The 1930s in the States were a time of uncertainty and desperation. The Great Depression rocked the whole country and many of its allies with a spiral of the economic downturn right at the peak of the early industrial era.
It led to widespread despair, disaster, and damage, which stayed with the country long.
It also led to necessities and innovations in technology that wouldn’t have been found if not for sheer desperation powering them. How else could the Baby Cage have come about?
The Baby Cage is one of the many 1930s oddities born from misconception and ignorance but built on good intentions.
When people who don’t know the correct answer try to solve a problem before them, they have to get creative to reach the end. This is the only kind of thinking that can result in an invention like the Baby Cage.
The thought of putting a child literally out the window, suspended and surrounded in chicken wire, is so crazy and messed up that it could only work in a society that had less money than common sense.
10 /10 It's Called A Baby Cage
Getting the obvious out of the way: Baby Cages were cages for babies and were often suspended from windows of midtown apartments.
They were like cribs but made of metal and were attached to the frames of windows so infants could be outside without actually being outside.
They were invented in 1922 formally to give babies fresh air for city-bound parents who couldn’t take long walks or strollers.
9 /10 The Science Behind It
The concept of the Baby Cage, as it was, seemed to come about first in 1884 in the book The Care and Feeding of Children by Dr. Luther Emmett.
He theorized that babies needed to be aired to renew and purify the blood, like how laundry must be circulated to dry out.
The thought then carried over: what if a mother is stuck at home and can’t leave her house for some reason? She’d get a Baby Cage.