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Speaker 1: In our recent episode on Exum Clement Stafford, we mentioned

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Speaker 1: her daughter describing herself as Asheville, North Carolina's first incubator baby. Well,

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Speaker 1: we have a whole episode related to the development of

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Speaker 1: incubators and their use in caring for premature babies. It's

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Speaker 1: about when babies and incubators were used as sideshow attractions

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Speaker 1: at theme parks and expositions. This came out on November sixth,

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Speaker 1: twenty nineteen. We had just come back from a tour

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Speaker 1: and I was a little bit under the weather. I

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Speaker 1: thought about not rerunning it for that reason, but really

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Speaker 1: it's the most obvious, just for the first couple of

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Speaker 1: minutes of the episode, So enjoy. Welcome to Stuff you

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Speaker 1: missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and

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Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm

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Speaker 1: Holly Frye. We are just back from our Denver and

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Speaker 1: Chicago leg of our tour, and I have a little

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Speaker 1: post tour vocal uncertainty. Yeah, I think we're both in

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Speaker 1: torch song territory. Mine alternately sounds fine and then like garbage,

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Speaker 1: So brace yes. So, if you've never heard our show before,

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Speaker 1: this is maybe not what we typically sound like all

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Speaker 1: of the time. Anyway, we have gotten so so many

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Speaker 1: requests for today's topic, including one that came in from

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Speaker 1: our listener Alyssa while I was writing the episode. That

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Speaker 1: never happens normally. Normally, when people say have you ever

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Speaker 1: thought about doing an episode on whatever? Fill in the blank?

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Speaker 1: Like ninety nine percent of the time the answer is

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Speaker 1: I don't know, maybe like there's so much stuff to

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Speaker 1: think about. But this was a case where she said

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Speaker 1: have you ever thought of doing this? And I was like,

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Speaker 1: I'm working on it right now. So way back when

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Speaker 1: we heard from Angela, Dan, Kristen, and Harrison all requesting

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Speaker 1: this topic, and then it briefly came up in our

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Speaker 1: past episode on the Fort Shaw Indian School girls basketball

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Speaker 1: team by total coincidence, after we recorded that episode, but

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Speaker 1: before it came out, the other podcast, Saw Bones put

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Speaker 1: out an episode on the topic. So then we were

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Speaker 1: just flooded with message about folks saying, hey, saw Bones

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Speaker 1: just did this. I lost track of everyone requesting it.

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Speaker 1: And anyway, the point is today we are talking about

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Speaker 1: Martin Cooney and his incubator side shows, which came complete

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Speaker 1: with premature babies in them. I've heard people pronounce his names.

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Speaker 1: His name a couple of different ways. I've heard some

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Speaker 1: people say County and I've heard some people say Cooney,

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Speaker 1: but Cooney seems to be the more common. From a

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Speaker 1: medical ethics standpoint, this is complicated. Cooney was turning premature

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Speaker 1: babies and their care into a side show attraction, and

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Speaker 1: for a while he was also making a lot of

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Speaker 1: money off of that, and there are a lot of

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Speaker 1: question marks around his background and the experience that he

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Speaker 1: had and whether he was qualified to be doing this

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Speaker 1: at all. But at the same time, premature baby really

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Speaker 1: were not getting a lot of care otherwise, and the

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Speaker 1: general sense among the mainstream medical community was that there

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Speaker 1: was really nothing to be done for them, so he

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Speaker 1: was definitely saving babies' lives. Also some question marks around

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Speaker 1: what he was doing. Today, when people use the phrase

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Speaker 1: premature baby, they typically mean a baby who was born

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Speaker 1: before thirty seven weeks gestation, But during the time that

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Speaker 1: we're talking about today, that term was a lot more nebulous.

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Speaker 1: It did include babies who had been born before thirty

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Speaker 1: seven weeks, but it also included babies who had a

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Speaker 1: low birth weight for some other reason, along with babies

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Speaker 1: who maybe had some sort of illness, disability, or developmental issue.

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Speaker 1: Regardless of the cause, these babies were often lumped together

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Speaker 1: and described as weaklings, and for the most part, doctors

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Speaker 1: and hospitals in the nineteenth century and Europe and North

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Speaker 1: America just didn't provide them any kind of specialized care.

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Speaker 1: Parents were instructed to keep them warm and to hope

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Speaker 1: or pray for the best, but that was just about it.

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Speaker 1: And then underlying this was an attitude that these babies

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Speaker 1: who were not very strong at their birth would just

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Speaker 1: grow up to be adults who also weren't very strong

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Speaker 1: if they survived. So there was this idea that maybe

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Speaker 1: it was better to just let nature take its course.

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Speaker 1: Of course, this is an ablest mindset and it sounds

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Speaker 1: really callous today, but at the time, infant mortality in

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Speaker 1: general was quite high, even among babies who were born

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Speaker 1: at full term and seemed initially to be healthy. And

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Speaker 1: as we talked about in our previous episode on Virginia Apgar,

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Speaker 1: well into the twentieth century, there was a lot more

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Speaker 1: medical focus on the person giving birth than on the

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Speaker 1: newborn baby. In the nineteenth century, the death of a

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Speaker 1: baby was a tragedy, but it was almost an expected tragedy,

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Speaker 1: especially among premature babies. The development that started to turn

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Speaker 1: this perception around was the incubator. Historically, people have known

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Speaker 1: that babies need to be yept warm, but not too hot.

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Speaker 1: This is especially true for pre term infants who have

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Speaker 1: less body fat and just aren't able to regulate their

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Speaker 1: own body temperature. As well, people have used things like

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Speaker 1: heated rocks or bricks or water bottles, blankets, candles, and

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Speaker 1: their own body heat to try to keep babies warm,

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Speaker 1: and there have also been cultures that recognize that premature

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Speaker 1: babies in particular needed to be kept consistently warm. As

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Speaker 1: Tracy was working on this, she found an article from

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Speaker 1: back in the nineteen forties, so the language there was

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Speaker 1: really outdated, but it described native people in Siberia wrapping

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Speaker 1: babies in the skin of a seabird with the feathers

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Speaker 1: turned inward, and then keeping this sort of pouch that

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Speaker 1: they had created suspended over a very small flame. And

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Speaker 1: that article also discussed indigenous people in Mozambique keeping preterm

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Speaker 1: babies wrapped up and placed in a large pot that

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Speaker 1: was warmed up in the sun. Both of these techniques

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Speaker 1: were essentially working as incubators, but the incubator as we

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Speaker 1: think of it today was first developed in France in

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Speaker 1: the nineteenth century by obstetrician Stephan Tarnier. At the time,

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Speaker 1: France as a nation was very concerned about its birth rate,

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Speaker 1: which was a lot lower than some of its neighbors.

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Speaker 1: This was leading to very practical worries about whether France

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Speaker 1: would have enough soldiers and laborers in the future, so

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Speaker 1: people were looking for ways not just to increase the

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Speaker 1: birth rate, but also to protect the lives of the

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Speaker 1: babies that were already being born. Tarnier got the idea

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Speaker 1: after seeing incubators being used to hatch eggs at a zoo.

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Speaker 1: His first incubator was not very sophisticated. It was basically

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Speaker 1: a hot water bottle under a wooden chamber with a

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Speaker 1: glass top, but it got the job done. In eighteen

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Speaker 1: eighty one, he tested it out in a Paris maternity ward,

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Speaker 1: focusing on babies who weighed less than two thousand grams

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Speaker 1: that's a little under four and a half pounds at birth.

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Speaker 1: He reported that being kept in the incubator cut their

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Speaker 1: mortality rate in half. Although this test went really well,

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Speaker 1: Tarnier's invention wasn't really able to be put into widespread use.

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Speaker 1: Most babies in France were being born at home, not

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Speaker 1: in the hospital, so hospitals set up premature baby wards

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Speaker 1: to receive these babies after their parents brought them in.

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Speaker 1: But most of the time, at least a day or

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Speaker 1: two passed between the birth and the arrival at the hospital,

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Speaker 1: so by the time they were admitted, these babies had

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Speaker 1: been just too cold for too long. Sometimes they had

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Speaker 1: also contracted some kind of illness, and so their mortality

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Speaker 1: rate continued to be quite high. In eighteen eighty nine,

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Speaker 1: physician Alexandra Leon patented an improved version of the incubator.

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Speaker 1: Like Tarnier's incubator, it heated a chamber from below, but

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Speaker 1: it also had a ventilation system that drew fresh air

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Speaker 1: into the incubator and a thermostat to regulate the temperature.

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Speaker 1: These devices were expensive, and it was also expensive for

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Speaker 1: a hospital to employ a twenty four hour medical staff

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Speaker 1: to care for the babies that needed them. This was

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Speaker 1: especially true since most people weren't giving birth in hospitals,

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Speaker 1: so for the most part, hospitals weren't adding premature infant

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Speaker 1: care to egsausing labor and delivery wards that were already

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Speaker 1: fully staffed, they were having to start from scratch. It

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Speaker 1: could be weeks or months before these babies were ready

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Speaker 1: to go home, so Words for premature infants also needed

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Speaker 1: to employ wet nurses to keep them fed. So to

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Speaker 1: make this level of care affordable, Leon established a number

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Speaker 1: of premature infant charities in France's major cities, and while

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Speaker 1: those were in operation, they treated as many as eight

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Speaker 1: thousand infants, with roughly seventy five hundred of them surviving.

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Speaker 1: These facilities were funded by charitable contributions by the cities

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Speaker 1: where they were operating, and by the admission fees that

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Speaker 1: people paid to come and look at these babies. These

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Speaker 1: incubators soon spread outside of France, as did the idea

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Speaker 1: of putting the incubators and the babies inside them on display.

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Speaker 1: On May first, eighteen ninety six, the kinder Rudenstaalt or

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Speaker 1: Child Hatchery opened at the Berlin Industrial Exposition. This included

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Speaker 1: six incubators that were open for public view, along with

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Speaker 1: housing for the medical staff and the wet nurses who

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Speaker 1: were working there. Later on, Martin Cooney said that the

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Speaker 1: child Hatchery in Berlin was where he got his start

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Speaker 1: in working with incubators and premature babies. He said that

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Speaker 1: he was from Alsace Laurin, France and had studied medicine

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Speaker 1: at University of Leipzig before continuing his education under the

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Speaker 1: tutelage of French pediatrician Pierre Boudin. Budin was one of

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Speaker 1: the leading authorities on the care of premature infants. He

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Speaker 1: even went on to write the first major textbook on

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Speaker 1: the subject, which was titled Nursing, the Feeding and Hygiene

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Speaker 1: of Premature and Full Term Infants. So, according to Cooney,

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Speaker 1: he went to Berlin on Budin's instruction to run the

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Speaker 1: child hatchery at the Berlin Industrial Exposition. Cooney said that

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Speaker 1: it had been his idea to put these babies in

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Speaker 1: the incubators rather than just showcasing empty incubators as an

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Speaker 1: example of a new technology. He also said he worked

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Speaker 1: with Empress Augusta Victoria to get approval for premature babies

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Speaker 1: from Berlin's hospitals to be cared for in this exhibit.

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Speaker 1: But none of that seems to actually be true, and

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Speaker 1: we are going to get too more about Cooney and

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Speaker 1: all of that after we first pause for a little

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Speaker 1: sponsor break. According to Martin Cooney's immigration documents, he was

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Speaker 1: born in Crotulsian on December thirtieth, eighteen sixty nine. Today

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Speaker 1: that's Cretotian, Poland, but at the time it was in Prussia.

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Speaker 1: Cooney's name at birth was Michael Cohen. He and his

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Speaker 1: family were Jewish, as was about a third of the

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Speaker 1: population of the town where they were living. From there,

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Speaker 1: his upbringing and background get really unclear. The backstory that

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Speaker 1: he told people about when and where he was born

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Speaker 1: was all over the place. He is listed on the

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Speaker 1: manifest of a ship that came to the US in

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Speaker 1: eighteen eighty eight when he was nineteen, but by eighteen

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Speaker 1: ninety seven he was in London, having partnered with entrepreneurs

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Speaker 1: Samuel Shankine to create an incubator exhibition for the Victorian

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Speaker 1: Era Exhibition. Although Cooney claimed that he had studied medicine

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Speaker 1: in Leipzig, which logically would have happened between eighteen eighty

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Speaker 1: eight and eighteen ninety seven, there's no evidence that he

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Speaker 1: studied at the University of Leipzig or at any other

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Speaker 1: university in Europe, or that he continued his studies with

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Speaker 1: Pierre Budem. There's also no evidence that Cooney had anything

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Speaker 1: to do with the child hatchery in Berlin, although it

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Speaker 1: seems as though he and Shankin licensed that endeavor from

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Speaker 1: Alexandra Leon when they started working on a similar attraction

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Speaker 1: at the Victorian Era Exhibition. When Cooney and Shankin launched

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Speaker 1: the Victorian Era Exhibition incubator display. Incubators had been used

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Speaker 1: in France and other parts of the Western European continent

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Speaker 1: for years, but they were still pretty new in England.

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Speaker 1: Attitudes about parenting were a little different. Parents were just

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Speaker 1: not as receptive to the idea. When Cooney and Shankin

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Speaker 1: had troublec vincing parents to place their babies in the exhibition,

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Speaker 1: they brought newborns across the Channel from France under the

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Speaker 1: care of nurse Louise Wrecht, who spent a lot of

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Speaker 1: her career working with Cooney's exhibits. At least two hundred

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Speaker 1: thousand people visited the incubators at the Victorian Era Exhibition.

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Speaker 1: It got a favorable write up in The Lancet, although

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Speaker 1: the Lancet's coverage of these types of exhibitions wasn't always positive.

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Speaker 1: Cooney and Shankin also wrote a letter to the Lancet

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Speaker 1: in eighteen ninety seven warning of the dangers of competing

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Speaker 1: shows that were not affiliated with them and had no

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Speaker 1: medical staff. Cooney's name on this particular letter is printed

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Speaker 1: as Martin Coney Coney. Martin Coney seems to have evolved

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Speaker 1: into Martin Cooney by the time Cooney started an incubator

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Speaker 1: exhibition at the trans Mississippi and International Exhibition, also known

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Speaker 1: as the Omaha World's Fair, that was in eighteen ninety eight,

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Speaker 1: although at that point he hadn't changed his name legally yet.

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Speaker 1: While in Omaha, Cooney was a roached by the Krug

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Speaker 1: Cabinet Beer Company about supplying beer for the exhibits wet nurses.

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Speaker 1: Folks have long believed that beer can help improve milk supply,

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Speaker 1: something that seems to be connected to one of the

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Speaker 1: polysaccharides in the barley rather than to the alcohol content.

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Speaker 1: The Omaha Daily Bee published a quote by doctor Martin

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Speaker 1: Cooney that quote, we take pleasure in stating we have

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Speaker 1: used Krug Cabinet bottled beer consistently for milk producing qualities.

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Speaker 1: We can cheerfully recommend it to all nursing mothers on

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Speaker 1: November two, eighteen ninety eight, while still in Omaha, Cooney

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Speaker 1: was naturalized as a US citizen. At that time, he

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Speaker 1: testified that he'd been living in Nebraska continually for the

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Speaker 1: previous ten years, and that was clearly not true, since

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Speaker 1: at minimum he had been in London for the Victorian Exhibition.

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Speaker 1: Cooney's next major exhibition was the Pan American Exposition in

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Speaker 1: Buffalo in nineteen oh one, which had eighteen incubators. By

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Speaker 1: that point, at least one hospital was also trying to

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Speaker 1: use incubators for premature infant care. That was Chicago Lying

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Speaker 1: In Hospital, where an incubator station was opened in nineteen

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Speaker 1: hundred by Joseph B. De Lee. This station had some

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Speaker 1: of the same struggles as the first French hospitals using

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Speaker 1: incubators did back in the eighteen eighties. They were expensive

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Speaker 1: to buy, run and staff, and most of the babies

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Speaker 1: who needed them were being born at home. By contrast,

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00:14:21,920 --> 00:14:24,920
Speaker 1: the attraction at the expo went very well, although the

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Speaker 1: exposition itself was marred by the assassination of President McKinley.

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Speaker 1: In nineteen oh three, Cooney started the baby exhibit that

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Speaker 1: he's most famous for. It was his first permanent exhibition

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Speaker 1: at Luna Park on Coney Island. This was permanent in

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Speaker 1: that he continued to run it for decades, but the

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Speaker 1: park itself was seasonal, so during the winter months, any

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Speaker 1: babies who were still there were either sent home or

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Speaker 1: to hospitals along with their incubators, and any incubators not

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00:14:52,000 --> 00:14:55,240
Speaker 1: in use were put into storage. The Luna Park exhibition

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Speaker 1: was similar to all of Cooney's previous exhibitions. It had

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Speaker 1: space for the incubators themselves, which people could view through

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Speaker 1: a window after buying a ticket. The space had housing

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Speaker 1: for the medical staff and the wet nurses. The staff

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Speaker 1: included doctor Solomon Fischel and nurses Louis Wrecht and Annabelle Segner.

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Speaker 1: But unlike earlier exhibits, this one also had an exam

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Speaker 1: room that was also viewable through a window, so in

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Speaker 1: addition to seeing the babies and their incubators, the audience

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Speaker 1: would also see there's some of their medical examinations and

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Speaker 1: other care. Their parents weren't charged anything for the baby's care,

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Speaker 1: and no premature baby was turned away. The incubator displays

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Speaker 1: had always had kind of an educational component, explaining what

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Speaker 1: the incubators were and how they worked and why the

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Speaker 1: babies needed them, and this continued at Luna Park as well.

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Speaker 1: For the most part, the care that the babies were

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Speaker 1: getting was pretty basic. Even when Pierre Boudin's textbook on

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Speaker 1: Premature Infant care was published in nineteen oh one, most

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Speaker 1: of its guidelines boiled down to keeping the baby warm

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Speaker 1: and fed and preventing infections. Breast milk was the ideal food,

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Speaker 1: which is there were wet nurses on staff. If breast

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Speaker 1: milk was not available for some reason, sterilized cow's milk

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Speaker 1: could be used as a substitute. For babies who were

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Speaker 1: too weak to suckle. The nurses used droppers or tubes

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Speaker 1: into the stomach or through the nose. At the same time,

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00:16:15,760 --> 00:16:19,120
Speaker 1: this was definitely a carnival attraction. It was located on

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Speaker 1: a boardwalk in an amusement park. Although Cooney had strict

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Speaker 1: rules for cleanliness and hygiene and the diets of the

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00:16:25,800 --> 00:16:30,480
Speaker 1: wet nurses, the surrounding area was noisy and dirty. Sometimes

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Speaker 1: the exhibits around the babies were a little racy. The

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Speaker 1: staff also included barkers who tried to draw in an

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Speaker 1: audience from outside, and people who sold tickets for twenty

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00:16:39,560 --> 00:16:43,880
Speaker 1: five cents apiece, and there was definitely some theatricality involved

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Speaker 1: in the display itself. The babies were often dressed in

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00:16:47,040 --> 00:16:49,680
Speaker 1: clothes that were too big for them, with an oversized

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00:16:49,720 --> 00:16:51,920
Speaker 1: bow around their middle, and that made them look even

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00:16:51,960 --> 00:16:55,560
Speaker 1: smaller than they already were. Nurse Wrect was fond of

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00:16:55,560 --> 00:16:58,320
Speaker 1: putting a diamond ring from her index finger around a

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00:16:58,320 --> 00:17:01,920
Speaker 1: baby's wrist where it would like a bracelet. Even though

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00:17:02,000 --> 00:17:05,560
Speaker 1: Cooney was providing life saving care to these premature infants,

295
00:17:05,560 --> 00:17:08,840
Speaker 1: and even though everyone seems to have taken as fact

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Speaker 1: that he really was a medical doctor, the Luna Park

297
00:17:11,800 --> 00:17:16,040
Speaker 1: exhibit drew a lot of criticism. On August seventeenth, nineteen

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Speaker 1: oh three, an article in The New York Times accused

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Speaker 1: Cooney of running a baby farm. John D. Lindsay, who

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Speaker 1: was president of the New York Society for the Prevention

301
00:17:25,200 --> 00:17:28,879
Speaker 1: of Cruelty to Children, became an outspoken critic of Cooney

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00:17:28,960 --> 00:17:32,399
Speaker 1: and of baby side shows. Eventually, the matter went to court,

303
00:17:32,600 --> 00:17:35,119
Speaker 1: and Cooney testified that he had saved fifty of the

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00:17:35,200 --> 00:17:38,159
Speaker 1: fifty two babies he was brought in Buffalo, and so

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00:17:38,320 --> 00:17:41,080
Speaker 1: far eighteen of the nineteen babies brought to him in

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00:17:41,119 --> 00:17:44,960
Speaker 1: New York. The Luna Park side show was allowed to continue.

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Speaker 1: On August thirty first, nineteen oh three, Michael Cohen legally

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00:17:48,800 --> 00:17:52,720
Speaker 1: changed his name to Martin Arthur Cooney. A little less

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Speaker 1: than a month later, on September twenty six, he married

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Speaker 1: nurse Annabelle Segner, who continued to work with him at

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Speaker 1: the baby exhibit. In nineteen te four, the Luna Park

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00:18:01,400 --> 00:18:05,800
Speaker 1: Nursery opened for the season, and another location virtually identical

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00:18:05,960 --> 00:18:09,399
Speaker 1: opened at Dreamland Amusement Park, which was also on Coney Island.

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Speaker 1: A third amusement park location later opened in Atlantic City,

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00:18:13,440 --> 00:18:17,760
Speaker 1: New Jersey. Throughout all of this, other people were continuing

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00:18:17,800 --> 00:18:21,520
Speaker 1: to use incubators with living babies as exhibits and side

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00:18:21,560 --> 00:18:25,000
Speaker 1: shows and fairs and expositions people who didn't have anything

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Speaker 1: to do with Martin Cooney. Cooney wrote about these as

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00:18:28,320 --> 00:18:32,480
Speaker 1: inferior imitations of his own idea, even though it really

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00:18:32,520 --> 00:18:36,160
Speaker 1: seems like he lifted this idea from Alexandra Leon. Some

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00:18:36,200 --> 00:18:39,919
Speaker 1: of these other exhibits ran without incident, but in nineteen

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00:18:39,960 --> 00:18:44,200
Speaker 1: oh four, disaster struck at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, also

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00:18:44,320 --> 00:18:46,879
Speaker 1: called the Saint Louis World's Fair. This was the one

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Speaker 1: that we talked about in our previous episode on the

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Speaker 1: Fort Shaw Indian schoolgirls basketball team. There was an outbreak

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Speaker 1: of diarrhea in the exhibit and the mortality rate at

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00:18:56,160 --> 00:18:59,960
Speaker 1: the exhibit approached fifty percent. A doctor was brought into

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00:19:00,119 --> 00:19:03,480
Speaker 1: take charge, and Cooney was careful distress that he had

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00:19:03,480 --> 00:19:07,000
Speaker 1: not had anything to do with that exhibit. Although Cooney

330
00:19:07,040 --> 00:19:11,280
Speaker 1: continued to arrange and run baby incubator attractions and expositions,

331
00:19:11,320 --> 00:19:13,840
Speaker 1: the amusement park locations were really a big part of

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Speaker 1: the rest of his career, and we'll get into more

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Speaker 1: of that after another quick sponsor break. In the years

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Speaker 1: after Martin Cooney arranged his first incubator attraction, he started

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00:19:31,600 --> 00:19:35,400
Speaker 1: holding periodic reunions which would bring together babies and young

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00:19:35,480 --> 00:19:37,760
Speaker 1: children who had spent their early months in one of

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00:19:37,760 --> 00:19:42,080
Speaker 1: his incubators, now, of course, thriving and healthy. The large

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00:19:42,119 --> 00:19:44,800
Speaker 1: majority of premature infants that he cared for went on

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00:19:44,920 --> 00:19:48,200
Speaker 1: to grow and thrive. At the same time, his whole

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00:19:48,240 --> 00:19:51,520
Speaker 1: career was full of ups and downs. For example, in

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00:19:51,600 --> 00:19:54,840
Speaker 1: nineteen oh five, the Infant Incubator Company was established with

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00:19:54,920 --> 00:19:59,919
Speaker 1: Cooney's colleagues doctor Solomon Fischel and Samuel Schenkin as co directors.

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Speaker 1: That same year, the New York Society for the Prevention

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00:20:03,080 --> 00:20:06,199
Speaker 1: of Cruelty to Children tried to lobby for legislation that

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00:20:06,240 --> 00:20:09,800
Speaker 1: would make the exhibition of babies in incubators a misdemeanor.

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Speaker 1: On January twenty ninth, nineteen oh seven, Cooney's wife, Annabelle,

347
00:20:14,000 --> 00:20:17,360
Speaker 1: gave birth to a daughter, about six weeks early. Since

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00:20:17,400 --> 00:20:20,800
Speaker 1: it was January, the amusement parks were closed for the season,

349
00:20:20,920 --> 00:20:23,600
Speaker 1: so Cooney got somebody to retrieve one of the exhibit

350
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Speaker 1: incubators from storage. This daughter, Hildegarde Francis, survived her infancy

351
00:20:28,720 --> 00:20:30,720
Speaker 1: and went on to become a nurse working in her

352
00:20:30,720 --> 00:20:34,600
Speaker 1: father's exhibits. She was also dogged by rumors that she

353
00:20:34,800 --> 00:20:38,320
Speaker 1: wasn't actually Martin and Annabel's child, but was a premature

354
00:20:38,359 --> 00:20:41,600
Speaker 1: baby that somebody else had abandoned. On May twenty seventh,

355
00:20:41,680 --> 00:20:45,160
Speaker 1: nineteen eleven, a fire broke out at Dreamland Amusement Park.

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Speaker 1: As always, there were staff members on duty at the

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00:20:48,320 --> 00:20:52,600
Speaker 1: incubator exhibition, which was successfully evacuated, but The New York

358
00:20:52,640 --> 00:20:55,560
Speaker 1: Times published an incorrect report saying that all of the

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00:20:55,600 --> 00:20:59,480
Speaker 1: babies had been killed. John D. Lindsay used this as

360
00:20:59,520 --> 00:21:02,440
Speaker 1: fodder TOI He renew his criticisms of the side shows,

361
00:21:02,680 --> 00:21:06,119
Speaker 1: although they did continue to operate. In nineteen fourteen, Cooney

362
00:21:06,240 --> 00:21:10,200
Speaker 1: established an incubator display at White City Amusement Park in Chicago,

363
00:21:10,600 --> 00:21:13,760
Speaker 1: and there he met doctor Julius Hess. Hess would go

364
00:21:13,840 --> 00:21:17,520
Speaker 1: on to establish the first dedicated intensive care unit for

365
00:21:17,560 --> 00:21:21,640
Speaker 1: premature infants in the United States. Hess didn't really approve

366
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Speaker 1: of the theatricality that was involved with Cooney's exhibits, but

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00:21:25,119 --> 00:21:27,640
Speaker 1: he really regarded Cooney as a friend and a colleague.

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00:21:28,160 --> 00:21:32,520
Speaker 1: When Hess published his textbook, Premature and Congenitally Diseased Infants,

369
00:21:32,640 --> 00:21:36,360
Speaker 1: he had Cooney review it beforehand and acknowledged his contributions

370
00:21:36,359 --> 00:21:39,760
Speaker 1: when it was published. Hess also dedicated another book to

371
00:21:39,800 --> 00:21:43,520
Speaker 1: Cooney in nineteen twenty eight. Together, Hesse and Cooney planned

372
00:21:43,520 --> 00:21:46,320
Speaker 1: a state of the art incubator facility for the Chicago

373
00:21:46,440 --> 00:21:50,600
Speaker 1: Century of Progress in nineteen thirty three. While Cooney's earlier

374
00:21:50,640 --> 00:21:54,240
Speaker 1: incubator exhibits had included some education, this was more like

375
00:21:54,240 --> 00:21:58,280
Speaker 1: a functioning research institute, with the staff specifically studying the

376
00:21:58,320 --> 00:22:01,920
Speaker 1: care the babies were receiving and its effects and outcomes.

377
00:22:02,560 --> 00:22:05,680
Speaker 1: Hesse and Cooney's medical teams were both involved, so each

378
00:22:05,760 --> 00:22:08,600
Speaker 1: team learned from the other. At about the same time,

379
00:22:08,760 --> 00:22:12,480
Speaker 1: more hospitals were starting to establish dedicated facilities for pre

380
00:22:12,600 --> 00:22:15,679
Speaker 1: term infant care, so this work being done at the

381
00:22:15,720 --> 00:22:19,159
Speaker 1: century of progress was contributing to a growing medical field.

382
00:22:19,760 --> 00:22:22,960
Speaker 1: The next year, in nineteen thirty four, William Randolph Hurst

383
00:22:23,000 --> 00:22:26,359
Speaker 1: approached Cooney with a request to travel to Canada, where

384
00:22:26,440 --> 00:22:30,760
Speaker 1: quintuplets had been born in Ontario. These five babies came

385
00:22:30,800 --> 00:22:34,080
Speaker 1: to be known as the dion Quints, and Cooney declined

386
00:22:34,160 --> 00:22:36,840
Speaker 1: to get involved with their care. The reason that he

387
00:22:36,880 --> 00:22:40,159
Speaker 1: gave publicly was that his existing patients needed him, he

388
00:22:40,240 --> 00:22:42,399
Speaker 1: just didn't have time with his other work, but it

389
00:22:42,480 --> 00:22:45,440
Speaker 1: was also because he didn't think these babies were likely

390
00:22:45,520 --> 00:22:49,959
Speaker 1: to survive, and his experience in cases of multiple births

391
00:22:50,119 --> 00:22:53,679
Speaker 1: at most only one baby survived. All five of the

392
00:22:53,720 --> 00:22:57,320
Speaker 1: dion quintuplets did survive their infancy, and we have gotten

393
00:22:57,359 --> 00:22:59,880
Speaker 1: a lot of requests to talk about them on the podcast.

394
00:23:00,000 --> 00:23:03,720
Speaker 1: It's kind of like the never ending request line. But

395
00:23:03,800 --> 00:23:05,960
Speaker 1: two of them are still living and we don't generally

396
00:23:06,000 --> 00:23:09,040
Speaker 1: do biographies of living persons, and they have also said

397
00:23:09,080 --> 00:23:12,159
Speaker 1: pretty clearly that they just want their privacy, and a

398
00:23:12,200 --> 00:23:15,119
Speaker 1: big part of their story is their privacy being taken

399
00:23:15,160 --> 00:23:18,760
Speaker 1: away from them from their infancy and childhoods. That is

400
00:23:18,760 --> 00:23:22,720
Speaker 1: why we are not doing an episode on the Dion quintuplets. So, yes,

401
00:23:22,760 --> 00:23:25,840
Speaker 1: it is fascinating and we understand the curiosity, but we're

402
00:23:25,840 --> 00:23:28,720
Speaker 1: respecting their privacy. Yeah, they've pretty clearly said they would

403
00:23:28,760 --> 00:23:32,160
Speaker 1: just like to be left alone. In the late nineteen thirties,

404
00:23:32,240 --> 00:23:35,560
Speaker 1: things were pretty difficult for Cooney. His wife, Annabel died.

405
00:23:35,920 --> 00:23:38,919
Speaker 1: He was also aware of events in Germany as Hitler

406
00:23:38,960 --> 00:23:41,359
Speaker 1: came to power, and he knew that his Jewish friends

407
00:23:41,400 --> 00:23:44,760
Speaker 1: and family in Europe were at great risk. During the

408
00:23:44,840 --> 00:23:47,760
Speaker 1: late nineteen thirties, he arranged for about fifteen people to

409
00:23:47,840 --> 00:23:51,480
Speaker 1: leave Europe, paying their way and handling their paperwork. Then

410
00:23:51,680 --> 00:23:54,800
Speaker 1: Cooney tried to arrange another Incubator side show at the

411
00:23:54,840 --> 00:23:58,360
Speaker 1: New York World's Fair in nineteen thirty nine, but by

412
00:23:58,400 --> 00:24:01,480
Speaker 1: this point the novelty of Incubator had started to wear off.

413
00:24:01,920 --> 00:24:04,199
Speaker 1: The exhibit just didn't draw the kinds of crowds that

414
00:24:04,280 --> 00:24:08,040
Speaker 1: previous efforts had, and for the first time, Cooney lost money.

415
00:24:08,720 --> 00:24:11,520
Speaker 1: The show was renewed for a second season, with Cooney

416
00:24:11,560 --> 00:24:13,760
Speaker 1: hoping that he could make up for the earlier loss,

417
00:24:13,840 --> 00:24:17,720
Speaker 1: but the opposite happened. The whole thing was financially disastrous.

418
00:24:18,320 --> 00:24:20,639
Speaker 1: It was not going well at this point for the

419
00:24:20,680 --> 00:24:25,320
Speaker 1: more permanent locations either, and the two remaining amusement park attractions,

420
00:24:25,320 --> 00:24:28,000
Speaker 1: which were at Luna Park and Atlantic City, both closed

421
00:24:28,040 --> 00:24:31,919
Speaker 1: in nineteen forty three. At that point Cooney retired. Also,

422
00:24:32,040 --> 00:24:35,000
Speaker 1: more and more premature care wards were opening around the

423
00:24:35,119 --> 00:24:37,679
Speaker 1: United States by this point. It was something that paused

424
00:24:37,720 --> 00:24:40,440
Speaker 1: a little during World War Two, but then resumed afterward.

425
00:24:40,800 --> 00:24:44,320
Speaker 1: Cooney died on March first, nineteen fifty. He had become

426
00:24:44,440 --> 00:24:47,240
Speaker 1: known at that point as the Incubator Doctor, and it's

427
00:24:47,320 --> 00:24:50,040
Speaker 1: estimated that during his career his exhibitions cared for at

428
00:24:50,119 --> 00:24:53,280
Speaker 1: least eight thousand babies and saved the lives of at

429
00:24:53,359 --> 00:24:56,520
Speaker 1: least six thy five hundred of them. But when talking

430
00:24:56,520 --> 00:24:58,720
Speaker 1: about it to the media, he always stressed that he

431
00:24:58,760 --> 00:25:01,960
Speaker 1: shouldn't get all the credit, that the doctors, nurses, and

432
00:25:02,000 --> 00:25:05,440
Speaker 1: wet nurses on staff were critical to the work. Cooney's

433
00:25:05,520 --> 00:25:09,560
Speaker 1: legacy is really complicated. There are just so many holes

434
00:25:09,600 --> 00:25:12,840
Speaker 1: and some outright falsehoods in the backstory that he told

435
00:25:12,880 --> 00:25:16,280
Speaker 1: people about himself, and we really have no idea what

436
00:25:16,359 --> 00:25:19,920
Speaker 1: his credentials were when he started his first exhibit. There's

437
00:25:19,960 --> 00:25:22,439
Speaker 1: just no documentation that he had the medical degree that

438
00:25:22,520 --> 00:25:26,720
Speaker 1: he said he had. Although we could logically conclude that

439
00:25:26,800 --> 00:25:29,760
Speaker 1: he changed his name to try to avoid anti Semitism,

440
00:25:29,960 --> 00:25:32,959
Speaker 1: we don't actually know what motivated him to do it

441
00:25:33,480 --> 00:25:36,920
Speaker 1: or why he was just so cagey and inconsistent about

442
00:25:36,960 --> 00:25:40,520
Speaker 1: what his background was. But he definitely dedicated most of

443
00:25:40,520 --> 00:25:43,240
Speaker 1: his adult life to taking care of babies that doctors

444
00:25:43,280 --> 00:25:46,320
Speaker 1: didn't think could or should be helped, and thanks to

445
00:25:46,359 --> 00:25:49,679
Speaker 1: his work, the public perception of premature babies also started

446
00:25:49,720 --> 00:25:53,280
Speaker 1: to shift away from this idea of hopeless weaklings who

447
00:25:53,359 --> 00:25:55,400
Speaker 1: might be better off if they were allowed to die,

448
00:25:55,840 --> 00:25:58,240
Speaker 1: to fighters who could thrive if they just had the

449
00:25:58,280 --> 00:26:02,160
Speaker 1: right kind of care. Some writers have framed Cooney's work

450
00:26:02,240 --> 00:26:06,080
Speaker 1: as an opposition to the eugenics movement, and while it's

451
00:26:06,160 --> 00:26:09,320
Speaker 1: true that the eugenics movement approved of the idea of

452
00:26:09,480 --> 00:26:13,280
Speaker 1: allowing the so called week to quote die out, Cooney

453
00:26:13,400 --> 00:26:16,399
Speaker 1: also reinforced some of that same mindset with how he

454
00:26:16,440 --> 00:26:19,760
Speaker 1: talked about these babies. He stressed that they were going

455
00:26:19,800 --> 00:26:23,119
Speaker 1: to grow up quote healthy and normal and not to

456
00:26:23,160 --> 00:26:26,080
Speaker 1: be weaklings. He implied that if they were going to

457
00:26:26,160 --> 00:26:28,720
Speaker 1: grow up to be ill or disabled, he wouldn't be

458
00:26:28,800 --> 00:26:31,680
Speaker 1: doing what he was doing. There are also arguments about

459
00:26:31,680 --> 00:26:34,600
Speaker 1: whether Cooney's use of incubators as a side show attraction

460
00:26:35,119 --> 00:26:39,080
Speaker 1: delayed their mainstream medical acceptance. That one's a little harder

461
00:26:39,119 --> 00:26:41,960
Speaker 1: to pin down. On the one hand, as Cooney and

462
00:26:42,000 --> 00:26:44,479
Speaker 1: his staff were working with these children, they were learning

463
00:26:44,560 --> 00:26:47,080
Speaker 1: and developing new skills and getting better at it over

464
00:26:47,119 --> 00:26:50,000
Speaker 1: time and influencing the work of some of the United

465
00:26:50,000 --> 00:26:54,520
Speaker 1: States earliest neonatologists. But it is also entirely possible that

466
00:26:54,600 --> 00:26:57,199
Speaker 1: doctors just didn't want to be associated with something that

467
00:26:57,280 --> 00:27:00,919
Speaker 1: was so closely connected to side shows and amusement parks,

468
00:27:01,400 --> 00:27:03,760
Speaker 1: and that it made the whole technology seem a little

469
00:27:03,760 --> 00:27:07,440
Speaker 1: bit suspicious. And of course, there have been huge advances

470
00:27:07,480 --> 00:27:11,400
Speaker 1: in premature baby care since Cooney's death. They are largely

471
00:27:11,440 --> 00:27:14,560
Speaker 1: outside the scope of this podcast, but especially for babies

472
00:27:14,760 --> 00:27:17,879
Speaker 1: born very early, it's no longer a matter of just

473
00:27:17,920 --> 00:27:20,440
Speaker 1: trying to keep them warm and fed and preventing illnesses.

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00:27:20,440 --> 00:27:22,960
Speaker 1: There are a lot of other medical interventions that can

475
00:27:23,000 --> 00:27:25,480
Speaker 1: take place, and that has led to a whole other

476
00:27:25,560 --> 00:27:29,800
Speaker 1: ethical debate about when to resuscitate premature babies and what

477
00:27:30,040 --> 00:27:33,440
Speaker 1: level of care and intervention that they should receive. Sus

478
00:27:33,440 --> 00:27:38,040
Speaker 1: Martin Cooney and his Babyside shows, which are fascinating and

479
00:27:38,040 --> 00:27:46,240
Speaker 1: also kind of complicated topic. Yeah, thanks so much for

480
00:27:46,320 --> 00:27:49,120
Speaker 1: joining us on this Saturday. If you'd like to send

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00:27:49,200 --> 00:27:53,000
Speaker 1: us a note, our email addresses History Podcast at iHeartRadio

482
00:27:53,160 --> 00:27:56,080
Speaker 1: dot com, and you can subscribe to the show on

483
00:27:56,119 --> 00:27:59,480
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to

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00:27:59,520 --> 00:28:01,160
Speaker 1: your favorite shoes