---
title: Tidiness Prevents Accidents
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/uk-tidiness-prevents-accidents-1939/
description: A photographed hand reaches down toward a loose nut, bolt and wing-nut lying in a pool of light on a workshop floor.
section: Collection
---

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3. Tidiness Prevents Accidents

[![Tidiness Prevents Accidents, 1939 UK poster: A photographed hand reaches down toward a loose nut, bolt and wing-nut lying](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/uk-tidiness-prevents-accidents-1939.jpg)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/uk-tidiness-prevents-accidents-1939.jpg)

# Tidiness Prevents Accidents

A photographed hand reaches down toward a loose nut, bolt and wing-nut lying in a pool of light on a workshop floor, under the lower-case slogan 'tidiness prevents accidents'. The tell for fear-appeal is the looming hand and long shadow, which present the stray parts as an injury risk to the viewer's own workplace.

## Propaganda techniques used in this poster

[Fear appeal](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/fear-appeal/)

## Text on the object

Original (English) · read from the image, not independently checked

```
tidiness
prevents
accidents

Issued by the Ministry of Labour and National Service and produced by the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents,
Terminal House, 52, Grosvenor Gardens, London, S.W.1.
ML/57
Printed by LOXLEY BROS. LTD.
```

[← Thousands of Women Needed Now in the ATS, WAAF](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/uk-thousands-of-women-needed-ats-waaf-1939/) [Tighten Your Grip! →](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/uk-tighten-your-grip-newbould-1939/)

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- [Anacoana fut pendue sans raison (engraving in Le miroir de la cruelle et horrible tyrannie espagnole)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/anacoana-hanged-miroir-tyrannie-espagnole-1620/) (Dutch Republic · 1620 · Fear appeal, Name-calling). Content note: Engraving of a hanged, bare-breasted Taino woman, burning huts and people being killed by Spanish soldiers.
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- [Gazette of the United States, "The Jeffersoniad" no. VIII, 14 August 1800](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/gazette-us-jeffersoniad-1800/) (United States · Aug 14, 1800 · Name-calling, Fear appeal)
- [Tyrants Prostrate, Liberty Triumphant (pro-Polk cartoon on Dorr), 1844](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/tyrants-prostrate-liberty-triumphant-polk-1844/) (United States · 1844 · Name-calling, Fear appeal). Content note: Speech balloons contain anti-Catholic and nativist wording ('the ruins of Popery') in the mouths of the Whig figures, written by a Democratic cartoonist and shown unaltered.
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