My Coney Island Baby

Delighted to learn that the funfair on Coney Island housed a baby incubator display. Dr Martin Couney's "Incubator Baby Exhibits" were a regular feature at the World's Fairs, as well as at their permanent site on Coney Island. In part this is because it was one of the most electrically endowed sites in the USA; but is is also because ticket sales funded his pioneering treatment of premature babies, and Coney Island guaranteed a high freak-show-friendly footfall. In August 1904 half a million people turned out to see the world's tiniest baby fight for its one-pound-six-ounce life (it succeeded, and according to the New York Times of September 4th, met the smallest woman in the world).

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