The Couney Family: Giving Preemies a Chance to Live

By Linda Harris Sittig

You’ve heard the adage, “It takes a village.” But sometimes, it takes just one family to make a profound difference. This month’s blog is not about a strong woman; it is about her family – the Couney Family of Brooklyn, New York.

And as in most good stories, the backstory sets the foundation.

THE BACK STORY

In the nineteenth century, babies born prematurely were considered genetic weaklings and often did not thrive. The mortality rate worldwide was high for children born 3-4 weeks early and weighing less than 5 pounds.

But in the mid-1850s, a French gynecologist named Dr. Etienne Tarnier started using special incubators to help premature babies survive.

By 1880 several research reports in France were extolling the virtues of incubators, even though medical authorities viewed the practice as quackery. Sixteen years later, Dr. Pierre Budin used the incubators with even greater success. In 1896 he gained permission to showcase six incubators, with preemies, to the World’s Fair in Berlin.

Martin Couney stared at the incubators at that exposition, impressed that people would pay to see such tiny babies lying in glass cribs. Two years later, Martin Couney immigrated to America, with dreams in his head of saving babies and making money.

CONEY ISLAND

Martin settled on Coney Island, New York, the most famous vacationland in America. It was known for its amusement parks, seaside bathing, and a 2.7-mile long Boardwalk. Coney Island attracted several thousand visitors every year.  Scraping together all the money he could find, Couney convinced the owners of Luna Park to let him set up an exhibit on the Boardwalk, where people could pay to see tiny babies.

Martin opened his incubator facility in 1903, and at just 10 cents a ticket, viewers flocked to his modest setup, called All the World Loves a Baby.

At first, he found only a few families willing to take a chance to save their premature babies’ lives. Martin did not charge the parents even a cent because he planned on the income generated from ticket sales to cover the cost of running the facility.

1904

The year 1904 was significant. Martin had by then hired a staff of six professional nurses, four registered and two wet nurses who rotated on a 24-hour schedule. In addition, he paid two local doctors to visit the facility daily. An early proponent of the importance of breastfeeding, Martin was adamant that the wet nurses stay as healthy as possible. They were immediately fired if caught smoking, drinking, or eating hot dogs (!). He was also an early proponent of the positive effect of babies being held, and every day each preemie was cuddled and gently rocked by a nurse.

It was also the year he fell in love with one of the professional nurses, Annabelle Segner. Marrying after a short courtship, Annabelle and Martin quickly became a team. Together they handled the intake of each preemie. The infant was immediately given a sponge bath, rubbed down with alcohol, swaddled, and given a small drop of brandy (if the baby was big enough to swallow) before being placed in a glass incubator kept at 96 degrees.

The facility was immaculate, the staff wore starched uniforms, and the babies were fed on a regular two-hour feeding schedule.

And to their credit, the Couneys took any preemie brought to them regardless of race, religion, or social class. And although it cost $15.00 (about $400 today) per incubator for the medical care, parents were never charged. Martin had been right. The entrance fee to the exhibit covered all the operating costs, good wages for the staff, and enough left for the Couney’s to open a second exhibit.

Then in 1907, Annabelle went into labor six weeks early and delivered a baby girl weighing only three pounds. They named her Hildegard.

BABY HILDEGARD

Annabelle and Martin immediately put Hildegard into their program. As each week went by, their baby daughter flourished and grew up to become a nurse at the facility. And although they hired barkers to stand outside the entrance to entice the crowd, the family considered their operation a small hospital, not a sideshow. In reality, it was a functioning neonatal intensive care unit.

I want to share that one of the Incubator Baby barkers was a clean-shaven, good-looking young man named Archie. Archie Leach worked for the Couney family for two years. But you would know him by his Hollywood name, Cary Grant.

SUMMARY

Annabelle died in 1936, and after Cornell Hospital opened the first New York premature Infant Station in 1943, Martin and Hildegard closed the Coney Island facility.

Today, of course, it would be considered unethical to house preemies in a public exhibit. But if you could talk to any parents whose preemie survived because of the Couney’s, I doubt they had any regrets.

Today, 1 in 10 babies born in America is premature. But thank goodness we have neonatal hospital facilities in all 50 states.

But from 1903 to 1943, the Couney family took in over 8,000 babies and boasted an 85% survival rate.

It took a family’s efforts to save thousands of preemie lives.

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You can always catch up with me on my website www.lindasittig.com. Right now, I am working on my fourth novel celebrating another unsung strong women in history. Happy Women’s History Month!

Linda😊