Alex Parry, Ph.D.

@safetyworkhstm.bsky.social

1933 Followers 1540 Following

Historian of home injuries, public health, and product safety at the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry. Former Ph.D. student and graduate worker organizer at Johns Hopkins. Still frustrated and/or over-caffeinated.

Thank-you card from a recent student
Resources for public writing with QR codes from the AAHM Education and Outreach Committee. The list includes the slides for an op-ed workshop, a link to the Op-Ed Project, the publisher page for David Perry’s recent book The Public Scholar, and a Medium post about public writing from WW Norton.
Diagram of a home accident sequence from the Uniform Definitions of Home Accidents Conference (1958). This diagram tried to capture the numerous causal factors that contributed to home accidents and conceptualized accidents as processes.
Cartoon drawings of four children smiling cheerfully while reaching for labeled containers of candy aspirin, DDT, bleach, and prescription medicine. The drawings appear on the cover of the October 1957 issue of the Home Safety Review.
Photograph of Presto Hot Dogger
Photograph of Hot Diggity Dogger hot dog toaster
Cartoon of Thomas the Tank Engine pulling cars filled with lead paint, poison pet food, and poison toothpaste with the caption “Thomas Goes to China / Toxic Railway”
Disclaimer from CDC website
eBay listing for Karen Gets a Fever (1972), a health education picture book from the Medical Books for Children series
Photograph from Life magazine (1971) showing spring-loaded jumping shoes sold to children as toys
Box of the Topper Corp. Suzy Homemaker Super Grill (1967), which came with a patented, UL-approved safety plug
Image of a character from the Venture Bros. being impaled by a falling lawn dart thrown straight into the air.
List of delays and gate changes for flight from JFK to ROC.
Email inbox with five consecutive messages from American Airlines announcing flight delays, automatic rebookings, and other shenanigans.
Advertisement for Suzy Homemaker Safety Grill underscoring the ways homemaking toys could help train “normal” future homemakers.
A reproduction of the National Safety Council's Family Safety Story of the Year for 1967, which shows a little girl playing with a motorized wringer washer.
DHEW injury data from the Final Report of the National Commission on Product Safety (1968-1970)
Illustration of a little girl playing with a motorized wringer washer from the National Safety Council’s Family Safety magazine (1967). The image appears in Alexander Parry, “Making Homemakers Responsible for Safety: Housework, Laundry Equipment, and the Unequal Burdens of Accident Prevention, c. 1910–80,” Technology and Culture 66.2 (2025): 411-447
Poster for the martial arts film “The 36th Chamber of Shaolin”
Picture of plastic “Magic Knife” toy with retractable blade from Edward Swartz, Toys That Kill (1986)
A 1933 advertisement for Voss Bros. “Safety-Guard” wringer picturing a man pointing at the viewer and declaring, “Here is the greatest Improvement since the invention of the wringer.” The pitch centers on a salesman inserting his clothes and hair into the machine to check its “instinctive” emergency release, a key selling point for safety-conscious customers.
Title and abstract of “Making Homemakers Responsible for Safety: Housework, Laundry Equipment, and the Unequal Burdens of Accident Prevention, c. 1910-80,” Technology and Culture 66.2 (2025): 411-47 Abstract begins: “This article investigates how twentieth-century U.S. corporations, nonprofit safety experts, and engineers came together to control the risks of home laundry equipment. Professionals worked with citizen-consumers to form a voluntary safety system intended to prevent injuries using education, markets for ‘safe’ appliances, and consumer product testing.”
Poster for “Rethinking Injuries” conference at Johns Hopkins with URL to the event website and recordings of selected sessions. https://hopkinsmedicalhumanities.org/rethinkinginjuriesconf/#1703178840947-a980d81a-9baa
Watercolor from the mid-nineteenth century of a man wrapped in wet blankets for a hydrotherapy treatment.The man is sitting on the floor next to a bathtub with a nonplussed expression on his face.
Photograph of a dilute calico cat crouching in an empty box of K-cups turned on its side
SoberRide poster for Halloween from 2004. The orange-and-black poster pictures a vampire preparing to bite a woman’s neck with the caption, “Drunk Driving Bites.”
Excerpt from a 1959 market research study for Mattel by the consumer psychologist Ernest Dichter. This passage records the “free associative comments” of an 8.5-year-old girl playing with a Barbie doll. The section ends: “Her husband has a big boat… they go to the country, play ball… they went swimming… she got pregnant. She got sick and after the baby was due in a week, the baby died. They had to take the baby away.”
Excerpt from the table of contents of a study by Ernest Dichter on the psychological motivations behind U.S. toy purchasing (1959). This section focuses on Barbie dolls and contains a subheading that reads “The Doll Is Too ‘Sexy.’”
1973 letter to consumer from Schaper Mfg. Co.: “We certainly appreciate your viewpoint, however, I am sure you realize there are many people who feel otherwise.”
Image of a sickly-looking child with leg braces and a wheelchair aiming his BB gun
Another image from the training program handbook showing a boy with crutches aiming his BB gun from a standing position and another boy using sandbags to steady the muzzle of his gun
Image from Daisy BB gun training program of a boy without legs sitting in a wheelchair and aiming a BB gun
1985 CPSC warning explaining why children should not play with lawn darts. The illustration shows an adult man gently tossing a dart underhand.
Photograph from Consumer Reports of a child playing outside with a Sonic Blaster bazooka. The child is looking into the scope of the toy with his head pressed against the stock.
Spread from the Good Housekeeping booklet “How to Build a Safer Home” (1948) summarizing the risks of specific rooms with silhouettes of homemakers performing different tasks.
Venereal disease prevention poster from the 1940s captioned, “Remember… they are waiting. Avoid V.D.” The poster shows a masculine hand holding an open wallet with pictures of his parents and “sweetheart.”
NTA poster from the mid-1930s showing the “modern weapons” (diagnostic and therapeutic technologies) used to “fight tuberculosis.”
Cover illustration of the bicycle safety mascot Sprocket Man from a CPSC comic book from 2004. Sprocket Man is riding a bike and carrying a stack of gears in his right hand.
Screenshot from eBay of National Safety Council dice game from 1957 based on Yahtzee.
Post from LinkedIn: “A salary increase makes you happy once a year. A healthy culture keeps you happy everyday [sic].”
Picture of a disheveled-looking toddler with the caption “can’t sleep?”
Flyer for Corner Society talk titled “Childproof: Health, Safety, and the Electric Vaporizer, c. 1920-1990.” The flyer includes a brief abstract of the presentation and a historical advertisement for a DeVilbiss electric vaporizer. For event details, see https://www.raom.org/event-5841437
DeVilbiss vaporizer ad featuring a distressed mother calling a doctor on the telephone with the text: “Are you taking the chance of being caught without a vaporizer when you need one?”
Photograph of the box of a Hankscraft Model 202-A electric vaporizer
A photograph of a light calico cat sleeping upside-down on me and my partner.
Still of Donald Duck “fixing” a malfunctioning toaster with a knife (1956)
Picture of short-lived National Safety Council mascot “Sammy Safety” (1954)
Drawing from Good Housekeeping (1913) of woman and child running from grease fire above the title: “Coquetting with the Fire Fiend: The Wholesale Sacrifice of Women and Children to Fire, Largely Through Woman’s Own Carelessness”
Home safety article titled “Home Is Where the Hurt Is” from the Sept. 6, 1942 issue of the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle. The accompanying image depicts a man falling off of a breaking step-stool being hit on the head by a framed message reading “God Bless Our Home.”
Picture of post-defense celebration with Yulia Frumer, Arwen Mohun, Jeremy Greene, Graham Mooney, and Angus Burgin. Thank you to my graduate student colleagues for the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval-inspired dissertation cake!
Diagram showing the intersecting causes of injuries and defining injuries as processes with five phases.
Flyer for "Rethinking Injuries" conference with QR Code to https://hopkinsmedicalhumanities.org/rethinkinginjuriesconf/.
Good Housekeeping story titled “How to Look Your Best in a Hospital.”
"Rethinking Injuries: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Harm, Safety, and Society; Hybrid Conference; March 7-9, 2024; Baltimore, MD"