Life Under Glass

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 17 August 2016

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The story of the premature babies in incubators on display in amusement park on Coney Island, and how the man who put them there, Martin Couney, changed attitudes to premature babies and saved countless lives.

At Coney Island amusement park between 1903 and 1943 there was an extraordinary exhibit: tiny, premature babies. 'Dr Martin Couney's infant incubator’ facility was staffed by nurses in starched white uniforms and if you paid a quarter, you could see the babies in their incubators. Journalist Claire Prentice has been following the story and tracked down some of those babies, now in their 70s, 80s and 90s, who were put in the show. She discovers how Dr Couney brought the incubator to prominence in the USA through World's Fairs and amusement parks, and explores how a man who was shunned by the medical establishment changed attitudes to premature babies and saved countless lives.

Image: Coney Island amusement park in 1904, Credit: Getty Images

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	The way incubators were first introduced into the United States involved a highly
0:06.0	unusual way of promoting the new technology.
0:08.8	I'm Claire Prentiss and for the BBC World Service I'm following the story of the man behind it, Martin Cooney and his incubator babies in Life Under Glass.
0:19.0	The exhibit was in Luna Park and it was part of the sideshow.
0:24.4	It says the incubators with living babies, all the world loves a baby.
0:30.6	It really is the moment the incubators sort of arrive on the American landscape.
0:34.8	Come in and take a look.
0:35.8	He's got the show if you've got the dime.
0:39.4	You hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry. I just weigh two pounds. I didn't wear anymore. My father said you know she's not
0:47.1	dead I'm not going to bury her and he said I'm gonna put her in the
0:50.9	incubator in Tony Allen, the amusement park.
0:54.0	It was a strange place to find a baby.
1:01.0	Martin Cooney's infant... It was a strange place to find a baby.
1:03.0	Martin Cooney's Infant Incubator show was sandwiched between the candy floss stand and the roller coaster,
1:09.0	just steps from the beach.
1:11.0	There, the public could pay a quarter to watch tiny premature babies
1:16.1	and their struggle between life and death. Cooney had his exhibit at Coney Island,
1:21.8	New York from 1903 to 1943 and was dubbed the Incubator Doctor.
1:29.0	At a time when American hospitals were ambivalent over whether premature babies could or even should be saved,
1:36.8	Kuni ran his facility as a medical outsider.
1:41.1	The incubator was not a new idea in 1993.
1:44.0	Kuni was building on scientific developments which had originated in France in the late 1800s,
	...

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