A rather strange bit of history that’s almost lost to the passage of time. Back in 1884, an American pediatrician by the name of Luther Emmett Holt advocated for babies to be “aired”, i.e, brought outside the house to breathe the outside air, improve their immunity and generally toughen them up. The exact description of this process was written thusly in his book:
Fresh air is required to renew and purify the blood, and this is just as necessary for health and growth as proper food,” he wrote. “The appetite is improved, the digestion is better, the cheeks become red, and all signs of health are seen.
Holt merely recommended for the baby’s crib to be placed near an open window, and this sounds fairly harmless. Some parents took it a step further, though. In 1908, Eleanor Roosevelt bought a chicken wire cage and hung it outside of her apartment in New York City, and place her baby girl, Anna, in the cage for naps and such.
This continued until a concerned neighbor threatened to call the police on her. Incidentally, she was also following advice from her doctor, who instructed her to ignore her baby when it cried. Perhaps the concerned neighbor simply had enough of the baby’s wailing.
In 1922, a woman named Emma Reed invented and patented a portable baby cage, designed to be hung outside of apartment windows and for babies to be placed inside. Now apartment dwellers, too, gets to “air” their new born children the same way as the former first lady.
The usage of baby cages managed to spread overseas and gained great popularity in London back in the 1930s, and was declared by the Royal Institute of British Architects as “essential to every housing of the middle class” back in 1935. World War II, however, would lead to a decline in the popularity of baby cages in London.
Despite having made some minor comebacks, the popularity of baby cages steadily faded due to safety concerns and were more or less gone by the 1950s.
Some more pictures of baby cages:
Originally from social media and other sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_cage
Temple of Zagan 