first didn't
work out, yeah, and then landed on enamel, which is
and these things still you know, we should say it's
(31:32):
not like it would last twenty years like they were.
You know, to mask you wear every day, so it
would get beat up over the years, and you know,
wear and tear happened for sure. Um. One of the
other things that the paint too is apparently the hue
was really difficult because on like an overcast day, it
might look really lifelike, but then that same hue in
(31:55):
sunlight looked like dead, so they had to like kind
of split the difference between it too. So from what
I saw, the paint getting the complexion right, was the
hardest part for sure. But yeah, those masks supposedly had
a life expectancy of just about a couple of years.
But the thing is is after the war, um Wood
(32:16):
Studio closed down and so did lads um, and so
these men that was it they got their mask. It
was almost like this weird little pop up that happened,
that went away and never came back. So these men,
you know, clung to their masks for as long as
they could, and so much so that um they there
(32:38):
are there. Basically aren't any of those masks. No one
is like, oh, this is a World War one UM
portrait mask. Those are all buried with their owners because
those masks became part of their public identity as well. Yeah,
I bet you there's gotta be one somewhere, right, surely,
but I think most of them are probably buried with
their owners. And these, like I said it, with lad
(32:58):
only masks, you were very lucky if you were able
to get one of these, because there were, um I
believe they estimated twenty tho fate what they called facial
casualties in World War One alone. So out of that number,
to only get eighty five from like the best artists
working is not very many people. And they think Francister
(33:21):
went would created more, um just because he was open
longer and he was more prolific, or he's faster. But um,
they don't have a number. But even still, even if
he made three times that it's nothing compared to how
many people have become facially disfigured from injur injuries. Right. Yeah,
and lad um, she was lauded, she did a lot
of interviews. Um. When she got back to the United States.
(33:44):
Two she was made a chevalier. Nice touch, is that right, Yeah,
Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor. And she just
went back to her you know, her art when she
got back to the United States. Yeah. This this, I
want to say, this all awesome Smithsonian article by Caroline
Alexander who talks about this. Yeah, it's good. It mentions
(34:04):
that her buss like she was a sculptor and before
her work in the war and after her work in
the war, it's actually really kind of generic portraits of people. Yeah,
Like it lacks like the pizzas and like the human
like touch that her actual wartime mask efforts had. Yeah,
that's really interesting. Yeah, it's cool. I like her busts.
(34:25):
I liked I like her style. It looks weirdly like
early twentieth century modern Yeah. Uh. And she died in
ninety nine. Um, she died young. She died at sixty
in Santa Barbara. Um. Francis Derwentwood died also young, fifty
five years old, in nineteen twenty six in London. And uh,
he was remembered obviously post war as well, which is
(34:47):
great public monuments war memorials, and the Machine Gun Corps
in Hyde Park Corner in London is uh apparently where
one of the most poignant war memorials him loves sits. Yeah. Yeah,
And like you said, I mean twenty thousand of these
(35:09):
injuries and only say several hundred of them received masks.
And again, this is a time when society didn't really
want you back if you were officially disfigured in the war.
And there was a there was an idea to basically
buy some land for disfigured officers, um, to have them
(35:29):
just basically go live off the land over here and
have a nice pension and just stay over here. And
those plans didn't come to fruition um, and so they
were just kind of expected to just go fade away,
just go away, we don't want to see you. In Australia,
apparently they had a lot of um facially disfigured soldiers
returning home. Um, a lot of them would just go
(35:51):
out and live into the live in the bush. You know,
it'd be like living in the woods in in England
or the U. S is okay, I'm gonna go live
in the woods now because you guys don't want to
see my face anymore. And a lot of them committed
suicide too, said said to say, or died of suspicious
accidental deaths. Yeah. Man, like the stories where you hear
about the their kids being frightened of their father and
(36:13):
stuff after the war just heartbreaking. Yeah, And that was
supposedly a pretty recurrent anecdote in newspaper articles about this
about these studios, like they're trying to save people because
their own kids can't stand to be around them, you know. Yeah,
but kids even scared of the mask because uh, you know,
it points out as while they did so much to
(36:34):
restore it, they were still expressionless faces, which um, you
know could could creep out of kid for sure. But
we've come a long way and Wonder is proof positive
of that. Go see that movie. It's good. I will. Uh.
If you want to know more about facial differences, go
check out UM I don't know, just search facial differences,
(36:54):
check out changing faces dot org and go see Wonder.
Why not it's a good movie. I'll check it out.
That was the second one was directed to everything. Okay, UM,
since I said that it's time for a listener mail,
I'm gonna call this relative of President Pierce here parentheses
(37:15):
lighthearted O God. I'm hey, guys, big fan had a
baby in August, so I've been behind on the episodes.
Finally got to these new short stuff where you mentioned
that President Franklin Pierce, and I couldn't help but laugh
out loud when I heard your disdain for the band.
My baby son's middle name is actually Pierce, just like
his father and every other male that was born in
his family, a tradition that has stemmed since you guessed
(37:38):
at Franklin Pierce became president. My husband is a great
great nephew of Pierce the Best. His grandmother actually still
owns the presidential china. That's kind of cool. Every time
someone finds out my husband a descendant of a president.
He gets so excited, but my husband and all of
his family just roll their eyes and exclaim, oh, he
(38:00):
was the worst president. Everyone just remembers Lincoln anyway. It
makes me laugh every time that his family doesn't think
much of this man any more than the rest of
the world. So just take comfort knowing that your hate
on Piers and his faults uh during his time in
office aren't past his own family. Man. That's something I'll
do my best to make sure my son makes up
(38:20):
for it. So, Sad I missed your shows in Denver,
please come back. And that is sincerely from Sarah, mother
of a Piers. Thanks Sarah, mother of a Piers. That
was a great email. Yeah, and we'll come back to
Denver for sure because we sold out two shows there.
Denver loves us, loves us, can't get enough of us
a mile high city. Yes, we'll be back. UM. If
(38:41):
you want to get in touch with us, why don't
you go ahead and mosey on over to um stuff
you should know dot com check out our social links there.
I also have a website called Josh clark Way dot
com if you want to check that out too, that's right,
and you can always send me Jerry and Chuck an
email all at once at Stuff podcast at how stuff
(39:02):
works dot com. For more on this and thousands of
other topics, is it how stuff works dot com
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
and there's Charles to be, Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry over there,
and this is stuff you should know. The It's so
(00:23):
I don't know what addition this is. It's a good one, though,
I predict. Yeah, I didn't. I didn't know much about this,
so I was when I found out. I was like, wow,
this is this is right up our alley. Yeah. This
is UM part of what's very frequently called UM a
hidden history of World War One. This is not something
(00:44):
that a lot of people have known about for very long,
although it seems to be picking up kind of academic interests.
But this idea of people who were disfigured in the
war UM facial suffered facial disfigurements UM. And I should
I say, I want to say now before at the
outset UM facial differences is the preferred term. And there's
(01:06):
like a whole there's a whole sea change going on
in perception UM and you know, just being out there
with facial differences, it's like the antithesis of what we're
about to talk about. So hats off to that, um.
But this was a time when there was a huge
sudden uptick in facial disfigurements is what they call them,
(01:30):
from being at war. Yeah, I mean World War One
was a brand new war. Uh. The Industrial Revolution brought
on new horrific ways to kill people, like the machine gun.
The machine gun uh in trench warfare, they point out
and in both of these articles that I read that, UM, people,
(01:53):
the soldiers at the time still didn't have a full
understanding of just what machine gun meant, and that you
don't have time to go pook your head above the
trench and look real quick, like those bullets are faster
than you, right, and you're not dodging one bullet. There's
a bunch of them comings. Maybe you get out of
the way of one, but there's three more headed your
(02:13):
way to. Yeah, so there wasn't I mean, it sounds
weird to think of that now, but there was not
that full understanding, and a lot of men in World
War One had a lot of bad things happened to
their face. Yeah. So not just from machine gun fire,
from sticking their head up above a trench, but also
from those mortar shells they've been around for a little while.
(02:33):
But they just prior to World War One, had really
been perfected into like really destructive instruments. Um, they blew
up and they created a totally different type of wound
than a bullet hole does because they're jagged pieces of metal, iron, steel,
and they could say, tear your lower jaw completely off, um,
(02:56):
take off half of your face like they just did
all sorts of really weird, horrible things. And that that
advancement in UM weaponry, I guess you'd call it, combined
with some advancements in UM battlefield emergency medicine, so that
saving lives. Yeah, So that there were worse wounds than
(03:18):
ever before, but the potential of surviving a wound like
that was also greater than ever before, which culminated in
a huge uptick in people who whose faces had been
disfigured by either bullets or shrapnel. UM, more than anyone
had ever seen before. And as far as numbers went. Yeah,
there are a couple of doctors in these articles that
(03:39):
have quotes, and one of them talked about like, you
don't we didn't see a broken bone. We saw bones
that were just shattered UM. At the time, I think
another quote talked about the weaponry was outpacing medicine um
and like you said, they would may be able to
save lives more, but it was outpacing like, well, now,
(04:02):
what do we do right? We don't have the means
to do facial reconstruction like they will in the future.
And in a very weird but also really real way,
World War One pushed reconstructive surgery to to advance by
leaps and bounds, just by all of a sudden having
a bunch of people to practice on and trying new
(04:22):
techniques on, but also having to do that all of
a sudden, you know, rather than slowly taking your time.
It was like, no, you need to figure this out now.
And a lot of surgical techniques advance. But a lot
of people point to World War One as like kind
of the dividing line between anything that came before as
far as plastic surgery goes, and modern plastic surgery really
(04:47):
started in World War One. But people have been doing
stuff as far as plastic surgery goes for more than
a thousand years before World World War One, or no,
about almost three thousand years, hundred years at least. That's
that's as far as I'm going I'm the worst at
figuring out Uh, time spans over centuries, as you know.
(05:10):
That's why I never do it. Um, you always leave it.
I usually just say the year and you're like, you
can figure it out how long ago that was? Um?
But about six is when we have evidence on paper
or papyri peppery of actual repairing things on the face
(05:32):
like that and suturing things on the face. Um. And Uh,
I believe there was a Hindu doctor named Sasarata who
developed the first rhino plasty. Yeah, because in India, especially
during this time, like I think this is about this
is five BC, so about years ago. Um, if you
(05:53):
were caught stealing, you would get your nose lopped off.
You could also get it lopped off in war and
happened frequently enough that it was an Indian doctor at
that time who who created the technique of like building
a new nose. Uh. Your nose could also just fall off.
If it was the seventeen hundreds and you had syphilis, yes,
(06:13):
can you imagine something like that? No, syphilis sounds awful.
I mean it would drive you in crazy to attack
your spine. But there were also these necrotic lesions called
gummos her gummas then an awful name for something that
eats your face away, a gumma. Oh I got a
new gumma today. Look at this thing, um. But it
(06:35):
would eat your nose clear off, It would eat your
eye out of its socket, It would eat your mouth away. Um.
And the prevalence of syphilis actually was something that kind
of pushed um plastic surgery along as well. Yeah, they
started experimenting with skin grafting U in the early eighteen hundreds. Um.
(06:55):
The turn plastic surgery didn't actually come about until the
eighteen hundreds, but they were you know, I can't imagine
the results were great, but they you know, they were
leading the way all over the world with some things
like skin graphs and plastic surgery. Very rudimentary and crude,
but it did pave the way. Yeah, they were figuring
(07:15):
out techniques, but again they didn't have they didn't have
something like World War One to push things for. They
had syphilis, which is something um. But the they had
like cleft palates was one that was a surgery that
that had been not perfected or anything like that, but
it was a surgery you'd frequently see if you were
a surgeon you might be asked to do. But um,
(07:39):
World War One again just brought on a drove of
totally different cases that no one had ever seen before.
So they had to get clever. And there were a
couple of people who kind of came to the fore
just as far as the plastic surgery went. There was
a guy from New Zealand named Gillies. What was his
first name, Chuck Mickey, You know I was going to
(08:02):
say that right now. His name was Sir Harold Gillies. Uh.
There were a few people there were, and we'll talk
about all of them kind of as we go here,
but Sir Harold Gillies. Uh, there was a gentleman name
Francis Derwent Would and then there was a woman named
Anna Coleman Lad and they all contributed greatly to this
(08:27):
new cause of this really really sad cause of these
men coming home with these really terrible things that have
happened to their face. And not only like I'm shunned
by society, but like my kids can't look at me,
My wife wants to leave me, and some of these
soldiers are like and she rightfully should want to leave me,
(08:50):
Like how can she even look at me, and it
was just such an awful thing to have to live with.
And they all chipped into um I mean I call
them war masks basically like these wound masks. And they
would make and if you see the pictures of these,
it's amazing. They these before and after photos. They would
make masks and we'll get into the nitty gritty, but
(09:12):
essentially masks to cover these what what they called then disfigurements,
whether it was a missing I a missing nose, the
lower half of your jaw, so it wouldn't be something
you wore over your entire face, it would just be
the part that they needed. Right. So initially it was um, okay,
we can advance plastic surgery. And that's where Harold Gillies
(09:33):
came in. He founded a hospital at sid Cup, which
is outside of London from what I understand, and it
was um that was where you would go if you
were British to get your to get plastic surgery. And
you could go stay there for like two years basically
getting a series of surgery and a series of surgery
just one after the other, um recovering new surgery, recovering
(09:56):
new surgery. And if they couldn't quite do it. Um,
they would send you over to Francis de Wentwood. We'll
talk about in a second, But there were there were
limits to plastic surgery. And when plastic surgery reached its limits,
and I guess the soldier's face was still uh disfigured
(10:20):
to the point where he didn't feel like he could
return to society, or society was like, damn, you stay
over there. Then Francis der went would an anneet Anna
Coleman lad came into play. Yeah, he wrote, Gillies wrote
of and he he pioneered a lot of work that
they still say is still important to modern plastic surgery. UM.
(10:41):
And he ended up writing a book and he he
was the guy that said, you know, before this, we
were doing things like cleft palates, and all of a
sudden we were getting two thousand patients a day coming
in with the most horrific injuries you could imagine. And
he ended up writing a book called A Plastic Surgery
of the Face. And if you look at this book,
(11:01):
and this article rightfully points out it's um, it really
demonstrates how far they had come and what they were
able to do, but also what they weren't able to
do at all at the same time. Yeah, like their
limitations even though he was doing for the time really
really advanced work. Yeah, I mean stuff we're like you
cut out a piece of skin and so it to
(11:24):
another part of your skin so that there's blood flow,
and then you cut off where it was originally connected
and then so that part down and basically you just
inchworm skin down the face to where you want it.
Like they were figuring out things like you have to
keep it a blood supply going or else it's gonna
just rot and fall off, like like really advanced stuff.
(11:46):
And like in a lot of cases, they they were
able to restore the soldier's face basically back to or
some close simularity similarity to what it was prior to
the injury. But again there were plenty of them where
it was just like, we can't do anything for you, man,
And that's when they would go that. It was when
(12:07):
those cases started to build up, Francis to Wentwood and
Anna Coleman lad stepped in. So we take a break. Yeah,
all right, we'll take a break right now. So one
(12:39):
thing I want to mention real quick is I don't
think we talked about was outside sid Cup or in
Sidcup where Gillies had his hospital. Uh, they had there
were so many men coming through there. They had in
the town they had certain benches painted were they painted blue? Uh?
And if there was a bench painted blue, it was
sort of a I guess you are, lack of a
(13:00):
better word, of warning to society, like here's where these
patients will be sitting, and you might want to not
sit there and look at them. Right. It was like
a horrible thing to do, but it was just sort
of emblematic of like what these men had to go through,
like children terrified in public of these people, Like they
(13:21):
wouldn't put mirrors in these hospitals. Well yeah, and it
was supposedly it was an enormous shock to see yourself.
I can't even imagine it, Like I can't imagine what
it what it would be like to see your face
like missing major features because and this was a recurring
(13:43):
theme that I saw in a lot of the um
like academic coverage of this is like, on the one hand,
what these people were doing, it was like really great
and noble and they were trying to help these people
regain their identity. But at the other it's kind of like, um,
what does it say about society that, like these people
couldn't come back because they were missing like an eye
(14:03):
or a mouth or or something like that. You know,
it's like stay in your house, like we don't. I
don't want my kid to see this second thing. Yeah,
there's a complicated thing going on here. It's complex. It's
not just cut and dry like that was right. This
guy was missing a face. Gotta have a face. They
made him a mask to cover up his deformity. Um,
it was. There's more to it than that, you know.
(14:25):
I mean we're at a place now where we're making
great strides and acceptance of of stuff like this. But
imagine it's still bad. Imagine what it was like back then.
Have you seen that movie Wonder? No, it's so good?
What is it? So sweet? It's like put a little
boy with facial differences and like him going from home
(14:45):
school to school year. Um, it's heartbreakingly sweet. Owen Wilson's
dad doing his own Wilson think Julie Roberts plays his
Mom's great. It's a great movie we're seeing. Um. But yeah,
there's a there's a whole movement go going on. I
follow this this account. I think there might be British
called changing faces, and they're all just like out, I'm proud,
(15:09):
like this is my face, Like I'm sorry, I'm I
can't do anything about it. I'm not gonna do anything
about it. Um, you know, let's let's move from there.
And uh, it's neat. It's neat to see just that.
That change a huge shift from hugo stay over here
out of society, Like society doesn't really feel like it
(15:30):
can ask that of people any longer, whereas before it
was like my wife can't even look at me. She's
repulsed by me, and she she deserves to be. That's
a huge change, you know, and I think that's wonderful. Well,
and it was also at the same time where you
would uh, where Kennedy would get lobotomized and stuffed in
a a insane asylum forever never to be talked about again,
(15:53):
or you know, people committed family members, like a dark
time for humanity. Yes, and we're just now coming out
of it a little bit. Well, we we've come a
long way since then, obviously, but it's just amazing how
many I don't know how much of the stuff still
goes on. Sad Should we talk about the masks. So
(16:13):
if if Harold Gillies couldn't do anything for you, um,
you would move on to Francis derwent Wood, who was
an artiste if there ever was one. Yes, So he
had a shop, uh called the Tin Knows a Shop. Yeah,
he didn't call it that, he didn't, I don't know.
(16:35):
He may have facetiously, but it was the Tommy's the
wounded British soldiers who called it that. Yeah, t I
n as in you don't have a nose, here's one
made of tin. So yeah, they called it the Tin
Knows a Shop. Yeah, but technical. But the official name
was the Masks for Facial Disfigurement Department. Yes, and it was.
(16:58):
It was founded by Francis to White would who um
he was, like I said, he was an artist and
he um and enlisted as a private in the medical
core at age forty four, Yeah, which is obviously, especially
back then, kind of old to do something like that. Uh.
He found pretty quickly that he didn't get a great duty.
(17:20):
He was, um he described as errand boy chores and
he had a knack though. He was an artist, so
he had a knack for coming up with some pretty
ingenious things. At first it was splints that were apparently
pretty creative and sophisticated. Then those chattering teeth that just
made everybody laugh because we're his Why was that everything?
(17:41):
I don't know, is that supposed to be funny? I guess,
look at those teeth chatter seventies, I guess. So I
was in the pet rock, which, by the way, I
want to do a show on that. Is there shows
worth of material or is that like a short stuff?
Do you think? I don't know, we'll find out. Yeah,
that's a nice tease. Um, maybe we'll come up with
the third podcast. It is called Somewhere in Between Stuff
(18:03):
exactly twenty three minutes exactly. Um, so, yeah, he was
doing Aaron Boy stuff. Had a lot of creativity. I
guess he caught the eye of the people there and
as an artist they said, you know what, you could
actually be very useful and constructing this kind of new idea.
Which are these uh these and again that's what they
(18:25):
call them back then, like disfigurement masks. Right, they had stuff.
They had prosthetics before facial prosthetics, but they were made
of rubber. They weren't very good they aesthetically they were
they were utilitarian. They were They were meant to maybe
help you chew again if you were missing your lower jaw,
um whatever. They were meant to solve the problem of
(18:49):
the missing function. This is the opposite of that. Yeah,
this is cosmetic. I guess you would call very much
so aesthetic cosmetic. Francis to Wentwood said like, I'm like,
I'm not trying to restore function. That's not the point
of what I'm doing. Um, what I'm doing is restoring identity.
Somebody put it that he was making portraits out of
(19:12):
metal they called them portrait masks, right, yeah, and then
putting them on to the person to to basically restore
their look back to what it was pre war. Yes,
and they were also very intent at at Wood's shop
of um treating these men with dignity and respect um too.
(19:33):
I think one of the nurses even talked about how
beautiful a face without a nose was. She was, Yeah,
it was Kathleen Scott, who was the widow of Robert Scott,
Robert Falcon Scott, who died in Antarctica on an expedition.
But she was a she was a sculptor who helped
out And it's like these are people still and they're
(19:56):
beautiful in their own way. Yeah. Her quote was men
without noses are very beauty full, like antique marbles, which
I have seen antique marbles all the time, so you
know exactly what she meant. They also said it would
shop to always look a man straight in the face. Remember,
he's watching your face to see how you're going to react.
So it started when they first would come in there
(20:18):
with being treated like a human being, which really is great.
So uh. He would establish his unit in March nineteen sixteen,
and by June of the following year he appeared in
the Lancet, the great legendary British medical journal that's still
(20:39):
around today. And then eventually at the end towards the
end of nineteen seventeen, there was a Boston based sculptor
in the United States, obviously in her previously to being married.
She was Anna Coleman Watts, and she was very talented
as a sculptor and eventually married a man named Maynard
lad who was a physician, and he moved to France
(21:02):
with him because he got a gig with the Red Cross. Yeah,
he was like the injured Children's core leader something like that.
Man um and yeah. So they moved to France and
she found out what Francister went Wood was doing back
in England and she's like, I'm going to try that here.
So with the Red Cross she set up something called
(21:24):
the Um Studio for Portrait Masks in Paris in the
Latin Quarter and she went to work doing the same thing. Again,
this is all pioneering stuff, Like these people were making
this up as they went along. There were a couple
of trained sculptors who turned during the war, turned their
talents to restoring facial identity to men whose faces have
(21:50):
been disfigured by shrapnelan bullets. Yeah, and by all accounts, Um,
the lad Studio was very much the same way of
like trying to set them up for success as humans
and treating them with dignity or place in the Latin
Quarter was very beautiful. It was described as a large,
bright studio Uh, plants and ivy on the walls and
(22:13):
flowers everywhere, and she wanted to make it like I
think it's a it's significant that these were artists and
not from the medical establishment, because they wanted to set
up these beautiful places for these men to come and
feel good about what's going on there? And I think
at the time, like hospitals were grim and any kind
of treatment you got was just I mean, we've talked
(22:35):
a lot about old medicine. It was not a sunny
experience in any way. Then those horrid like wicker wheelchairs
that are the creepiest things anyone's ever seen. Yeah, so
Lad tried to set up a really lovely, cheery, welcoming
space for her patients to come in, which is just great.
And there's news real footage from that era of Lad
(22:56):
working in her studio with one of her patient clients.
I don't know what you'd all him, but I think
he's missing a substantial part of his lower face, maybe
his lower jaw. And she attaches the prosthetic the mask
and like tucks it behind his ears, like it hangs
on behind his ears right, and um, it's it's the
(23:17):
neatest thing. Like he smiles, like he goes from not
sad but neutral, but then all of a sudden he
smiles and it's like it was a warm, genuine smile. Um.
And it's it's really moving because you can read about it.
It's like we did all you want and like, oh,
here's this quote from this person, and this person said
this was an amazing thing too. And here's a letter
(23:38):
of somebody. We're seeing that guy smile when when um,
when Anna Coleman lab puts the prosthetic on his face,
says it all like all comes into to focus what
everybody in the articles are talking about. Yeah, and there
are a lot of great before and after photos of
the end. We'll get in, you know, in a few
(23:59):
minutes on how what they made these things. But there
are a lot of great before and after photos. And
when you look at these because initially in today's in
two thousand eighteen, is you think about, well, these people
had a horrific thing happened to their face, and so
now they wear a mask like attached by either eyeglasses
or hooked over their ears to to mesh with the
(24:21):
rest of their face. And your first thought is like,
how unbelievable did that look? But when you look at
these photos, they look really good. And you can only
imagine that just that sense of uh normalcy for lack
of a better word, meant so much to these men,
even covering it up, not fixing it cover to to
(24:46):
blend in, Yeah, I think is what they were looking
for pretty extraordinary. You want to take another break, Yeah,
let's do it. We're gonna take a break, everybody. We
just decided, I don't know if you heard or not,
and here we go. All right, So let's talk about
(25:21):
how these masks were made. Again. They were revolutionary. These
people were making it up as they were going along. Um,
but they hit upon it pretty well right out of
the gate. And the big one of the big differences
was that these weren't rubber prosthetics that were meant to
restore function. They were metal masks that were meant to
restore identity. Yeah, and a little dignity maybe. Um. So
(25:45):
the first thing would happen is LAD or you know
whoever is working on this, because they all LAD and
would both had people they worked with on their teams.
So the first thing they would do is get a
photo obviously more than one photo of pre war and
what they look like. Because the whole thing is, I
don't want to make you look like you looked before,
(26:05):
not just well let me just fashion you a nose.
It's like, I want your nose to look like your
old nose. And so they would get these photos that
the people, the patients and soldiers would have to heal
completely in order to undergo this process at all. Like
it's not the kind of thing they could do, you know,
as they're healing. Uh. And so they made a plaster cast,
(26:27):
and then after that they would make what's called a squeeze,
which is like a clay version of that cast. And
then eventually that would end up in a galvanized copper
mask about the thickness of like a playing card, right,
And the plaster cast that they would make of your
face was supposedly just an awful, awful process, Like they
(26:48):
would give you a little straw to put in your
mouth and like that's how you breathe for as long
as they were they took to make the plaster cast. Yeah,
it's pretty bad. It would be bad anyway, but after
you've suffered that trauma right to your face, imagine anything
near or around your face would be really uh. Yeah,
And let's talk about that what led up to that.
(27:09):
First of all, you were shot in the face or
hit was trapnel in the face. Sometimes you would be
laying there if you went down in no man's land
for hours days before somebody came and got you. You
were taken to a Field Hospital and then flown over
to England or driven over to England or by boat.
Be quiet, everybody, um or taken to Paris um and
(27:33):
you underwent possibly two years of surgical reconstruction, and finally,
once all your surgeries were healed, you would find yourself
in Mrs Ladd's studio or Francister went Wood studio getting
plaster coated over your disfigured face, holding a little straw
in your mouth. So, yeah, it was. It was probably
not the greatest thing that they've ever experienced. It was
(27:55):
probably tied for first with a couple of those other
ones along the way for being terrible. Yeah, and like
you said, this is after um, noble but not great
result attempts at you know, doing it the plastic surgery way.
So these people are desperate there. I mean, if you've
gone in there to get a portrait mask, you're that's
(28:15):
your last stop to try and resume, you know, your
previous life. Basically suppose as you can get to it.
All right, So if you had facial hair, if you
had a mustache, which a lot of men did back then, um,
they would use real hair and add that into the mask. Her.
I think it took her about a month to make
(28:36):
one of these. Yeah. I don't know if you said
or not, but she was credited as by far being
the better artist, Like the result was really talented, much
better coming out of the Lad studio than the Woods studio. Yeah,
but he was faster and more prolific. Yeah, he had
a lot more. I think he served a lot more patients. Uh.
In the end, I believe her shop was only up
in about a year and with four assistants, created a
(28:58):
hundred and eighty five man asks, which UM, again in
the grand scheme of things, is not very many people,
but changed all of those lives, you know. So they
so they're from the plaster cast. You said they made
a squeeze. The cast is a negative, the squeeze is
a positive. And then they would use the squeezes the
model for making the cast that or the mask that
(29:21):
they needed UM and then they would they would cast
it into UM copper one thirty second of an inch
thick and then it like you said, it would attach
by UM spectacles or around the ear. And Mrs Lad
you said she used hair, Yeah, but would use like
(29:45):
he painted his on. Yeah. So when you go to
look up these photos. They'll have the before and after
and on the left. You know, it's sometimes you can't
even tell what this man might have previously looked like,
and so you look at the right and then it
looks you know, it's a mask, but you're like, you
can tell that that's what this guy looked like, and
it's like, it really is true. The loss of identity
(30:07):
that must happen have happened at least back then, um,
and I'm sure now too. Where if you undergo a
facial trauma, it's amazing what how drastically it can change
how you look your face. It just changes from what
it was before. When you see some of the before
before pictures, so before the injury, then after the injury,
(30:29):
and then after the mask that before the injury, and
then after the injury picture, sometimes you're like, how, like
I I don't see that person in there at all.
So yeah, I can imagine, like we said, they kept
mirrors out of the ward because seeing yourself like that,
especially if you were in the process of undergoing surgery,
I'm sure they were like, you don't need to see
(30:49):
this at all, buddy, just just let us keep working
on you. You know. Yeah, one of the tougher parts
of this process too, and um, and also most important
was matching the skin tone. So obviously, if you have
a mask that doesn't look like your other you know,
skin tone on the rest of your face, then it's
going to stand out more. And your whole point was
(31:10):
to blend in. So she would save it that for
last and actually fit the mask on the man and
and paint it while it was on their face so
she could match it as exactly as possible. I think
used a couple of different oil paints at first didn't
work out, yeah, and then landed on enamel, which is
and these things still you know, we should say it's
(31:32):
not like it would last twenty years like they were.
You know, to mask you wear every day, so it
would get beat up over the years, and you know,
wear and tear happened for sure. Um. One of the
other things that the paint too is apparently the hue
was really difficult because on like an overcast day, it
might look really lifelike, but then that same hue in
(31:55):
sunlight looked like dead, so they had to like kind
of split the difference between it too. So from what
I saw, the paint getting the complexion right, was the
hardest part for sure. But yeah, those masks supposedly had
a life expectancy of just about a couple of years.
But the thing is is after the war, um Wood
(32:16):
Studio closed down and so did lads um, and so
these men that was it they got their mask. It
was almost like this weird little pop up that happened,
that went away and never came back. So these men,
you know, clung to their masks for as long as
they could, and so much so that um they there
(32:38):
are there. Basically aren't any of those masks. No one
is like, oh, this is a World War one UM
portrait mask. Those are all buried with their owners because
those masks became part of their public identity as well. Yeah,
I bet you there's gotta be one somewhere, right, surely,
but I think most of them are probably buried with
their owners. And these, like I said it, with lad
(32:58):
only masks, you were very lucky if you were able
to get one of these, because there were, um I
believe they estimated twenty tho fate what they called facial
casualties in World War One alone. So out of that number,
to only get eighty five from like the best artists
working is not very many people. And they think Francister
(33:21):
went would created more, um just because he was open
longer and he was more prolific, or he's faster. But um,
they don't have a number. But even still, even if
he made three times that it's nothing compared to how
many people have become facially disfigured from injur injuries. Right. Yeah,
and lad um, she was lauded, she did a lot
of interviews. Um. When she got back to the United States.
(33:44):
Two she was made a chevalier. Nice touch, is that right, Yeah,
Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor. And she just
went back to her you know, her art when she
got back to the United States. Yeah. This this, I
want to say, this all awesome Smithsonian article by Caroline
Alexander who talks about this. Yeah, it's good. It mentions
(34:04):
that her buss like she was a sculptor and before
her work in the war and after her work in
the war, it's actually really kind of generic portraits of people. Yeah,
Like it lacks like the pizzas and like the human
like touch that her actual wartime mask efforts had. Yeah,
that's really interesting. Yeah, it's cool. I like her busts.
(34:25):
I liked I like her style. It looks weirdly like
early twentieth century modern Yeah. Uh. And she died in
ninety nine. Um, she died young. She died at sixty
in Santa Barbara. Um. Francis Derwentwood died also young, fifty
five years old, in nineteen twenty six in London. And uh,
he was remembered obviously post war as well, which is
(34:47):
great public monuments war memorials, and the Machine Gun Corps
in Hyde Park Corner in London is uh apparently where
one of the most poignant war memorials him loves sits. Yeah. Yeah,
And like you said, I mean twenty thousand of these
(35:09):
injuries and only say several hundred of them received masks.
And again, this is a time when society didn't really
want you back if you were officially disfigured in the war.
And there was a there was an idea to basically
buy some land for disfigured officers, um, to have them
(35:29):
just basically go live off the land over here and
have a nice pension and just stay over here. And
those plans didn't come to fruition um, and so they
were just kind of expected to just go fade away,
just go away, we don't want to see you. In Australia,
apparently they had a lot of um facially disfigured soldiers
returning home. Um, a lot of them would just go
(35:51):
out and live into the live in the bush. You know,
it'd be like living in the woods in in England
or the U. S is okay, I'm gonna go live
in the woods now because you guys don't want to
see my face anymore. And a lot of them committed
suicide too, said said to say, or died of suspicious
accidental deaths. Yeah. Man, like the stories where you hear
about the their kids being frightened of their father and
(36:13):
stuff after the war just heartbreaking. Yeah, And that was
supposedly a pretty recurrent anecdote in newspaper articles about this
about these studios, like they're trying to save people because
their own kids can't stand to be around them, you know. Yeah,
but kids even scared of the mask because uh, you know,
it points out as while they did so much to
(36:34):
restore it, they were still expressionless faces, which um, you
know could could creep out of kid for sure. But
we've come a long way and Wonder is proof positive
of that. Go see that movie. It's good. I will. Uh.
If you want to know more about facial differences, go
check out UM I don't know, just search facial differences,
(36:54):
check out changing faces dot org and go see Wonder.
Why not it's a good movie. I'll check it out.
That was the second one was directed to everything. Okay, UM,
since I said that it's time for a listener mail,
I'm gonna call this relative of President Pierce here parentheses
(37:15):
lighthearted O God. I'm hey, guys, big fan had a
baby in August, so I've been behind on the episodes.
Finally got to these new short stuff where you mentioned
that President Franklin Pierce, and I couldn't help but laugh
out loud when I heard your disdain for the band.
My baby son's middle name is actually Pierce, just like
his father and every other male that was born in
his family, a tradition that has stemmed since you guessed
(37:38):
at Franklin Pierce became president. My husband is a great
great nephew of Pierce the Best. His grandmother actually still
owns the presidential china. That's kind of cool. Every time
someone finds out my husband a descendant of a president.
He gets so excited, but my husband and all of
his family just roll their eyes and exclaim, oh, he
(38:00):
was the worst president. Everyone just remembers Lincoln anyway. It
makes me laugh every time that his family doesn't think
much of this man any more than the rest of
the world. So just take comfort knowing that your hate
on Piers and his faults uh during his time in
office aren't past his own family. Man. That's something I'll
do my best to make sure my son makes up
(38:20):
for it. So, Sad I missed your shows in Denver,
please come back. And that is sincerely from Sarah, mother
of a Piers. Thanks Sarah, mother of a Piers. That
was a great email. Yeah, and we'll come back to
Denver for sure because we sold out two shows there.
Denver loves us, loves us, can't get enough of us
a mile high city. Yes, we'll be back. UM. If
(38:41):
you want to get in touch with us, why don't
you go ahead and mosey on over to um stuff
you should know dot com check out our social links there.
I also have a website called Josh clark Way dot
com if you want to check that out too, that's right,
and you can always send me Jerry and Chuck an
email all at once at Stuff podcast at how stuff
(39:02):
works dot com. For more on this and thousands of
other topics, is it how stuff works dot com
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