“To all whom it may concern,” the 1922 letter to the United States Patent Office opens. “Be it known that I, Emma Read, a citizen of the United States, residing at Spokane, in the county of Spokane and State of Washington, have invented certain new and useful Improvements in Portable Baby Cages.”
Less than a year after applying, Read was granted the patent for the “Portable Baby Cage.” The invention wasn’t entirely new. Parents had jury-rigged their own solutions for several decades prior – all looking to address the same problem. The health and vitality of urban infants was, in a word, lacking.
At the turn of the century, Dr. Luther Emmett Holt had prescribed his own solution. "Fresh air is required to renew and purify the blood, and this is just as necessary for health and growth as proper food," Holt wrote in his 1894 treatise, The Care and Feeding of Children. "The appetite is improved, the digestion is better, the cheeks become red, and all signs of health are seen."
The book outlines a prescription decidedly less radical than what would come later. Apartment windows should be opened wide, with the child’s crib or carriage placed a few feet away. A bonnet and light coat was then be placed on the child – as if going for a stroll on the street – though screens, Holt added, were unnecessary.
Less than a decade after Holt’s words were published, the world saw a rise in the creation of open-air schools to combat the rise of tuberculous with air and sunshine. In his 1902 pamphlet, A Handbook of the Open-Air Treatment and Life in an Open-Air Sanatorium, Charles Reinhardt describes the public’s changing opinions about the health benefits of fresh air.
“Prevention is ever better than cure, and consumption – recently recognized as a curable disease—is eminently preventable; moreover, the means by which it may be prevented in the individual, and stamped out as a national scourge, are so simple, and tend to such a general improvement in health and vigour, that it is a thousand pities that their recognition should be delayed for an unnecessary moment,” Reinhardt writes. “And yet the prejudice against fresh air, especially after nightfall, accompanied by a fondness for warn, and therefore as a rule, stuff and impure atmosphere, is so deep rooted in the minds of people.”
Outside the sanatorium and open-air schools, parents heeded the emerging scientific consensus in the form of the “health cage.” Perhaps the best-known proponent of the phenomenon was a 21-year-old mother named Eleanor Roosevelt. Residing in New York City, the future first lady built her own health cage from wire mesh and a wooden basket. The family doctor had prescribed fresh air for the newborn Anna, and told the new mother to simply let the baby cry.
The wailing infant caught the attention of neighbors, one of whom threatened to alert New York Society for Prevention of Cruelty Toward Children. “This was a rather a shock for me,” Roosevelt wrote in her autobiography decades later, “I thought I was being a very modern mother.”
Read’s patent sought to address the problem of providing city children fresh air, while dealing with some of the broader safety concerns that arose when suspending an infant outside a window, several stories above the street.
“When the baby has finished taking a nap,” the patent reads, “the curtains may be rolled up out of place, so as to permit a thorough supply of fresh air to pass through the cage, which is mostly of open, work or wire fabric, which will prevent the baby from falling from the cage.”
The 30s saw a rise in popularity, particularly in the United Kingdom. A 1940 British news reel highlights a some-time baby cage resident Sally of West London. “From now on, it’s high society and life in a penthouse for her,” the narrator exclaims as Sally’s mother dresses her up in a coat a places her in the outdoor cage.
Later that same year, the Battle of Britain would – at least temporarily – end the popular use of baby cages in the U.K., as bombardments by the Nazi air force took some of the shine from the idea of hanging small children in cages above the city street.
Sources:
Portable Baby Cage https://patents.google.com/patent/US1448235A/en
The Intriguing History of 1930s Baby Cages https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/news/a33058/hanging-baby-cages/
Put Your Baby in a Bird-Cage https://www.newspapers.com/image/?clipping_id=30053090
New York Today: Spring Break Fever https://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/04/09/new-york-today-spring-break-fever/