September 8, 2020 • 41 mins
Nowadays, incubators are a common sight in hospitals across the US -- but, once upon a time, this life-saving technology was treated like a sideshow attraction. Hundreds of thousands of people flocked to 'Infantoriums' to marvel at how incubators were able to keep babies born prematurely both healthy and safe. And, the publicity generated by these side shows may be, in part, the reason this technology is in hospitals today.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Ye,
(00:26):
welcome to the show Ridiculous Historians. As always, thank you
so much for tuning in. This is you know, I've
said this before, but but this this is a really
really weird one. It's a story that maybe I'm familiar
to a lot of people. Uh, unless, of course, you're
a fan of side shows. I don't do people still
(00:50):
go to side shows. I mean, it's certainly not particularly
politically correct anymore. You're Ben still though, right, not a
proprietor of a side show. Yeah, and you're knowl I am.
I mean, I think the closest thing we've got today
would be like a Ripley's Believe it or Not situation
where maybe I don't know, maybe there's some some things
in there that could be classified as that, but they're
(01:11):
not human beings, their dioramas or recreations or you know,
just a historical kind of exhibit. But yeah, man, uh
sideshows uh problematic and fascinating things. Yes, yes, to say
the least, I was also captivated by Ripley's Believe It
or Not. I think for people in our generation that
(01:33):
that was probably to your point, the closest that a
lot of us came to side shows. Uh. We have to,
as always ask our super producer Casey Pegram before we
begin today's show. Casey, I know you're coming in blind
with this one. Uh, what's your take on sideshows? I'm
just thinking about sideshow Bob from the Simpsons. That was
(01:56):
one association that popped up immediately. But yeah, I'm pretty
much where you guys are, like Ripley's believe it or not,
at the wax Museum, things you do at Destin Beach
on vacation, those are kind of the vibes I'm getting.
So never's like a genuine side show, probably for the
best m m. Yeah, usually somewhere near the airbrush t
(02:16):
shirt stand where you can get like a dolphin jumping
over a sunset that's right, a shell uh that is
painted in some bizarre color. I I like the beach life,
like the boardwalk snacks. Today we are talking about something
that happened on boardwalks, early boardwalk side shows today. In
(02:38):
as we know, side shows often have this terrible historical
reputation because there would be people who had some sort
of disability, right or some sort of visually striking difference
about themselves. That's right, And I mean, you know, it's
complicated because oftentimes, while those folks were reviled and ridicule
(02:59):
as part of those it was a society that would
have shunned them to such a degree they probably wouldn't
have been able to find gainful employment in any other way.
So it's a bit of a mixed bag. Will While
it was definitely you know, uh, it makes me think
of why people had a real problem with that movie
The Greatest Showman, because it really romanticized that whole world.
But then there's a very empowered musical number where all
(03:21):
the sideshow oddity individuals kind of banded together and talk
about how they're beautiful on the inside and stuff. But
that movie kind of divided people. I quite enjoy the music, though,
but you know what I'm saying though, like this is
definitely you know, they were getting paid probably a pittance,
you know, but they were fed, and they were allowed
to kind of live within a society or a mini
(03:42):
society that would at least kind of accept them as peers.
And often there were you know, kind of famous ones
in terms of individuals, like you know, you think about
the lobster Boy and all of that stuff. But you
have sort of categories of sideshow oddity, things like pin heads,
which would have been, you know, a pretty crass way
of referring to somebody with a developmental condition that caused
(04:06):
problems with the shape of their skull, et cetera. And
they kind of had like a point to skull that's
exactly right. It's exactly right then, And bearded ladies and
things like that, the tattooed man. You know, people that's
had any kind of any number of outward um conditions
that could have been looked at as you know, they're
(04:27):
some kind of mutation or some sort of superpower in
a weird way, but not in a positive way. I
don't know what I'm I'm kind of I feel like
I'm having a hard time talking about it and trying
to stay relatively PC because it is such a difficult
thing to discuss. Yeah, for a lot of people. Uh,
the idea of the sideshow instantly conjures images. I know
(04:51):
you were probably thinking of this two casey of the
ninety two film Freaks, Uh, and Freaks did feature people
who had worked side show performers in real life. Uh,
like the microcephalic Schlitzy who was billed as the last
of the Aztecs. And to your point, well, there would
be things like conjoined twins. Uh, there would be things like,
(05:15):
as you said, someone with differently shaped hands, someone who
had three legs. But then there would also be people
who are capable of extraordinary feats like how many how
many people were roaming through the Midwest claiming to be
the world's strongest man, were the largest largest person. When
we think of this, and I think it did a
(05:36):
tremendous job explaining some of the problematic aspects of this.
But when we think of side shows today, we're you know,
we we have the benefit of retrospect, and we also
think in terms of those categories like the tattooed lady,
the illustrated man, and so on. But today we'd like
to introduce you to a new type of sideshow exhibit
(05:59):
that might surprise you. It turned out, for a time
in the beginning of the twentieth century, babies became stars
of side shows for a very weird reason. But not
just any baby. These were specifically babies that were born
um early before the full term of the pregnancy had
(06:21):
come to a conclusion, and they're referred to collectively as
premature babies. And you know, folks out there in podcast
land may have siblings that are premature that we're born prematurely. Um,
there are many reasons this can happen. UM. Some absolutely
just completely a fluke. You never you can't really predict
what it's going to happen. UM. There are obviously more
(06:43):
kind of negative and nasty reasons this can happen, things
like drug addiction and the mother. Um. But a lot
of times, oftentimes when babies are born prematurely has nothing
to do with any uh negative actions of the mother.
And it's also more than possible for that baby, they're
moren small to have a completely normal life and become
(07:03):
completely healthy. And that is because of some medical technology,
specifically something called an incubator. Yes, one of the main
characters of our story today is a doctor, Martin A Cooney.
He knew about incubators. He knew that incubators could play
a powerful role in ensuring the health of premature babies.
(07:28):
But he also knew that the quote unquote system, you know,
the medical establishment and stuff, didn't have much interest in
pushing this new technology forward because the incubator was a
very new idea at the time. There wasn't a lot
of money being put into research for this literally life
(07:48):
saving technology. So he decided that he would hit the
streets himself, and he built a traveling exhibit that showed
audience members premature babies living in incubators. For a lot
of us, this sounds like a maternity ward, right, Hey,
(08:10):
pre covid, I could go to a hospital and if
I'm not too creepy, they'll let me walk by that area.
They sure will. Um not not so much these days.
But Cooney's fascination with incubators, you know, came, didn't just
come like us an overnight thing. Wasn't like the hot
new medical device on the street. Um. He studied in
(08:30):
Paris under a very well respected researcher and um and
physician named Pierre Boudin, who was confused as to why,
you know, these devices hadn't been adopted more widely. So
he actually displayed some incubators in the Berlin World's Fair
(08:53):
in eighteen nineties six. And this was really kind of
at the the onset of of the idea of a fair.
It wasn't really what we think of today is you know,
it's sort of devolved into just more of a you know,
a place where you can write a cheap roller coaster.
It sort of travels from town to town. Um, there
might be some games that you're gonna lose your money
(09:14):
off of, but at the time they were really considered
these kind of like almost like what we have today
with stuff like ce S, which is, you know, the
massive electronics convention where new technology is unveiled in all
of the different organizations and companies that make technology show
up and show their wares all at the same time
(09:35):
in in Vegas. You've been to one of those, haven't you, Casey.
We've been to several, ben and I yeah to you,
to cover um, automotive stuff, um, some just kind of
general technology. It's uh, multiple convention centers, massive footprint, tens
of thousands of booths. I think, um, yeah, it's quite something.
We Uh my favorite memory of CS probably is is
(09:58):
the weird night A group of us and the crew
got together and one of us, friend of the show
Stillan Fagan, had never gambled before, and I think Ramsey
was the same, and so so we set off to
try to try to have a Vegas experience it was
a ridiculous story for another day. But you're right, these
(10:19):
things world fairs CS, stuff like the the expos, like
the Pan American Exposition. These were prominent, high level of fairs,
you know what I mean, Like people would go to
these things to see the latest innovations. I think your
comparison about CS is spot on Nolan's. It was much
These were much more like a big up and coming
(10:42):
technology kind of conventioned and they were what you would
consider a side show today. And that's where these child
hatcheries came in. That's what they were called. You would
as an audience member, you would pay a dime and
you can see pictures of this, especially there's some great
ones on an article from Atlas Obscura. You would pay
(11:05):
a time and you would walk around and observe these
babies living, happy and hopefully healthy in these incubators. They're
much larger, by the way, than the incubators were familiar
with today. And we have to establish at the beginning
of this story the children were not harmed by being
(11:25):
in the incubators. They were they were on display, so
there's you know, a wound to their dignity perhaps, but
they were able to receive medical care that they otherwise
probably would not have received. And this this is an
idea that went through several iterations before our friend Cooney
(11:46):
had brought the Act to the United States. So let's
maybe just let's stay with the incubators just a little bit,
and let's describe them. So his baby had child hatchery,
or infantorium as it was called. UH. Each incubator in
there was about one and a half meters high. They
(12:06):
had steel walls, they had a framework a glass front
so you could observe the children. And they used water
boilers to feed warm water into pipes running underneath the
babies UH, and thermostats to maintain and regulate temperatures. What
we're saying is that the baby's overall, we're safe in
these things. That's that's key to this story. Well, I
(12:28):
mean they were more than safe, right. They really desperately
needed this, and that's because premature babies have a they're
they're incapable of regulating their own body temperatures. And before
incubators were a thing, I've I've read, you know, in
researching this and watching I watched a really interesting PBS
I can't remember what it was called but it was Justtally,
a woman who antique road show style, was presented with
(12:51):
this like silver cup from an event at the at
the Chicago World's Fair. Um, and it was connected to
one of these baby display kind of situations, and one
of the doctors they interviewed just talking about how um
and before there were incubators, doctors didn't know what to
do and they didn't have much control, so they would
(13:12):
do things like put the babies in shoe boxes and
stick them next to a radiator, which sounds really unsafe.
So yeah, yeah, these things were revolutionary. Yeah yeah. And sadly,
before the rise of incubators, there would be people who
would say things like, well, the child has to do
its best to survive, you know, and that's a terrible
(13:32):
thing for you to hear as a parrot. And that's
where our story leads us to Coney Island. Around the
turn of the century. If you headed to Coney Island,
you would see, you know, all the usual Coney Island diversions,
although I do believe this was before Nathan's famous hot
dog eating contest, which is one of my favorite things.
(13:54):
You could go to a newly opened amusement park called
Luna Park, but you might also run into a permanent
inventorI um, a permanent exhibit of premature babies in these incubators,
and Cooney was doing this because he needed the funds
(14:15):
from these audience members. The technology of incubators for humans
was laughed at, a roundly dismissed by physicians, even though,
as you said, no it it had a past before,
like people knew the thing would work. It's just it's
sad when you think that for the first five decades
of the existence of this incubator, it was functioning mostly
(14:38):
as a novelty item. That's right. I mean, you know,
we think of incubators in terms of like hatching eggs,
you know, from chicken embryos, let's say, and that's really cool,
but not always necessary. It's sort of a little more
of like a parlor trick, a scientific parlor trick. It's
not something you know, when you think of like farmed
eggs or even mass produced chicken eggs, it's not something
(15:00):
that would be employed in that respect. So that's that's
an interesting way of putting it bad. Although I can't
help but think of the scene from Jurassic Park with
the incubator and the baby velociraptor that he pulls out,
it's all covered in like bloody slime. Uh, and then
kind of makes that let all kind of And that's
how you know those buggers are evil because the baby
(15:23):
is evil. Grown ups are definitely gonna be evil. Uh. Yeah,
you're right, But what what isn't cute when it's in
that juvenile stage? I am clearly biased. I'm a Jurassic
Park fan. Uh. There's even a holiday called July six
Park by one of my favorite sketch groups, Chris and Jack.
So do celebrate it when you get a chance. Your
Your point about incubators is absolutely true. It wasn't until
(15:46):
the eighteen eighties when Stefantagnier, French obstetrician, saw these things
being used at a zoo and said, hey, if it
works on baby chickens, maybe it works on baby humans.
And part of the reason the medical establishment did not
immediately jump on the baby train here is that they
(16:06):
had a long history of prejudice toward premature babies. It
was expensive to care for them, and honestly, as horrible
as this sounds, a lot of people thought it was
pointless because babies born below a certain threshold of birth
weight had high mortality. And then physicians also thought this
(16:28):
invention that came from watching chickens in a zoo was
unscientific and they didn't believe that it could actually save
people's lives. And that's where the guy you mentioned earlier, Pierre,
comes in, and he says, why aren't more hospitals investing
in this? We can save people. So he started researching
the technology. He kept running into roadblocks for funding, and
(16:53):
that's why in like you said, he wanted to display
these incubators at the World's Fair. That's absolutely correct. The
World's Fair. Um, you know, you'll recall when you're making
that CS comparison and sort of the whole like modern
day con and like you know, whether it's unveiling the
newest uh uh you know, smart home technology or what
(17:15):
have you. Back in these days, the technology that was
being unveiled was like life changing. Really well, I mean
not to say that technology today isn't important if there
are there aren't occasionally things that are unveiled these kind
of uh conferences that do change people's lives, but not
the same as like the dishwasher or like the color television.
(17:35):
You know, things that like haven't really been replaced, They've
maybe been improved upon, They've maybe been given internet connectivity.
Or you have like a camera inside your fridge that
you can look up on your smartphone in cause you
can see how much cott is cheese you have left
when you're at the grocery store. But uh, it's the
game changing technology in the way that we would see
in these industrial just post industrial revolution fairs. Isn't quite
(17:57):
the same today. And you guys completely only I'm full
of crap if if you think I'm missing the mark
on that. But um, the ones that we that really
lead the charge were European. So Cooney realizes these exhibits
can save babies lives and they and he realizes the
public will pay to see this futuristic technology. Eventually, he
(18:22):
and Boudin realized that these exhibits are successful enough to
make a potential life saver for these children. Coney was
interested personally in this because he himself was the father
of a child born prematurely as daughter, and he reasoned,
if hospitals don't care for these prematurely born children, then
(18:44):
we can crowdsources. He didn't use the word crowdsource, but
that's essentially what he did in Buffalo, New York in
nine one. He built this huge building just for the
baby Incubator exhibit. He got tons of press, which turned
out to be even more important than getting a lot
of people in the crowd. And that's how starting in
(19:06):
nineteen o three you could see the permanent Coney Island
Baby Incubator exhibition. One was at Luna Park and another
one was also in Coney Island at dream Land, so
nurses would tend to the babies the public would look
on in amazement. And the weird thing is this is
(19:26):
still kind of like a sideshow, so there is still
a carnival barker here. And I wonder what they're saying,
like America left technology, the baby is born premature, through
the wonders of our age, will be able to live.
It's so, yeah, they had a pitch. I'm sure they
were about but it's also like, I don't know. The
(19:48):
thing about it is like premature babies are cute because
they're so bloody small and their eyes are closed. They
look like little rabbits or little puppies you know, that
are born when their eyes aren't even open yet, and
and they're real skinny, and so like they're on the
one hand, they're they're adorable, babies are cute and everything,
but they're also you know, they're not the most healthy looking.
(20:08):
They're a little like you're you're worried about them. There's
a sense of of of oh, no, is this baby
gonna be okay? And uh, I wonder it seems like
there was a capitalization on all of those things because
I don't know, like the pitch likely did not center
specifically on the amazing life saving technology that is that
(20:29):
is just my uh my, the sense that I get
what do you what do you think? Then yeah, he
definitely so there were definitely theatrical elements to this, right
that people are going to see. We know that. According
to a book by Dawn Raffle, The Strange Case of
Dr Cooney, How a mysterious European showman Saved thousands of
(20:49):
American babies, Cooney knew the score, you know what I mean,
Like he dressed infants on purpose and two large clothing.
Uh he would he would have nurses slip of finger
ringing around the entire risk of a premiature child because
this was visually appealing, right, and it's It's like people
(21:10):
were watching it for the fascination and a little bit,
a little bit of danger, a little bit of anxiety.
Will these children make it? Uh? You know one thing
I forgot to mention at the beginning of this, he
used the phrase Premis. In nineteen thirty nine, when he
was looking back and talking about this experience, he said,
all my life, I've been making propaganda for the proper
care of Premise, who in other times were allowed to die.
(21:32):
And that's why I said, everything that he did was
strictly ethical. Kind of a ends justify the means reasoning
if you think about it. And here's the thing. This
Coney Island inventorium stuff huge success, huge success. Uh. He
would charge a couple of cents to get in, and
then again from that PBS a little short that I saw,
(21:54):
he was apparently raking in about fift hundred dollars a day. Um.
But here's the thing, you know, I think a big
part of the success of it, in terms of like
the viewers, wasn't necessarily it was a pleasant thing. It
wasn't like a freak show. It wasn't like, look at
that weird looking baby. It was because in their incubators.
They looked safe, and they looked cuddly and kind of like,
(22:16):
you know, nothing could harm them, and that's sort of comforting,
especially when you see something vulnerable that's being cared for. Uh.
That that's just a theory, but I think that that
likely has something to do with the success because he
was making that kind of money every day and this
was a permanent installation at Coney Islands Luna Park um
and he while he charged people to see it, he
(22:39):
didn't charge the parents of the babies to put them
in there. So what does that mean? This is a
very complicated individual. Like on the one hand, he's doing
this thing that on the surface could seem kind of
exploitive of of of these uh you know, unfortunate uh
infants that that are having difficulty, But he's also literally
(23:02):
the reason that they're like gonna be okay. And he's
not charging the parents anything because medical to the medical
community hasn't fully embraced this technology yet. So without him
and this side show, he likely that these a lot
of these babies likely wouldness survived. Yeah, it's true. They
have made a lot of money and it went to
the children. We know that in nineteen O three. It
(23:24):
costs fifteen dollars a day to care for each individual baby.
That's around four hundred and five dollars a day in
these are modern times, and he Cooney was able to
cover all the cost through the entrance fees alone. But
because he was operating in a side show setting rather
(23:45):
than the maternity ward of a hospital, people viewed him
with suspicion and some folks outright hated this guy. Folks
like the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty
to Children. They accused him multiple times of exploiting the babies,
endangering their lives, putting them on display. But none of
(24:07):
these complaints really hurt the endeavor, and by the nineteen
thirties people were coming around and they were saying, you know,
this guy is a medical pioneer. That's right, he's onto something.
Um it is. I don't have the direct quote in
front of me, but one of those uh prevention, you know,
Cruelty to children organizations said something like, how dare you, sir,
(24:29):
take a vulnerable small child and put them in the
tawdry chaos of the midway, you know, like something along
those lines. Like it was like he was he was
being a bad influence, like these babies, we're gonna accidentally
get drunk or something or catch a whiff of cigarettes smoke,
right exactly. And so if you happen to see the
(24:50):
World's Fair in Chicago in nineteen thirty three and thirty
four lasted more than years, like eighteen months, it would
be tough to miss Cooney's. You would see this huge
sign that says like living babies and incubators Ethically, Apparently,
it was quite a massive sign, and I've seen them
(25:10):
categorized as being the Simithsonian article that we looked at
as the letters being so large they could be read
from across the entire uh fair ground, which was massive.
This was the Chicago World's Fair. This was like the
America's big Like this is us. We are at the
pinnacle of technological discovery of you know, pushing the narrative forward.
(25:32):
And this was no exception. So you'd think something like
the Incubator, with all the amazing things we said about it,
all the amazing research, um would be like in the
main hall next to the automobile you know or whatever.
But that wasn't the case because it really continued the
same tradition as his previous iteration of this as kind
(25:56):
of like on the midway right, which they definitely had
a the World's Fair. In fact, this booth was right
next to one featuring the famous scandalous Sally Rand, who
was known it was a burlesque dancer known for her
ostrich feather fan dance and also balloon bubble dance. And
(26:17):
um really like got arrested multiple times, charged with like
all kinds of levels of indecency, and they had her
right next to the premature baby exhibit at the Chicago
World's Fair, exactly. Yeah. And these incubators, of course, if
we're talking turkey here, Uh, they were not inexpensive as
(26:38):
you might imagine. Uh. The exhibit itself was I think
the entire cost of it was seventy dollars back then,
which is around one point four million dollars today. Uh.
And and the price went up to over time as
as it became more respected in the public and the zeitgeist.
I believe by the time it was in cargo, the
(27:01):
audience members paid cents to see the exhibit, and they
flocked there by the hundreds of thousands. Eventually, this leads
to Cooney having a homecoming celebration on July four, And
this is kind of I rarely say this word, but
this is kind of cute. It was for the babies
(27:22):
who had graduated from the incubators at the Chicago World's
Fair that past summer. And this was broadcast live on
local radio and across the fair grounds, so people were
able to see the results of this incubation technology at work.
And you gotta think how amazing it is. It's got
(27:44):
to be a warm, fuzzy feeling if you saw these
exhibits earlier and then you hear this story and you think,
you know, I, in some way, whether through a dime
or a quarter, helped these kids live. It's certainly the
surprise eyes twist payoff. You know. I don't like again,
it really seems that the at the very least, I mean,
(28:06):
what is it real live incubated babies. You know, it
doesn't necessarily uh scream charity um. But he almost was
like secretly getting these folks to contribute to the well
being of these children, even if that wasn't front and
center in the in the whole you know, concept of
the of the exhibit. Um. He also like had it
(28:28):
all schmalt stuff and like red, white, and blue, and
you know, he had nurses running around wearing like starched
white kind of uniforms, and the whole thing was very Uh,
there was a lot of pageantry to it. It's very interesting,
but I think he knew exactly what he was doing.
(28:49):
You might be asking yourself, Casey nol Ben, why can't
I go see a infictorium today? You know, I don't
want to see it in a hospital. I went the
side show experience. I want to eat some fun, Okay,
I want a little razzle dazzle, you know, yeah, exactly. Uh.
This was an era and it did come to an end.
(29:10):
After decades of caring for these children. Cooney was credited
in the development of neonatal care and hospitals, but the
public got familiarized with it, right. It lost that razzle
dazzle we described, It lost that sense of novelty, and
by the early nineteen forties, people just weren't as interested
in the novelty of baby incubators and hospitals were also
(29:34):
starting to open their own units dedicated to the care
of premature children, and so in Ninette Cooney closes the
show in Coney Island. He lives seven more years. He
passes away at the age of eighty. The sad story
is that he achieved fame, but maybe not financial success.
(29:56):
This is how this is what makes me think he
wasn't crooked or embezzling. He was apparently broke when he
passed away. Did you see that? No? I didn't see that.
But it does make sense. I mean, you know, we're
talking a lot of money to buy all these machines
and to have the upkeep and to hire the staff,
and you know, it really does feel like perhaps the
price of admission was just going back into the maintenance
(30:17):
of all this stuff, you know. Uh, And he really
did just figure out a clever, kind of sneaky way
of building like the world's first top of the line
neonatal care center, because it wasn't until you know, folks
took notice of the of the good that he was
doing that this technology did really catch on in a
much more meaningful way. I wanted to backtrack, ever, so
(30:40):
s latest to point out something interesting. That is, when
something that was mentioned in the PBS thing that I watched,
um which I'm gonna give you the name of because
it's it was quite good and short and very interesting Uh.
We talked about this in the past, that the World's
Fair had kind of a history of doing odd human displays.
(31:00):
If you get my drift, Ben, remember the indigenous people
display very messed up, very messed up like this human
zoo almost of folks from you know, African countries, dressed
in their you know, uh indigenous garb and holding spears,
and one particular individual was um eventually put in like
(31:22):
a zoo and then he was forced to like wrestle
with a chimpanzee every day until uh organization that worked
towards black rights uh shut that down. And then he
ended up in a in in a home kind of
like a halfway house situation and took his own life. Uh.
Not to say that this is anything like that, but
(31:43):
if if my brain moved towards like the exploitative nous
of this, that's something that definitely popped in, especially since
we had discussed that story before. Yeah, there's another twist here.
Cooney had his heart in the right place. But we
were very careful folks in the way we described him
throughout this episode. Let's see, we called him a an entrepreneur,
(32:06):
maybe we implied that businessman. We called him a medical pioneer.
But there's one thing he wasn't. He was not a doctor,
most likely almost almost certainly. Yeah, yeah, that I did
feel like I almost like did I miss that part? Like,
you know, because he um, Yeah, it's true. He had
(32:27):
said that he studied medicine in Berlin and Leipsig, but
there was no evidence that he actually and he went
by a couple of different names. We know him as Cooney,
he go went by Cohen k o h N also Cohen.
There's no evidence that he actually studied medicine at the
university in either of those cities. Um. And you know,
(32:49):
in Germany, to be a physician you have to write
a thesis. And uh, you know, the U s National
Library of Medicine has copies of all of the German
records and of thus far been able unable to locate
a thesis written by Cooney. Yeah. He was also super
super sketchy about the specifics of his personal life, which
(33:11):
you know, I respect. Uh. He was evasive about his
date of birth and where he was born. Later research
showed that he immigrated to the US and at the
age of nineteen. But the problem with that is someone
of that age would not have been old enough to
be at university in Berlin and leapsake before going on
(33:34):
to do grad work in Paris. UH. He claimed to
be the inventor of an incubator, but there's no evidence
that he registered a patent. UH In he listed his
career as get the surgical instruments, and then by my
ninety thirty he described himself in the census as a physician.
(33:58):
So if he had been caught doing any of that falsely,
you know, pretending to be a doctor, that's that's breaking
the law. He could have gone to prison. And the
weird complex part about that is this means almost certainly
many of those children would have died. Yeah, that's right.
We've been kind of saying that how along, and not
to be labor the point, but because the whole thing
(34:21):
is just kind of a head scratcher, right, Like, on
the one hand, he did something that was real, real cool,
you know, at a real positive impact. By the way,
off Mike well well, Ben was making an amazing point. Um.
I looked up what this PBS clip was, and it's
from a show or a series called History Detectives from
season seven, episode four. Uh. It's sixteen minute, fifty second
(34:42):
clip about side show babies, and basically this all starts
with a woman who wants to know if the silver
baby cup that she got from the nineteen thirty three
Chicago's World's Fair with her name engraved on in Patricia Uh,
if there was Her mother claimed that she was whisked
away from her home as a premature baby be um
who was literally being kept in a shoe box by
(35:03):
the radiator like we talked about, UH, and taken UH
to an incubator at the nineteen thirty three Chicago World's Fair.
And this episode starts off with is this even true?
She has no evidence of this being true. The woman
does recognize that this silver cup is in fact a
genuine artifact from the Chicago World's Fair. It had the
right logo and everything. It turns out that these cups
(35:26):
were given to those quote unquote graduates that we talked about,
and she was in fact one of the babies that
were that you know. And again there's a lot of
it's gonna be a lot of babies because this was,
like what you say, it lasted a year the Chicago
World's Fair eighteen months, so UH, And I don't want
to spoil the whole thing for even though I kind
(35:47):
of spoiled a part of it. But there's a lot
more information that's I highly recommend you check it out.
Uh just about like a lot of good imagery from
the time, archival stuff, and you get to see, uh,
you get to go a little deeper into it visual
then obviously you can do on a podcast. But she
ends up very pleased that she was then that this happened.
(36:08):
It starts off a little questionable, and then she ends
up being very thankful that that. You know, she didn't
think she would have survived if not for for this gentleman.
And that's been a journey like that for I think
both of us. Too bad. It's from ups and downs
in terms of whoa WDF to Oh it's heartwarming, back
to you know, somewhere in the middle when we find
out that he wasn't really a doctor, but at some
(36:30):
point he retired and just said my work here is
done and I've saved enough babies. Yeah, he claimed an
eighty five percent success rate. There's no way to verify that,
but it's still far far better than zero percent, right,
or then these poor children having to be left to
the whims of fate, and with that in mind, we say,
(36:54):
hats off to you Cooney. You're you're a bit sketchy,
that's true. It is a bit of a roller coaster
worthy of Codey Island. But you made the world a
better place, So I would I would say thanks to him,
you know, thanks for making side shows a little more wholesome. Yeah,
And I would also argue that in those days, sometimes
(37:16):
a little healthy sketch goes a long way, that's right. Yeah,
Sometimes sometimes you had to get it in where you could.
And he definitely had a plan and uh, you know,
as evidence by the fact that he retired with very
little money. Certainly wasn't a money making scheme. It was
much more of like his life's work. And I don't know,
like I don't know there's quite enough for like a big,
(37:37):
full biopic, but I definitely think that he deserves a
place in the history of of of medicine, even if
he wasn't an actual doctor. And so that's our show today.
Thank you as always for tuning in, big, big thanks
to super producer Casey Pegram And I forgot to ask you, guys,
where did either of you happen to be born prematurely
(38:00):
not I, Um though, my daughter's sister was, but only
just a little bit. But she did have a little
bit of She had to be put on an incubator
for a bit and then she was fine, but she
had she had a little bit of problems breathing. That's
the thing that happens to if they're underdeveloped, they have
to you know, get a little extra help. Um. So yeah,
it was definitely scary, but less so knowing that this
(38:21):
tech was out there. You know, what about you, Casey.
I had a friend growing up. I was born on
his due date and he was born on mine. But
it was only a difference of like four days, so
that's not really premature, so I can't I can't really
lay claim to that. No, that's pretty cool. I was
the opposite. I was born two weeks late. I'm still
catching up. I was enormous. Uh, but we want to
(38:43):
hear from you. You can find us all over the internet,
the Instagram's, the Twitter bowls, the Facebook areas. Just go
check out ridiculous historians on Facebook. We'd love to recommend
that one. You can see some sick memes. You can
see your fellow listeners. Uh, both mocking both my crippling
(39:05):
phobia of metal and uh my my pal Knolls fear
of birds. Uh, in a very good hearted, wholesome way,
usually usually usually No, We love every single one of
the folks over their ridiculous historians, and you can be
one of them too and be the recipient of our love.
All you gotta do is go to Facebook, uh in
(39:26):
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you can do that. You can also find us on
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(39:46):
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(40:07):
the show at some point soon. He's busy, he's he's
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Blugier researcher extraordinaire. I thank Jonathan Quiz. Did you think
(40:28):
Jonathan Quister? That's what I want to start calling him now,
to Jonathan like Jonathan Swift, I'm since to start calling
him Jonathan Quister. I think that works. Uh. If you
did thank him, I'm thinking him again. If you didn't
consider this the first time, with double the love, It's Friday, y'all.
We're not entirely here. We've been checked out for about
the last fifteen minutes. We're giving it our level best
speak for yourself intentions. Hey, when I say we, I
(40:53):
mean the royal we as in this guy right here
with the two of the two thumbs and the and
the dad jokes. I'm gonna tell you a secret, give
it before before we go off there. I've been, I've been,
I made, I made a cocktail, and I've just been
staring at it off screen for when we wrap Ben,
(41:13):
what is it? What is it? It's an old fashioned
I'm gonna go get an old fashioned tub man. Well,
I'll enjoy one with you in spirit up there in
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(41:38):
more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
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Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Ye,
(00:26):
welcome to the show Ridiculous Historians. As always, thank you
so much for tuning in. This is you know, I've
said this before, but but this this is a really
really weird one. It's a story that maybe I'm familiar
to a lot of people. Uh, unless, of course, you're
a fan of side shows. I don't do people still
(00:50):
go to side shows. I mean, it's certainly not particularly
politically correct anymore. You're Ben still though, right, not a
proprietor of a side show. Yeah, and you're knowl I am.
I mean, I think the closest thing we've got today
would be like a Ripley's Believe it or Not situation
where maybe I don't know, maybe there's some some things
in there that could be classified as that, but they're
(01:11):
not human beings, their dioramas or recreations or you know,
just a historical kind of exhibit. But yeah, man, uh
sideshows uh problematic and fascinating things. Yes, yes, to say
the least, I was also captivated by Ripley's Believe It
or Not. I think for people in our generation that
(01:33):
that was probably to your point, the closest that a
lot of us came to side shows. Uh. We have to,
as always ask our super producer Casey Pegram before we
begin today's show. Casey, I know you're coming in blind
with this one. Uh, what's your take on sideshows? I'm
just thinking about sideshow Bob from the Simpsons. That was
(01:56):
one association that popped up immediately. But yeah, I'm pretty
much where you guys are, like Ripley's believe it or not,
at the wax Museum, things you do at Destin Beach
on vacation, those are kind of the vibes I'm getting.
So never's like a genuine side show, probably for the
best m m. Yeah, usually somewhere near the airbrush t
(02:16):
shirt stand where you can get like a dolphin jumping
over a sunset that's right, a shell uh that is
painted in some bizarre color. I I like the beach life,
like the boardwalk snacks. Today we are talking about something
that happened on boardwalks, early boardwalk side shows today. In
(02:38):
as we know, side shows often have this terrible historical
reputation because there would be people who had some sort
of disability, right or some sort of visually striking difference
about themselves. That's right, And I mean, you know, it's
complicated because oftentimes, while those folks were reviled and ridicule
(02:59):
as part of those it was a society that would
have shunned them to such a degree they probably wouldn't
have been able to find gainful employment in any other way.
So it's a bit of a mixed bag. Will While
it was definitely you know, uh, it makes me think
of why people had a real problem with that movie
The Greatest Showman, because it really romanticized that whole world.
But then there's a very empowered musical number where all
(03:21):
the sideshow oddity individuals kind of banded together and talk
about how they're beautiful on the inside and stuff. But
that movie kind of divided people. I quite enjoy the music, though,
but you know what I'm saying though, like this is
definitely you know, they were getting paid probably a pittance,
you know, but they were fed, and they were allowed
to kind of live within a society or a mini
(03:42):
society that would at least kind of accept them as peers.
And often there were you know, kind of famous ones
in terms of individuals, like you know, you think about
the lobster Boy and all of that stuff. But you
have sort of categories of sideshow oddity, things like pin heads,
which would have been, you know, a pretty crass way
of referring to somebody with a developmental condition that caused
(04:06):
problems with the shape of their skull, et cetera. And
they kind of had like a point to skull that's
exactly right. It's exactly right then, And bearded ladies and
things like that, the tattooed man. You know, people that's
had any kind of any number of outward um conditions
that could have been looked at as you know, they're
(04:27):
some kind of mutation or some sort of superpower in
a weird way, but not in a positive way. I
don't know what I'm I'm kind of I feel like
I'm having a hard time talking about it and trying
to stay relatively PC because it is such a difficult
thing to discuss. Yeah, for a lot of people. Uh,
the idea of the sideshow instantly conjures images. I know
(04:51):
you were probably thinking of this two casey of the
ninety two film Freaks, Uh, and Freaks did feature people
who had worked side show performers in real life. Uh,
like the microcephalic Schlitzy who was billed as the last
of the Aztecs. And to your point, well, there would
be things like conjoined twins. Uh, there would be things like,
(05:15):
as you said, someone with differently shaped hands, someone who
had three legs. But then there would also be people
who are capable of extraordinary feats like how many how
many people were roaming through the Midwest claiming to be
the world's strongest man, were the largest largest person. When
we think of this, and I think it did a
(05:36):
tremendous job explaining some of the problematic aspects of this.
But when we think of side shows today, we're you know,
we we have the benefit of retrospect, and we also
think in terms of those categories like the tattooed lady,
the illustrated man, and so on. But today we'd like
to introduce you to a new type of sideshow exhibit
(05:59):
that might surprise you. It turned out, for a time
in the beginning of the twentieth century, babies became stars
of side shows for a very weird reason. But not
just any baby. These were specifically babies that were born
um early before the full term of the pregnancy had
(06:21):
come to a conclusion, and they're referred to collectively as
premature babies. And you know, folks out there in podcast
land may have siblings that are premature that we're born prematurely. Um,
there are many reasons this can happen. UM. Some absolutely
just completely a fluke. You never you can't really predict
what it's going to happen. UM. There are obviously more
(06:43):
kind of negative and nasty reasons this can happen, things
like drug addiction and the mother. Um. But a lot
of times, oftentimes when babies are born prematurely has nothing
to do with any uh negative actions of the mother.
And it's also more than possible for that baby, they're
moren small to have a completely normal life and become
(07:03):
completely healthy. And that is because of some medical technology,
specifically something called an incubator. Yes, one of the main
characters of our story today is a doctor, Martin A Cooney.
He knew about incubators. He knew that incubators could play
a powerful role in ensuring the health of premature babies.
(07:28):
But he also knew that the quote unquote system, you know,
the medical establishment and stuff, didn't have much interest in
pushing this new technology forward because the incubator was a
very new idea at the time. There wasn't a lot
of money being put into research for this literally life
(07:48):
saving technology. So he decided that he would hit the
streets himself, and he built a traveling exhibit that showed
audience members premature babies living in incubators. For a lot
of us, this sounds like a maternity ward, right, Hey,
(08:10):
pre covid, I could go to a hospital and if
I'm not too creepy, they'll let me walk by that area.
They sure will. Um not not so much these days.
But Cooney's fascination with incubators, you know, came, didn't just
come like us an overnight thing. Wasn't like the hot
new medical device on the street. Um. He studied in
(08:30):
Paris under a very well respected researcher and um and
physician named Pierre Boudin, who was confused as to why,
you know, these devices hadn't been adopted more widely. So
he actually displayed some incubators in the Berlin World's Fair
(08:53):
in eighteen nineties six. And this was really kind of
at the the onset of of the idea of a fair.
It wasn't really what we think of today is you know,
it's sort of devolved into just more of a you know,
a place where you can write a cheap roller coaster.
It sort of travels from town to town. Um, there
might be some games that you're gonna lose your money
(09:14):
off of, but at the time they were really considered
these kind of like almost like what we have today
with stuff like ce S, which is, you know, the
massive electronics convention where new technology is unveiled in all
of the different organizations and companies that make technology show
up and show their wares all at the same time
(09:35):
in in Vegas. You've been to one of those, haven't you, Casey.
We've been to several, ben and I yeah to you,
to cover um, automotive stuff, um, some just kind of
general technology. It's uh, multiple convention centers, massive footprint, tens
of thousands of booths. I think, um, yeah, it's quite something.
We Uh my favorite memory of CS probably is is
(09:58):
the weird night A group of us and the crew
got together and one of us, friend of the show
Stillan Fagan, had never gambled before, and I think Ramsey
was the same, and so so we set off to
try to try to have a Vegas experience it was
a ridiculous story for another day. But you're right, these
(10:19):
things world fairs CS, stuff like the the expos, like
the Pan American Exposition. These were prominent, high level of fairs,
you know what I mean, Like people would go to
these things to see the latest innovations. I think your
comparison about CS is spot on Nolan's. It was much
These were much more like a big up and coming
(10:42):
technology kind of conventioned and they were what you would
consider a side show today. And that's where these child
hatcheries came in. That's what they were called. You would
as an audience member, you would pay a dime and
you can see pictures of this, especially there's some great
ones on an article from Atlas Obscura. You would pay
(11:05):
a time and you would walk around and observe these
babies living, happy and hopefully healthy in these incubators. They're
much larger, by the way, than the incubators were familiar
with today. And we have to establish at the beginning
of this story the children were not harmed by being
(11:25):
in the incubators. They were they were on display, so
there's you know, a wound to their dignity perhaps, but
they were able to receive medical care that they otherwise
probably would not have received. And this this is an
idea that went through several iterations before our friend Cooney
(11:46):
had brought the Act to the United States. So let's
maybe just let's stay with the incubators just a little bit,
and let's describe them. So his baby had child hatchery,
or infantorium as it was called. UH. Each incubator in
there was about one and a half meters high. They
(12:06):
had steel walls, they had a framework a glass front
so you could observe the children. And they used water
boilers to feed warm water into pipes running underneath the
babies UH, and thermostats to maintain and regulate temperatures. What
we're saying is that the baby's overall, we're safe in
these things. That's that's key to this story. Well, I
(12:28):
mean they were more than safe, right. They really desperately
needed this, and that's because premature babies have a they're
they're incapable of regulating their own body temperatures. And before
incubators were a thing, I've I've read, you know, in
researching this and watching I watched a really interesting PBS
I can't remember what it was called but it was Justtally,
a woman who antique road show style, was presented with
(12:51):
this like silver cup from an event at the at
the Chicago World's Fair. Um, and it was connected to
one of these baby display kind of situations, and one
of the doctors they interviewed just talking about how um
and before there were incubators, doctors didn't know what to
do and they didn't have much control, so they would
(13:12):
do things like put the babies in shoe boxes and
stick them next to a radiator, which sounds really unsafe.
So yeah, yeah, these things were revolutionary. Yeah yeah. And sadly,
before the rise of incubators, there would be people who
would say things like, well, the child has to do
its best to survive, you know, and that's a terrible
(13:32):
thing for you to hear as a parrot. And that's
where our story leads us to Coney Island. Around the
turn of the century. If you headed to Coney Island,
you would see, you know, all the usual Coney Island diversions,
although I do believe this was before Nathan's famous hot
dog eating contest, which is one of my favorite things.
(13:54):
You could go to a newly opened amusement park called
Luna Park, but you might also run into a permanent
inventorI um, a permanent exhibit of premature babies in these incubators,
and Cooney was doing this because he needed the funds
(14:15):
from these audience members. The technology of incubators for humans
was laughed at, a roundly dismissed by physicians, even though,
as you said, no it it had a past before,
like people knew the thing would work. It's just it's
sad when you think that for the first five decades
of the existence of this incubator, it was functioning mostly
(14:38):
as a novelty item. That's right. I mean, you know,
we think of incubators in terms of like hatching eggs,
you know, from chicken embryos, let's say, and that's really cool,
but not always necessary. It's sort of a little more
of like a parlor trick, a scientific parlor trick. It's
not something you know, when you think of like farmed
eggs or even mass produced chicken eggs, it's not something
(15:00):
that would be employed in that respect. So that's that's
an interesting way of putting it bad. Although I can't
help but think of the scene from Jurassic Park with
the incubator and the baby velociraptor that he pulls out,
it's all covered in like bloody slime. Uh, and then
kind of makes that let all kind of And that's
how you know those buggers are evil because the baby
(15:23):
is evil. Grown ups are definitely gonna be evil. Uh. Yeah,
you're right, But what what isn't cute when it's in
that juvenile stage? I am clearly biased. I'm a Jurassic
Park fan. Uh. There's even a holiday called July six
Park by one of my favorite sketch groups, Chris and Jack.
So do celebrate it when you get a chance. Your
Your point about incubators is absolutely true. It wasn't until
(15:46):
the eighteen eighties when Stefantagnier, French obstetrician, saw these things
being used at a zoo and said, hey, if it
works on baby chickens, maybe it works on baby humans.
And part of the reason the medical establishment did not
immediately jump on the baby train here is that they
(16:06):
had a long history of prejudice toward premature babies. It
was expensive to care for them, and honestly, as horrible
as this sounds, a lot of people thought it was
pointless because babies born below a certain threshold of birth
weight had high mortality. And then physicians also thought this
(16:28):
invention that came from watching chickens in a zoo was
unscientific and they didn't believe that it could actually save
people's lives. And that's where the guy you mentioned earlier, Pierre,
comes in, and he says, why aren't more hospitals investing
in this? We can save people. So he started researching
the technology. He kept running into roadblocks for funding, and
(16:53):
that's why in like you said, he wanted to display
these incubators at the World's Fair. That's absolutely correct. The
World's Fair. Um, you know, you'll recall when you're making
that CS comparison and sort of the whole like modern
day con and like you know, whether it's unveiling the
newest uh uh you know, smart home technology or what
(17:15):
have you. Back in these days, the technology that was
being unveiled was like life changing. Really well, I mean
not to say that technology today isn't important if there
are there aren't occasionally things that are unveiled these kind
of uh conferences that do change people's lives, but not
the same as like the dishwasher or like the color television.
(17:35):
You know, things that like haven't really been replaced, They've
maybe been improved upon, They've maybe been given internet connectivity.
Or you have like a camera inside your fridge that
you can look up on your smartphone in cause you
can see how much cott is cheese you have left
when you're at the grocery store. But uh, it's the
game changing technology in the way that we would see
in these industrial just post industrial revolution fairs. Isn't quite
(17:57):
the same today. And you guys completely only I'm full
of crap if if you think I'm missing the mark
on that. But um, the ones that we that really
lead the charge were European. So Cooney realizes these exhibits
can save babies lives and they and he realizes the
public will pay to see this futuristic technology. Eventually, he
(18:22):
and Boudin realized that these exhibits are successful enough to
make a potential life saver for these children. Coney was
interested personally in this because he himself was the father
of a child born prematurely as daughter, and he reasoned,
if hospitals don't care for these prematurely born children, then
(18:44):
we can crowdsources. He didn't use the word crowdsource, but
that's essentially what he did in Buffalo, New York in
nine one. He built this huge building just for the
baby Incubator exhibit. He got tons of press, which turned
out to be even more important than getting a lot
of people in the crowd. And that's how starting in
(19:06):
nineteen o three you could see the permanent Coney Island
Baby Incubator exhibition. One was at Luna Park and another
one was also in Coney Island at dream Land, so
nurses would tend to the babies the public would look
on in amazement. And the weird thing is this is
(19:26):
still kind of like a sideshow, so there is still
a carnival barker here. And I wonder what they're saying,
like America left technology, the baby is born premature, through
the wonders of our age, will be able to live.
It's so, yeah, they had a pitch. I'm sure they
were about but it's also like, I don't know. The
(19:48):
thing about it is like premature babies are cute because
they're so bloody small and their eyes are closed. They
look like little rabbits or little puppies you know, that
are born when their eyes aren't even open yet, and
and they're real skinny, and so like they're on the
one hand, they're they're adorable, babies are cute and everything,
but they're also you know, they're not the most healthy looking.
(20:08):
They're a little like you're you're worried about them. There's
a sense of of of oh, no, is this baby
gonna be okay? And uh, I wonder it seems like
there was a capitalization on all of those things because
I don't know, like the pitch likely did not center
specifically on the amazing life saving technology that is that
(20:29):
is just my uh my, the sense that I get
what do you what do you think? Then yeah, he
definitely so there were definitely theatrical elements to this, right
that people are going to see. We know that. According
to a book by Dawn Raffle, The Strange Case of
Dr Cooney, How a mysterious European showman Saved thousands of
(20:49):
American babies, Cooney knew the score, you know what I mean,
Like he dressed infants on purpose and two large clothing.
Uh he would he would have nurses slip of finger
ringing around the entire risk of a premiature child because
this was visually appealing, right, and it's It's like people
(21:10):
were watching it for the fascination and a little bit,
a little bit of danger, a little bit of anxiety.
Will these children make it? Uh? You know one thing
I forgot to mention at the beginning of this, he
used the phrase Premis. In nineteen thirty nine, when he
was looking back and talking about this experience, he said,
all my life, I've been making propaganda for the proper
care of Premise, who in other times were allowed to die.
(21:32):
And that's why I said, everything that he did was
strictly ethical. Kind of a ends justify the means reasoning
if you think about it. And here's the thing. This
Coney Island inventorium stuff huge success, huge success. Uh. He
would charge a couple of cents to get in, and
then again from that PBS a little short that I saw,
(21:54):
he was apparently raking in about fift hundred dollars a day. Um.
But here's the thing, you know, I think a big
part of the success of it, in terms of like
the viewers, wasn't necessarily it was a pleasant thing. It
wasn't like a freak show. It wasn't like, look at
that weird looking baby. It was because in their incubators.
They looked safe, and they looked cuddly and kind of like,
(22:16):
you know, nothing could harm them, and that's sort of comforting,
especially when you see something vulnerable that's being cared for. Uh.
That that's just a theory, but I think that that
likely has something to do with the success because he
was making that kind of money every day and this
was a permanent installation at Coney Islands Luna Park um
and he while he charged people to see it, he
(22:39):
didn't charge the parents of the babies to put them
in there. So what does that mean? This is a
very complicated individual. Like on the one hand, he's doing
this thing that on the surface could seem kind of
exploitive of of of these uh you know, unfortunate uh
infants that that are having difficulty, But he's also literally
(23:02):
the reason that they're like gonna be okay. And he's
not charging the parents anything because medical to the medical
community hasn't fully embraced this technology yet. So without him
and this side show, he likely that these a lot
of these babies likely wouldness survived. Yeah, it's true. They
have made a lot of money and it went to
the children. We know that in nineteen O three. It
(23:24):
costs fifteen dollars a day to care for each individual baby.
That's around four hundred and five dollars a day in
these are modern times, and he Cooney was able to
cover all the cost through the entrance fees alone. But
because he was operating in a side show setting rather
(23:45):
than the maternity ward of a hospital, people viewed him
with suspicion and some folks outright hated this guy. Folks
like the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty
to Children. They accused him multiple times of exploiting the babies,
endangering their lives, putting them on display. But none of
(24:07):
these complaints really hurt the endeavor, and by the nineteen
thirties people were coming around and they were saying, you know,
this guy is a medical pioneer. That's right, he's onto something.
Um it is. I don't have the direct quote in
front of me, but one of those uh prevention, you know,
Cruelty to children organizations said something like, how dare you, sir,
(24:29):
take a vulnerable small child and put them in the
tawdry chaos of the midway, you know, like something along
those lines. Like it was like he was he was
being a bad influence, like these babies, we're gonna accidentally
get drunk or something or catch a whiff of cigarettes smoke,
right exactly. And so if you happen to see the
(24:50):
World's Fair in Chicago in nineteen thirty three and thirty
four lasted more than years, like eighteen months, it would
be tough to miss Cooney's. You would see this huge
sign that says like living babies and incubators Ethically, Apparently,
it was quite a massive sign, and I've seen them
(25:10):
categorized as being the Simithsonian article that we looked at
as the letters being so large they could be read
from across the entire uh fair ground, which was massive.
This was the Chicago World's Fair. This was like the
America's big Like this is us. We are at the
pinnacle of technological discovery of you know, pushing the narrative forward.
(25:32):
And this was no exception. So you'd think something like
the Incubator, with all the amazing things we said about it,
all the amazing research, um would be like in the
main hall next to the automobile you know or whatever.
But that wasn't the case because it really continued the
same tradition as his previous iteration of this as kind
(25:56):
of like on the midway right, which they definitely had
a the World's Fair. In fact, this booth was right
next to one featuring the famous scandalous Sally Rand, who
was known it was a burlesque dancer known for her
ostrich feather fan dance and also balloon bubble dance. And
(26:17):
um really like got arrested multiple times, charged with like
all kinds of levels of indecency, and they had her
right next to the premature baby exhibit at the Chicago
World's Fair, exactly. Yeah. And these incubators, of course, if
we're talking turkey here, Uh, they were not inexpensive as
(26:38):
you might imagine. Uh. The exhibit itself was I think
the entire cost of it was seventy dollars back then,
which is around one point four million dollars today. Uh.
And and the price went up to over time as
as it became more respected in the public and the zeitgeist.
I believe by the time it was in cargo, the
(27:01):
audience members paid cents to see the exhibit, and they
flocked there by the hundreds of thousands. Eventually, this leads
to Cooney having a homecoming celebration on July four, And
this is kind of I rarely say this word, but
this is kind of cute. It was for the babies
(27:22):
who had graduated from the incubators at the Chicago World's
Fair that past summer. And this was broadcast live on
local radio and across the fair grounds, so people were
able to see the results of this incubation technology at work.
And you gotta think how amazing it is. It's got
(27:44):
to be a warm, fuzzy feeling if you saw these
exhibits earlier and then you hear this story and you think,
you know, I, in some way, whether through a dime
or a quarter, helped these kids live. It's certainly the
surprise eyes twist payoff. You know. I don't like again,
it really seems that the at the very least, I mean,
(28:06):
what is it real live incubated babies. You know, it
doesn't necessarily uh scream charity um. But he almost was
like secretly getting these folks to contribute to the well
being of these children, even if that wasn't front and
center in the in the whole you know, concept of
the of the exhibit. Um. He also like had it
(28:28):
all schmalt stuff and like red, white, and blue, and
you know, he had nurses running around wearing like starched
white kind of uniforms, and the whole thing was very Uh,
there was a lot of pageantry to it. It's very interesting,
but I think he knew exactly what he was doing.
(28:49):
You might be asking yourself, Casey nol Ben, why can't
I go see a infictorium today? You know, I don't
want to see it in a hospital. I went the
side show experience. I want to eat some fun, Okay,
I want a little razzle dazzle, you know, yeah, exactly. Uh.
This was an era and it did come to an end.
(29:10):
After decades of caring for these children. Cooney was credited
in the development of neonatal care and hospitals, but the
public got familiarized with it, right. It lost that razzle
dazzle we described, It lost that sense of novelty, and
by the early nineteen forties, people just weren't as interested
in the novelty of baby incubators and hospitals were also
(29:34):
starting to open their own units dedicated to the care
of premature children, and so in Ninette Cooney closes the
show in Coney Island. He lives seven more years. He
passes away at the age of eighty. The sad story
is that he achieved fame, but maybe not financial success.
(29:56):
This is how this is what makes me think he
wasn't crooked or embezzling. He was apparently broke when he
passed away. Did you see that? No? I didn't see that.
But it does make sense. I mean, you know, we're
talking a lot of money to buy all these machines
and to have the upkeep and to hire the staff,
and you know, it really does feel like perhaps the
price of admission was just going back into the maintenance
(30:17):
of all this stuff, you know. Uh, And he really
did just figure out a clever, kind of sneaky way
of building like the world's first top of the line
neonatal care center, because it wasn't until you know, folks
took notice of the of the good that he was
doing that this technology did really catch on in a
much more meaningful way. I wanted to backtrack, ever, so
(30:40):
s latest to point out something interesting. That is, when
something that was mentioned in the PBS thing that I watched,
um which I'm gonna give you the name of because
it's it was quite good and short and very interesting Uh.
We talked about this in the past, that the World's
Fair had kind of a history of doing odd human displays.
(31:00):
If you get my drift, Ben, remember the indigenous people
display very messed up, very messed up like this human
zoo almost of folks from you know, African countries, dressed
in their you know, uh indigenous garb and holding spears,
and one particular individual was um eventually put in like
(31:22):
a zoo and then he was forced to like wrestle
with a chimpanzee every day until uh organization that worked
towards black rights uh shut that down. And then he
ended up in a in in a home kind of
like a halfway house situation and took his own life. Uh.
Not to say that this is anything like that, but
(31:43):
if if my brain moved towards like the exploitative nous
of this, that's something that definitely popped in, especially since
we had discussed that story before. Yeah, there's another twist here.
Cooney had his heart in the right place. But we
were very careful folks in the way we described him
throughout this episode. Let's see, we called him a an entrepreneur,
(32:06):
maybe we implied that businessman. We called him a medical pioneer.
But there's one thing he wasn't. He was not a doctor,
most likely almost almost certainly. Yeah, yeah, that I did
feel like I almost like did I miss that part? Like,
you know, because he um, Yeah, it's true. He had
(32:27):
said that he studied medicine in Berlin and Leipsig, but
there was no evidence that he actually and he went
by a couple of different names. We know him as Cooney,
he go went by Cohen k o h N also Cohen.
There's no evidence that he actually studied medicine at the
university in either of those cities. Um. And you know,
(32:49):
in Germany, to be a physician you have to write
a thesis. And uh, you know, the U s National
Library of Medicine has copies of all of the German
records and of thus far been able unable to locate
a thesis written by Cooney. Yeah. He was also super
super sketchy about the specifics of his personal life, which
(33:11):
you know, I respect. Uh. He was evasive about his
date of birth and where he was born. Later research
showed that he immigrated to the US and at the
age of nineteen. But the problem with that is someone
of that age would not have been old enough to
be at university in Berlin and leapsake before going on
(33:34):
to do grad work in Paris. UH. He claimed to
be the inventor of an incubator, but there's no evidence
that he registered a patent. UH In he listed his
career as get the surgical instruments, and then by my
ninety thirty he described himself in the census as a physician.
(33:58):
So if he had been caught doing any of that falsely,
you know, pretending to be a doctor, that's that's breaking
the law. He could have gone to prison. And the
weird complex part about that is this means almost certainly
many of those children would have died. Yeah, that's right.
We've been kind of saying that how along, and not
to be labor the point, but because the whole thing
(34:21):
is just kind of a head scratcher, right, Like, on
the one hand, he did something that was real, real cool,
you know, at a real positive impact. By the way,
off Mike well well, Ben was making an amazing point. Um.
I looked up what this PBS clip was, and it's
from a show or a series called History Detectives from
season seven, episode four. Uh. It's sixteen minute, fifty second
(34:42):
clip about side show babies, and basically this all starts
with a woman who wants to know if the silver
baby cup that she got from the nineteen thirty three
Chicago's World's Fair with her name engraved on in Patricia Uh,
if there was Her mother claimed that she was whisked
away from her home as a premature baby be um
who was literally being kept in a shoe box by
(35:03):
the radiator like we talked about, UH, and taken UH
to an incubator at the nineteen thirty three Chicago World's Fair.
And this episode starts off with is this even true?
She has no evidence of this being true. The woman
does recognize that this silver cup is in fact a
genuine artifact from the Chicago World's Fair. It had the
right logo and everything. It turns out that these cups
(35:26):
were given to those quote unquote graduates that we talked about,
and she was in fact one of the babies that
were that you know. And again there's a lot of
it's gonna be a lot of babies because this was,
like what you say, it lasted a year the Chicago
World's Fair eighteen months, so UH, And I don't want
to spoil the whole thing for even though I kind
(35:47):
of spoiled a part of it. But there's a lot
more information that's I highly recommend you check it out.
Uh just about like a lot of good imagery from
the time, archival stuff, and you get to see, uh,
you get to go a little deeper into it visual
then obviously you can do on a podcast. But she
ends up very pleased that she was then that this happened.
(36:08):
It starts off a little questionable, and then she ends
up being very thankful that that. You know, she didn't
think she would have survived if not for for this gentleman.
And that's been a journey like that for I think
both of us. Too bad. It's from ups and downs
in terms of whoa WDF to Oh it's heartwarming, back
to you know, somewhere in the middle when we find
out that he wasn't really a doctor, but at some
(36:30):
point he retired and just said my work here is
done and I've saved enough babies. Yeah, he claimed an
eighty five percent success rate. There's no way to verify that,
but it's still far far better than zero percent, right,
or then these poor children having to be left to
the whims of fate, and with that in mind, we say,
(36:54):
hats off to you Cooney. You're you're a bit sketchy,
that's true. It is a bit of a roller coaster
worthy of Codey Island. But you made the world a
better place, So I would I would say thanks to him,
you know, thanks for making side shows a little more wholesome. Yeah,
And I would also argue that in those days, sometimes
(37:16):
a little healthy sketch goes a long way, that's right. Yeah,
Sometimes sometimes you had to get it in where you could.
And he definitely had a plan and uh, you know,
as evidence by the fact that he retired with very
little money. Certainly wasn't a money making scheme. It was
much more of like his life's work. And I don't know,
like I don't know there's quite enough for like a big,
(37:37):
full biopic, but I definitely think that he deserves a
place in the history of of of medicine, even if
he wasn't an actual doctor. And so that's our show today.
Thank you as always for tuning in, big, big thanks
to super producer Casey Pegram And I forgot to ask you, guys,
where did either of you happen to be born prematurely
(38:00):
not I, Um though, my daughter's sister was, but only
just a little bit. But she did have a little
bit of She had to be put on an incubator
for a bit and then she was fine, but she
had she had a little bit of problems breathing. That's
the thing that happens to if they're underdeveloped, they have
to you know, get a little extra help. Um. So yeah,
it was definitely scary, but less so knowing that this
(38:21):
tech was out there. You know, what about you, Casey.
I had a friend growing up. I was born on
his due date and he was born on mine. But
it was only a difference of like four days, so
that's not really premature, so I can't I can't really
lay claim to that. No, that's pretty cool. I was
the opposite. I was born two weeks late. I'm still
catching up. I was enormous. Uh, but we want to
(38:43):
hear from you. You can find us all over the internet,
the Instagram's, the Twitter bowls, the Facebook areas. Just go
check out ridiculous historians on Facebook. We'd love to recommend
that one. You can see some sick memes. You can
see your fellow listeners. Uh, both mocking both my crippling
(39:05):
phobia of metal and uh my my pal Knolls fear
of birds. Uh, in a very good hearted, wholesome way,
usually usually usually No, We love every single one of
the folks over their ridiculous historians, and you can be
one of them too and be the recipient of our love.
All you gotta do is go to Facebook, uh in
(39:26):
our articulous storians and inner one of our names. All
three a joke, a dad joke, some references that we
know that you're alive and breathing and not some sort
of creepy bot trying to infiltrate our precious community. Um,
you can do that. You can also find us on
social media or ridiculous history. Uh, if you want. You
can also find Ben and I as human people on
(39:46):
our own social meats. I am at how now, Noel
Brown on Instagram. You can find me on Twitter app
Ben Bull in hs W. You can also find me
on Instagram. Uh, as I always say, in a burst
of creativity, I'm Ben Bowland. Thanks of course to the
quister Jonathan Strickland, who we need to get back on
(40:07):
the show at some point soon. He's busy, he's he's
learning guitar. Actually, I think he's okay if we tell
people that. Uh. And thanks, of course to Alex Williams,
our official uh slapping Bob Bob and slap maker. Thanks
Chris for us it is here in spirit U gave
Blugier researcher extraordinaire. I thank Jonathan Quiz. Did you think
(40:28):
Jonathan Quister? That's what I want to start calling him now,
to Jonathan like Jonathan Swift, I'm since to start calling
him Jonathan Quister. I think that works. Uh. If you
did thank him, I'm thinking him again. If you didn't
consider this the first time, with double the love, It's Friday, y'all.
We're not entirely here. We've been checked out for about
the last fifteen minutes. We're giving it our level best
speak for yourself intentions. Hey, when I say we, I
(40:53):
mean the royal we as in this guy right here
with the two of the two thumbs and the and
the dad jokes. I'm gonna tell you a secret, give
it before before we go off there. I've been, I've been,
I made, I made a cocktail, and I've just been
staring at it off screen for when we wrap Ben,
(41:13):
what is it? What is it? It's an old fashioned
I'm gonna go get an old fashioned tub man. Well,
I'll enjoy one with you in spirit up there in
the clouds, floating with Christopher Haciotis uh and and our
spirit old fashions. We'll see you next time Fox. For
(41:38):
more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
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