ANDERSON SHELTER

Wairarapa Times-Age, 31 August 1940, Page 5

ANDERSON SHELTER

MANY LIVES SAVED IN AIR RAIDS.

'The man who invented the Anderson air-raid shelter, which has saved many lives in Britain, has not yet one himself. When the sirens blare he seeks safety in a hastily constructed sandbag shelter in his Regent’s Park homewhile 15,000,000 people are protected by his device. He is Mr William Paterson, GO-year-old Scottish engineer, who is chairman of the Paterson Engineering Works, ' Kingsway, London. “I could not get one,” he said this week. “The great idea was that the working people should have them, and so I had my' own shelter built. I am afraid it is merely an affair of sandbags.”

The story of the shelter began in November, 1938, when Sir John Anderson was appointed Minister of Civil Defence and began to consider a shelter policy. He wanted a shelter that could be easily delivered and erected. Mr Paterson, his old friend, to whom he turned with the problem, produced a quarter-sized model. J “One evening.” said Mr Paterson, “I /Tarried the model under my arm and ’•went by car to see Sir John. We assembled the shelter on the floor in the house, and the first thing he did was to jump on. it. He is a man of some weight, but it stood the shock.”