True Stories #170 - Air Out Your Baby

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Episode Transcript

(00:01):
I'm set Andrews, and what you'reabout to hear is a true story.
Eleanor was only twenty one years oldand she was just trying to do the
right thing for her child. Butback in nineteen o six, when she

(00:23):
had taken her baby outside, neighborssaw the whole thing. They got angry,
and they threatened to call social services. Eleanor was horrified. She hadn't
been trying to endanger her baby.She just thought it was all part of
being a modern mother. Her thinkingwas almost certainly influenced by a very popular

(00:47):
eighteen ninety four book. It waswritten by doctor Luther Emmett Holt, and
the book was called The Care andFeeding of Children. Luther Holt was a
popular pediat Christian. He was medicaldirector and a baby's hospital in New York,
and his book about baby care waslike something you would expect from the

(01:10):
turn of the century. It hadsome good advice in there and also some
really bizarre and sometimes terrible advice.Doctor Holt said that babies needed regimens strict,
structured. Never play with a babythat is less than six months old,
because if you do, it makesthem twitchy and nervous. They're agitated

(01:34):
and irritable and not able to sleepwell at night. And here is another
interesting piece of advice from doctor Holt. He said, make sure that you
air out your baby from the bookquote fresh air is required to renew and
purify the blood. And this isjust as necessary for health and growth is

(01:59):
proper food. The appetite has improved, the digestion is better, the cheeks
become red, and all signs ofhealth are seen. Also, doctor Holt
believed that exposing babies to the outsideworld toughen them up. Cold weather would
adapt them better too cold weather.In fact, parents were encouraged to bathe

(02:23):
their babies in cold water for thesame reason. Hot temperatures would help them
function better under the summer sunshine.Breathing whatever was in the air, even
and perhaps especially in a populated city, would fortify the child's constitution. Doctor
Holt even recommended keeping a baby nearan open window. Sounds pretty harmless,

(02:49):
except for the fact that this ideaof airing out your baby gave birth to
one of the strangest inventions of thetwentieth century, the baby cage. Now
The first patent for a marketed babycage happened in nineteen twenty two, and
it worked like this. The cagewas made of chicken wire, It had

(03:14):
a wooden floor, and then you'dput your baby blanket or a tiny mattress
or whatever on it, and thebaby cage would be hung on the exterior
side of the window of your homeor apartment, and your chicken cooped baby
would literally sit outside like a pottedplant, perched on the window sill.

(03:36):
In heavily populated cities like New York, where doctor Holt lived, this meant
that your child might have been outsideon a latched platform, surrounded by chicken
wire, maybe twenty five or thirtystories in the air. In fact,
it was heavily populated areas with highrise buildings where these baby cages were most

(04:00):
attractive, because they weren't homes witha lot of elbow room with a nice
big yard in the big city,where your baby can't crawl on the lush
green grass. What do you doto get it outdoors? You hang it
outside the high rise. Baby cageswere popular with families on a meager budget

(04:23):
who lived in low income apartment complexes, and they were also popular with the
elite who lived in their lofty percheshigh in the sky. Baby cages were
even gifted to new parents, likewe might gift formula and diapers to a
new mother and father. Now,this practice began to wane as we approached

(04:47):
the middle of the twentieth century.Specifically, I'm reminded of Britain. During
the Second World War, parents hadto stop hanging their babies outside the windows
in baby cages during bombing runs againstthe city. You know, you don't
want your young child outside when there'sshrapnel and debris, And ultimately the practice

(05:12):
died out altogether in the nineteen fifties. Fortunately, history doesn't have any record
of a baby cage failing or falling, and it's well worth a Google image
search to see one of these thingshanging outside an apartment or a high rise.
I mean, it's fascinating and itis shocking, but it's also reassuring

(05:35):
to know that some people were shocked, even back more than a hundred years
ago, when a community of neighborssaw that well meaning but misguided new mother
hanging her own homemade baby kage outsidea high rise apartment in nineteen o six,

(05:55):
That twenty one year old woman namedEleanor Roosevelt and the story of the
baby cages of the early twentieth centuryis a true story. True Stories podcast dot com