The strange case of Coney Island’s Infantorium Freak Show
And how one man who wasn’t even a doctor forever changed the $4.9 neonatal care industry
Located on the lower tip of the borough of Brooklyn, you’ll find one of the country’s most iconic amusement parks … Coney Island.
In fact many say Coney Island is the birthplace of American amusement parks.
Coney Island is often referred to as the “People’s Playground” because you can ride a variety of rollercoasters, Ferris wheels, snack on popcorn or cotton candy, or sunbath on the beach … all in one setting.
Yet before 1844, Coney Island was nothing more than a hunk of land that cows, sheep, and goats used for grazing.
No one is really sure how the land got its name, other than a few theories. One is that the Dutch, who originally owned the land called it “Coney Eylant,” because it was the “island raided by coneys,” or rabbits, which lived there.
The Dutch granted use of the island to a group of English settlers who then established the little town of Gavesend.
When I say little, I mean it. By the end of the 18th century, Gavesend had one bed and breakfast, which was used mostly by wealthy people who came to swim at local beach.
As word spread about the isolated beach, more people wanted to see it for themselves. So a second hotel was erected and a regular stagecoach service from the Brooklyn mainland was instituted.
In 1844, the island had its first daily ferry, which allowed more tourists to come and check out the little beach town.
It wasn’t until after the American Civil War in 1865, that Coney Island truly began to thrive. That’s right around the time that many hotels and restaurants started to make their way along the beach, as well as rental shops where bathing “costumes” could be purchased.
By 1868, Coney Island was flourishing. One popular guidebook listed it as the best beach on the Atlantic coast. By 1873, it was attracting 25,000 to 30,000 visitors on weekends
With so many people coming and going, the town’s councilmen decided there needed to be more activities to keep all those visitors occupied. So he asked LaMarcus Adna Thompson for help.
Mr. Thompson was an American inventor and businessman most famous for creating what were known back then as “gravity rides,” the earliest version of a roller coaster.
For Coney Island, Mr. Thompson built the Switchback Gravity Railway.
It was the first roller coaster built in the United States. But it wasn’t really a roller coaster. It was more like a weird train and somewhat dangerous one too.
Passengers had to climb a fifty-foot-high platform that brought them to a train which rode on a track at the speed of six miles per hour. It then came to a stop at the other end of the track in which riders were free to hop on to another train, which then took them back in the direction they came from.
Now Dear Reader, if you have one roller coaster in an amusement park, you’re going to want a few more. And for Coney Island, the next one added was operated by a mechanical conveyer belt that carried the cars to the top of the ride.
You’re also going to need carousals, exotic performers, circuses, and aquariums. And you’ll also want last but not least a freak show.
Doctor No Doctor
Martin Arthur Couney’s life was marked in mystery to most people who knew him.
He was born in 1869 in the little town of Krotoszyn, which was then part of German-Prussia (now Poland). There’s not much recorded history of his childhood, other than we know he came from a combined family of German and Jewish ethnicity.
In fact his cultural and professional background remain contested to this day because he repeatedly changed the details throughout his life.
For example, Mr. Couney claims he studied for his medical degree at different universities including one in Leipzig, Germany, and another in Berlin. And upon graduation, he received his medical license, which he claims could not be used in the U.S. because it was European.
And that’s why whenever he traveled to the U.S., he couldn’t call himself a doctor.
However the real problem is, there is no actual record of Mr. Couney ever studying medicine in any European medical institution.
What we do know with 100% certainty is that Mr. Couney was an apprentice under Professor Pierre Constant Budin in Paris. Professor Budin was an established obstetrician, outstanding doctor, and scientist.
Professor Budin was most known for creating infant care facilities throughout Parisian hospitals and worked closely with Etienne Tarnier, the developer of one of the first infant warming devices.
Because of his work treating infants, Professor Budin eventually became known as the founder of modern perinatal medicine. So it was indeed an honor for Mr. Couney to be his apprentice.
Well Professor Budin wasted no time at all in putting his young protégé to work. One of the things he asked Mr. Couney to do was find a way to show off the new incubator he had just created with Mr. Tarnier.
Professor Budin wanted people, mostly the current medical establishment to know that infants born frail and underweight had a greater chance of surviving if they were put inside an incubator.
It was now up to Mr. Couney to spread the word.
Being somewhat of a showman, Mr. Couney knew the only way to draw attention to this new medical devise was to put it on display at an event that was well attended. Luckily for him the 1896 World Industrial Exposition was being held in Berlin.
The exhibition opened on May 1, 1896, in Treptow Park and would run for six months. This particular exposition was being promoted as bigger and better than those held in Paris or London.
This made it the perfect place for Mr. Couney to showcase the newly built infant incubator. But he’d need two things to make the exhibit come to life: (1) a name for his exhibition and (2) real-life babies to show how the incubator worked.
So Mr. Couney, with the help of Professor Budin made arrangements with Berlin’s Charity Hospital to have a few premature babies delivered to the exhibit site, where he would put them inside the already warmed up incubators.
He also hired several nurses to keep watch over the infants, as well as a handful of wet nurses to care for the babies when they needed to be fed.
Now that he had “the goods” needed for his exhibit, his next task was coming up with a name. But that didn’t take him long at all. Nope, Mr. Couney already had one in mind: The “Kinderbrutanstalt,” which roughly translated means child hatchery.
The Kinderbrutanstalt exhibit was a huge hit. Hundreds of people lined up to see these tiny babies sleeping peacefully in incubators made of steel and glass.
The Traveling Baby Show
The display was so successful that British event promoter Samuel Schenkein invited Mr. Couney to recreate it at the Victorian Era Exhibition the following year, which he agreed to do.
Now if something is a big hit in Europe, the same thing will probably happen in the U.S. And so Mr. Couney figured why not bring his Kinderbrutanstalt display to America?
And off to the U.S. he went with incubator in hand (more like boxed up in the ship’s storage deck). In 1898 the Kinderbrutanstalt was on display in the U.S. for the first time ever at the Nebraska Trans-Mississippi Exposition.
But this time Mr. Couney required guests to pay a fee. That’s because the display cost around $75,000 to build and maintain (along with nurses needed to tend to the infants).
Visitors didn’t mind coughing up .25 cents each to stand and stare at the tiny babies, which were so small, they were dressed in doll clothes.
And as you might have guessed by now the display was a huge success. So much so that from that year on and up until 1902, the baby display could be found at different exhibits all across the country.
Along the way Mr. Couney picked up a nickname as the incubator doctor. This was the first time Americans had ever seen such a fantastical medical devise.
In fact premature babies who were born well below the normal birth weight were considered too ill to treat. It was best to let Mother Nature step in.
But also back then, the medical industry didn’t have the technology or know-how for treating babies born premature.
It was mostly a matter of hope and prayer for their survival. But this new incubator would change everything.
Come See the Child Hatchery
Maybe it was his age … or maybe touring the country with tiny babies was becoming more of a hassle then he expected … for whatever reason, Mr. Couney decided to create a more permanent display.
And he chose none other than Coney Island to be the new home for his living baby exhibit.
By the early 1900’s, Coney Island was booming. As many as 45,000 men, women and children were strolling through the different themed parks that had popped up. Or riding the Barrel of Fun, which tossed people on top of each other when they first entered the amusement.
Then there was the Blow-Hole Theater, which blew a gust of air up women’s skirts and dresses.
If that didn’t make you laugh, maybe watching the circus performers or the sealions performing tricks in their artificial lagoon would put a smile on your face.
Or maybe you’d prefer to spend a quarter gazing at one of the freak shows that lined the back of the park.
And maybe … just maybe you’d be willing to take a peek inside the tent with the bright red neon sign that read, “Living Babies in Incubators.”
Step inside and you’ll see five or six incubators, each with a tiny baby inside. Nearby was a nurse to watch over each one. This was a one-of-a-kind display. Nothing like it had existed before.
The Coney Island Infantorium drew large crowds on a regular basis. At one point over 200,000 people had come to the Island to see the exhibit with all the tiny babies inside.
Mr. Couney took in babies from all backgrounds, regardless of race or social class, a progressive policy back then. But here’s the truly remarkable thing … he was literally saving the life of babies born premature.
In fact physicians from hospitals all over the country would send their premature babies to Mr. Couney’s infantorium, where they were cared for until healthy enough to return home.
Mr. Couney did not take a penny from the parents of the babies. All the costs were covered through the exhibit’s entrance fees.
A Matter of Fate
In1902 Mr. Couney married the love of his life … a nurse who was a member of the staff that cared for the infants in the incubators, Annabelle Maye.
And just five years later in 1907 Annabelle May gave birth to their daughter Hildegarde who was born premature. And the couple knew exactly what do.
Hildegarde was put on display with the other preemies at the Coney Island exhibit. And that’s where she stayed for the first three months of her life until she was well enough to live outside of the glass box.
Over the course of his nearly 50-year career, Mr. Couney took in around 8,000 babies, saving the lives of 6,500. Pediatricians today acknowledge that the team of doctors and nurses which Mr. Couney assembled was highly skilled, ensuring the babies got the best care available in America at that time.
One of those surviving premature babies is Kathy Meyer. She was born eight weeks premature in 1939. She was taken to Cornell University’s New York Hospital, which had just opened a training and research center for premature infants.
But when the physicians told her parents she’d have to stay in the hospital for quite some time, they refused to do so. They couldn’t afford the hospital medical bills and decided the next best place for their daughter was the Living Babies in Incubator Exhibit run by Mr. Couney.
Of her experience Kathy says, “I was a sickly baby. If it wasn’t for Couney, I wouldn’t be here today. And neither would my four children and five grandchildren. We have so much to thank him for.”
Doctor not doctor Couney didn’t just save the lives of thousands of babies, he revolutionized neonatal care for years to come.
Awesome Quotes by Awesome People
“Like stars are to the sky, so are the children to our world. They deserve to shine!” —Chinonye J. Chidolue