New Life Jacket Aka New Life Jackets Demonstrated In The Thames (1959)

Royal Festival Hall Pier, River Thames, London. Tilt up from the feet of a girl, Susan Aveyard (aged 15) being helped into a sack by Mark Shaw. Susan is wearing a yellow hooded rubber suit. C/U of a spectator and his little girl. C/U of Shaw fastening the top of the sack around Susan’s neck. M/S of Shaw tying rope around Susan. They are standing on the bank of the River Thames and in the background is a crowd of spectators. M/S of spectators leaning over a rail. M/S of Susan trussed up with rope and sacking jumping from the top of some stone stairs into the murky water below. Tilt down to follow Susan’s impact into the water - she bobs up almost immediately. The narrator reveals that Shaw, from Morecambe in Lancashire, has invented the lifesaving jacket worn by Susan - “a new system that’s so efficient it’s impossible to drown - even in a sack“! The narrator explains that the jacket - named the ’Marksway’ - is lined with a special cotton fabric which “when dry allows air to circulate freely and w