Baby in overhanging cage, London, 1934

1934 photo of a baby in a wooden and wire cage hanging out of a window a few stories up. It looks secure.

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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bentleywg

It looks like an open air bed.
Suds

My first thought was “Baby Cage Fight!”. Am I a bad person?
- Anonymous
  
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oschene

Probably trying to ward off rickets — London didn’t get a lot of sun in those days, coal smoke and fog and all that.
http://elid.in/g/uvlight
stosh machek

childhood pic of sir edmond hillary? baby powered air conditioning unit? falcon bait?
boxlightbox

http://boingboing.net/2009/07/22/devices-for-storing.html

still awesome.
Anonymous

I have to do the same thing to my children, otherwise they gnaw on the furniture
Anonymous

I wonder if they let him in at night.
Xenu

Too bad Michael Jackson didn’t have one of these.
Anonymous

Sleeping porch. Considered very healthy at one time.
franko

mother? air the baby out â€” he stinks!
Anonymous

Another view here:

http://s3.amazonaws.com/data.tumblr.com/tumblr_kuyr3pAvsv1qa9b8ro1_1280.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=0RYTHV9YYQ4W5Q3HQMG2&Expires=1262308874&Signature=HpxI6ipV2hcwEJXyvUWIYP%2BUOJI%3D

From here:

http://blackandwtf.tumblr.com/page/3
Anonymous

wasn’t this done for babies with ‘croup’? doctors determined that the babies need cool moist air at night to breathe more easily… so people built these little outdoor sleeping pens.
jfrancis

That is to prevent him from flying back to Kensington Gardens.
Architexas

Caging babies is wrong! I bet they also ply them with antibiotics and growth hormones. Free-range babies or nothing, I say.
Anonymous

The same people who freak out about this photograph, are probably the same people who feel no qualms about strapping their baby into an automobile car-seat made of plastic and nylon.

The only difference being, that automobiles kill far more babies every minute that all of the window baby cage fatalities in all of history.
- Anonymous
  
  that’s a skewed curve. try scaling your comparision model.
Anonymous

Least they won’t grow up afraid of heights, pigeons maybe, but not heights.
pyster

caged baby is more tender… tho range baby cold be pretty tasty!
Anonymous

I think this is fascinating! Are there any good books about 1930s London?
hallpass

This was to allow the child to better enjoy the pristine air of 1930s London.
Anonymous

Forget the baby cage, what I want to know is the name of the painting being used by one of the russian commentors on the link page showing two women hugging, one of them nude. ;p
- Anonymous
  
  That would be a detail of a photograph by Jan Saudek.
- Anonymous
  
  That particular image is a photo by
  Jan Saudek entitled ‘Oh, those beautiful B. Sisters!’ and you may further ogle it and others like it here: http://www.mdf.ru/english/festivals/fotobiennale/biennale2006/saudek_fb06/
V

Does it come in teenager sizes?
lewis stoole

b.f. skinner decided to “upgrade” his experiments.
Anonymous

My cat would just love that.
Anonymous

These were fashionable for a time to allow city-dwelling children to get fresh air and sunshine during daylight hours — fumes, smoke, etc., apparently hadn’t entered the spectrum of things pediatricians and mothers worried about yet.

If I recall correctly, BoingBoing ran a photo of a similar installation somewhere in New York City a year or two ago.

The conversation then seemed to return no documented evidence of any significant illness or injury to the children involved.
SFCPat

This was a fairly common way in the 30′s & 40′s for those in large cities to have windows open in the non-ac summer’s and not have to worry about a toddler falling out of a window 6 stories up. As was tying a rope around a small childs waist and allowing him/her to play outside attached to the clothes line while busy mom’s cooked, cleaned, washed without automatic machines, and did everything else that required doing. It was a simple time and these were simple solutions, not child abuse.
Lobster

Nothing shows love for your neighborhood more than filling the street with the sound of an externally mounted shrieking infant.
Avram / Moderator

I guess the parents had just seen Peter Pan.
nanuq

“b.f. skinner decided to “upgrade” his experiments.”

Leave B.F. alone, his kids turned out just fine.

http://drvitelli.typepad.com/providentia/2009/08/heir-conditioning.html
arborman

It would be a lot more useful (though downstairs neighbour unfriendly) if you were to take off the baby’s diaper while he was out there. Saves on the cleanup, helps the shrubs.