Infant Incubators at Dreamland

Infant incubators as amusement park attraction? Browsing through the digitized Eugene L. Armbruster photographs and scrapbooks, I saw a few photographs of the exterior and interior of an old German farmhouse-style building. At the bottom of each photo, Armbruster wrote: "Infant Incubators Dreamland, 1904." 

A May 7, 1904 advertisement in the Brooklyn Times announced "THE LARGEST BABY INCUBATOR IN THE WORLD" as one of many fascinations offered by the brand-new Coney Island amusement park Dreamland. Another article described it: "...delight of delights, a structure filled with incubators and propagating the human species. Of this last and decidedly novel show, Dreamland's press agent says, naively: 'The building has a picturesque gable in the niche of which a large stork is seen standing above a nest of cherubs'" ("Coney's Latest Big Show Will Open Next Saturday," May 8, 1904, Brooklyn Eagle).

To be honest, there has been a whole book written about this: The Strange Case of Dr. Couney: How a Mysterious European Showman Saved Thousands of American Babies by Dawn Raffel (2018). This book tells the story of Dr. Martin Couney who exhibited incubator babies around the United States at the beginning of the 20th century. However, dear Brooklynology reader, I hope you will indulge me in exploring this topic on a smaller scale through the newspapers, photographs, and books in our collections at the Center for Brooklyn History.

I wanted to look a little more into why a baby incubator exhibition would be competing for attention alongside "Ben Morris and his Wonderful Illusions" and the "Sensational Leap-Frog Railway." Surely babies would not be a draw for Coney Island-goers seeking thrills? But these attractions are more similar than they appear at first glance. People oohed and ahhed at the tiny babies, medical marvels kept alive by this novel device. At the time, the field of neonatology (the medical specialty that treats newborn infants, especially those who are ill or premature) itself was in its infancy and while doctors (and not-doctors) in Europe had been working on solutions to care for premature infants since the 1880s, the actual use of these treatments was mostly taking place outside of hospitals. In 1897, the Victoria Era Exposition featured an infant incubators exhibition, Barnum & Bailey brought them to a fair in London in 1898, and in 1901 at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York.

We have a few photographs taken by Eugene L. Armbruster in our collection that depict the infant incubator exhibition at the Dreamland amusement park in Coney Island in 1904. Even though he lived in Bushwick, Eugene L. Armbruster (1865-1943) took many photographs of Coney Island around this time period. In fact, three whole scrapbook albums in his collection of photographs are devoted to the area and include newspaper clippings as well as photographic prints. As an amateur photographer and local historian, Armbruster sought to document Brooklyn during a period of rapid growth and change by taking photographs of buildings and landscapes during his walks throughout Brooklyn. After his retirement in 1920, Armbruster even published an "Old-Timer" column in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

Dreamland opened in the summer of 1904. The beginning of the 20th century marked the rise of extravagant, mechanized amusement parks and attractions at Coney Island. For many, wages and leisure time increased and advertising campaigns lured people to the seaside (Frank 2015, 30-31). Inspired by the success of the opening of Luna Park in 1903, former New York State Senator William H. Reynolds raised money to build Dreamland Park (Frank 2015, 4). It was painted all white and claimed to be lit by 1,000,000 light bulbs, 100,000 of which dotted the 375-foot Beacon Tower (Kyriazi 1976, 66).

And Dreamland was not the only Coney Island amusement park to feature infant incubators. Luna Park had its own exhibition the summer before in 1903. An article in the Times Union promised the infant incubator, which had been featured at the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo "has been greatly improved, and is sure to be one of the wonders of New York this summer" ("Luna Park Ready for Crowds," May 10, 1903, page 3).

An article on Luna Park's 1903 opening day extolled the exhibition ("Infant Incubators Opened Today," June 3, 1903, Times Union, page 5): 

The infant incubators... are perhaps the most wonderful of all the wonderful exhibits... which has become the glowing and pulsing heart of Coney Island... It is not a mere show; it is an educational exhibition, behind which is one of the most genuine philanthropies in existence.

Another article recognized the mismatch of Luna Park's incubator exhibition among the other Coney Island attractions ("Hints to Young Parents in Luna Park 'QBators'," June 4, 1903, Brooklyn Eagle, Page 3): 

It should be said at the beginning that the incubator or "Q bator," as it is called, is not a thing to appeal to the general run of the Coney Island crowd. When everything has been said there is a strong flavor of incongruity and inappropriateness in its being there at all. The very idea of "spielers" and "barkers" standing before the doorway and haranguing the passing throng in an effort to divert its shekels for a spectacle so serious, not to say sacred, strikes one as questionable, almost repellant.

That same year, the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children took Elmer S. Dundy, an owner of Luna Park, to court, declaring that "Dundy violated sections 288 and 292 of the Penal Code, in permitting young children to be on public exhibition" ("Against Luna Park Incubator," Brooklyn Daily Times, June 26, 1903, Page 4). A notice in December 1903, announced that the Society won its case in the Court of Special Sessions, but the sentence was not defined: 

A 1911 article in the American Journal of Nursing listed the benefits of such exhibitions even though "the feeling of the medical profession is against the show incubators..." Fairs had the money to pay for the care of these infants while hospitals at the time could not (or would not), and this was an opportunity to educate the public (and medical professionals) that premature babies could and should be treated. Of course, the author, Mary Dabney Smith, then goes on to list the strict guidelines that these infant incubators needed to adhere to around sanitation, nutrition, and bathing (1911, 792-795).

And what about Dreamland's incubator exhibition? The History of Coney Island: Lists and Photographs of Main Attractions viewbook, 1904 (V1986.022), lists many of Dreamland's 1904 attractions, such as the Leap Frog Railway, but does not include the infant incubators. Viewbooks, also known as souvenir albums, were commercial publications made up of mostly photographs from an event or place. 

The infant incubators are listed under Luna Park's attractions in this viewbook even though Dundy was sued over this attraction the year before. I consulted a few other viewbooks of Coney Island from around this time period in our collection, but did not find any other mentions of the infant incubators.

Dr. Martin Couney ran the Dreamland exhibit with several trained nurses, including his wife Annabelle Maye (Duffel 2018, 27). During the opening season, Dr. Couney and Dr. Fischel, under their Society for the Preservation of Infant Life, even hosted a reunion of incubator babies at Dreamland. While Dreamland experienced financial trouble soon after opening, the Infant Incubators were sustained by visitor admission fees. 

Dreamland did not last long, however. Early in the morning of May 27, 1911, opening day of the season, a worker accidentally knocked over a bucket of hot tar on the Hell Gate ride and it caught fire, which spread throughout the park (Raffel 2018, 123). Employees escaped and the infants were quickly taken to safety thanks to the nurses and doctor there that night.

The Saturday, May 27 Brooklyn Daily Times reported: "Babies, wrapped in cotton, are carried to safety. Six tiny mites of humanity, occupants of the baby incubators, were wrapped in bundles of cotton and carried out..." ("Coney Island Fire Ruins Dreamland; Loss $4,000,000"). And as you can see from the map accompanying this article, the Infant Incubators were not far from the point of origin of the fire. Dreamland itself did not survive, nor was it rebuilt (Kyriazi 1976, 69-70).

The Brooklyn Daily Times reported on June 10 that Luna Park had given the babies a new home: "large sanitary, fireproof building, and a better home than they have ever had..." And it would be a permanent exhibition ("City and Seashore Amusements -- Luna Park"). I'm sure there was some wheeling and dealing behind the scenes by Dr. Couney and his associates, which Dawn Raffel discusses more in her book.

In 1913, Couney hosted another reunion of incubator babies specifically from Dreamland. However, the catastrophic loss of records in the Dreamland fire meant that they did not know how to track down all of the children. This reunion was especially important for drumming up publicity for the Infant Incubators exhibition being featured in the upcoming 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco ("Incubator Babies to Have Reunion," August 16, 1913, Brooklyn Citizen). The Panama-Pacific proved a lucrative exposition for Couney, which reportedly brought in $72,830.30 ("Consult the Coney Museum if you Would be a Showman," June 25, 1930, Brooklyn Daily Times).

The Luna Park babies were a symbol of the future. During a demonstration of 1500 suffragists at the park in 1913, the babies listened attentively as some of the women made their case in the Infant Incubators exhibition. The women spoke to them "in the hope that the babies would absorb the ideas and grow up and become ardent suffragists" ("Even Babies Cooed: 'Votes for Women'," August 8, 1913, Brooklyn Daily Times, Page 3).

Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, technology and resources for caring for premature infants in hospitals increased. The infant incubators were slowly becoming less of a novelty. I found mentions of the Coney Island Infant Incubator Hospital through 1936 on Brooklyn Newsstand, our database of digitized Brooklyn newspapers. It seems it separated from Luna Park at some point to be its own entity: Infant Incubator Hospital. A wanted ad ran in the Brooklyn Eagle in May 1926 for a nurse for the Infant Incubator Hospital:

Coney Island itself changed a bit during this time. Of course, it was not immune to the 1929 stock market crash. The great amusement parks deteriorated, but Coney Island was still a popular destination for people of any social class (Frank 2015, 79).

Perhaps times did get tough for Martin Couney. In 1930, the Brooklyn Citizen reported Dr. Couney and other Coney Island notables were being sued for allegedly conspiring to stop a new show near the boardwalk, "The Un-Named," which included human embryos. The new showman, Samuel Gordon, attested to the scientific nature of the exhibit, but Couney, along with the president of the Brooklyn Borough Gas Company, co-leader of the 16th Assembly District, president of the Coney Island Chamber of Commerce, and editors of the local paper found the display "objectionable" ("Sues Rivals of Human Embryo Show at Coney," June 6, 1930, Brooklyn Citizen). Gordon and his attorney claimed Dr. Couney was just worried about the new exhibit hurting his own bottom line ("'Mystery of Life' Exhibit Starts Merry War at Coney," June 6, 1930, Times Union).

Dr. Couney may have believed in the little babies he treated, installing the most up-to-date technology in premature infant care, but in 1933 he did not feel the same way about their mothers. When claiming that the rate of premature babies had doubled since 1890 (a statistic I have not fact-checked), Couney said: "You can't tell a girl of today a thing...They think they must be athletes till the last minute. And then their babies suffer for it. We can't do anything with them. But we can save their babies" ("Scolds Mothers of Babies Born Prematurely," December 17, 1933, Brooklyn Eagle).

Dr. Couney continued to display the infant incubators at fairs throughout the United States, the last major exposition being the 1939 New York World's Fair. The Coney Island exhibit closed in 1943 and Couney and the other doctors and nurses he worked with are now credited with having saved thousands of premature babies lives. Not to mention the ones they convinced the medical community were worth saving.

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Other References:

Frank, Robin Jaffee. Coney Island: Visions of an American Dreamland, 1861-2008 (Hartford, CT: Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art and Yale University Press, 2015), 791.06874 F. Brooklyn Public Library, Center for Brooklyn History.

Kyriazi, Gary. The Great American Amusement Parks: A Pictorial History (Secaucus, New Jersey: Citadel Press), 790.068 K. Brooklyn Public Library, Center for Brooklyn History.    

Raffel, Dawn. The Strange Case of Dr. Couney: How a Mysterious European Showman Saved Thousands of American Babies (New York: Blue Rider Press, 2018), 618.9201 R.