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Exposition Coloniale de Marseille, 1906

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Exposition Coloniale de Marseille, 1906

The Exposition Coloniale de Marseille was the first French exposition devoted exclusively to the colonies (earlier colonial sections at Rouen 1896 and Rochefort 1898 being narrower affairs, and the 1900 Paris colonial section a subordinate part of the Exposition universelle). The framing of the Exposition was overtly imperial and commercial — a showcase of France’s twenty-five-year colonial expansion and, above all, of Marseille’s role as its principal port. The site was the former military parade ground (champ de manœuvre) of the Rouet, at the rond-point du Prado, the future Parc Chanot, combined with several other parcels for a total of 40 hectares provided to the Exposition’s organizers. The exposition opened with an official inauguration on the afternoon of Saturday April 14,1906 (the eve of Easter), attended by the Mayor Chanot and commissaire général Jules Charles-Roux.

The Exposition featured about fifty palaces and pavilions along a tree-lined central avenue running from the Prado entrance. The Grand Palais de l’Exportation, at the head of the avenue, housed metropolitan and Marseille industry (oil-milling, soap, tanning, sulphur and sugar refining) and, in its wings, a retrospective exhibition of Provençal art and a colonial fine-arts section. Each of the major colonies (Algeria, Tunisia, French West Africa, Madagascar, and Indochina) had its own palace in an evocative regional style. A separately sited “Palais de la Mer” carried what contemporaries called the first genuine international section of oceanography and maritime fisheries in France, mentioned by many visitors as the high point of the exposition. Large greenhouses exhibited exotic plants including orchids, palms, cycads, pandanus, coffee trees, cocoa trees, rubber plants, etc.

In addition to the palaces and formal exhibits, there was a substantial fairground of paid attractions — the Water-Toboggan, the Maison Hantée, the Château Labyrinthe, a “Venise”/place Saint-Marc water ride, the Panorama de Madagascar, an American aeroplane, a captive balloon, the “Torpille réfrigérante” novelty in the Madagascar section, and the baby incubator (couveuse) pavilion discussed below. The attractions were supplemented by daily concerts, indigenous performances, the Cambodian royal dancers, six monthly agricultural competitions, several scientific and professional congresses (the colonial congress of 4–9 September is the best documented), and set-piece fêtes.

The exposition closed with a grand ceremony on Sunday November 18, 1906, presided by the colonial minister Milliès-Lacroix, at which the list of Grand Prizes was read. The closing gala was disrupted when the electric-lighting contractor, aggrieved at his award, cut the illuminations and caused a brief panic and a judicial inquiry (Le Petit Marseillais, 17 Nov; Le Figaro, L’Opinion nationale, Le Radical, all 19 Nov 1906). The exposition drew more than 1,800,000 visitors over its run, mostly from France, and finished slightly in the black. The exposition was widely judged a commercial and political success, cementing Marseille’s self-image as the “porte de l’Orient,” and its grounds became the Parc Chanot; the fairgrounds were reused for the Exposition Internationale des Applications de l’Électricité in 1908, and another Marseille colonial exposition followed in 1922.

The Incubator Exhibit

Although we do not have any pictures of Alexandre Lion’s incubator pavilon at the 1906 Exposition, it is better documented than many. The Guide Officiel plan shows the couveuse pavilion immediately to the right (east) of the Grand Palais, adjacent to the Marseille Restaurant/Brasserie, the Bar and the Théâtre — corroborating the press descriptions that describe it “à droite du Grand-Palais.” Medically-oriented coverage appeared in Dr Louis Porcheron’s article “Les Curiosités Médicales de l’Exposition” in Le Feu (revue mensuelle, Marseille; no. 16, “Numéro de l’Exposition Coloniale,” 1 August 1906, pp. 69 ff.).

Source: Le Feu, Numero de l’exposition coloniale, Marseille, August 1, 1906.

In this pavilion located to the right of the Grand Palais, one finds the little angels in a hurry to leave the maternal cradle before the end of natural laws.
As soon as they appeared, they were received by benevolent hands who placed them in artificial cradles where they find the uniform temperature of their first nest. these premature fruits fallen from the tree of life ripen little by little in the gentle, warm heat of the incubators.
This work of the Lion incubators (this is the name of the learned founder-director) is truly admirable; it saves a proportion of the 80% otherwise doomed to death. (Excerpt from the bulletin of the Academy of Medicine, November 12, 1895.)
The incubator consists of a metal cage with a glass frame at the front. The heating, inside the incubator, is produced by a circulation of heated water in a coil communicating with a tank placed next to it. The thermosiphon can be heated either by gas, oil or electricity.
The invariability of the temperature is ensured automatically by means of a very ingenious regulator. Pure air filtered by a very simple hydraulic system, invented by Mr. Lion, comes to oxygenate the children’s lungs; the old air disappears through an ad hoc chimney.
Toddlers are breastfed regularly in an adjoining room heated to 25 degrees.
When, during the first days, premature infants do not have the strength to suckle, they are fed through the nose with sterilized formula or mother’s milk, using a special spoon.
A sheet of temperature, placed above each incubator, indicates daily the triple curve of the rectal temperature and the weight of the child, and the temperature of the incubator.
This summary description can give only a faint idea of the operation of incubators.
Young girls and mothers, go learn in this little pavilion. Your heart will be deliciously moved and your brain will be satisfied with a new scientific acquisition.

The daily press treated the pavilion as a popular attraction. A Le Petit Marseillais notice of September 20, 1906 reports eight babies then present, “auxquels on donne la vie artificiellement,” admitted on doctors’ recommendation, and installed to the right of the Grand Palais. Le Petit Provençal‘s recurring “Balade-Exposition” column (signed J.M.) mentions the pavilion and its operator repeatedly, variably as “M. Lion, directeur de ce scientifique établissement” (1 Sept, 27 Oct) and “M. Lion, l’inventeur” (3 Nov). The same column also published two distinct promotional figures: a single-Sunday gate of 1,500 visitors to the pavilion (20 Oct 1906) and a cumulative career claim of “more than 800 kids” [plus de 800 marmots] owing their lives to the couveuses (3 Nov 1906). The couveuse pavilion also features in the visit of the Chinese study mission of June 1906, whose members left 50 francs in the pavilion’s collection box “whose installation they greatly appreciated” [dont ils ont fort apprécié l’installation] (Le Petit Provençal and Le Petit Marseillais, both 10 June 1906).

Lion was awarded a Grand Prize for his exhibit, under Groupe III, Classes 13–16, “L’Hygiène aux Colonies” (jury of physicians presided by Dr Viry, inspecteur des services de santé du XVe corps d’armée), among the Grands Prix, the exhibitor of record is “Couveuses artificielles d’enfants (Lion, directeur), Saint-Mandé, Seine.” This appears in the organizer-primary Palmarès Officiel (1907) and is independently reproduced, in identical wording, in two Marseille newspapers within days of the closing — Le Sémaphore de Marseille (22 November 1906) and La Dépêche coloniale (27 November 1906).

Lion souvenir postcard for the 1906 Exposition, with the usual stock photos, and the then-current address of his Paris establishment. Source: Author’s collection.
Map of the exposition. The location of the incubator pavilioin is marked. Source: Guide Officiel de l’Exposition Coloniale de Marseille 1906.
Sources – General
Sources – Medical
  • Porcheron, L[ouis]. “Les Curiosités Médicales de l’Exposition.” Le Feu (Littérature – Art – Science; revue mensuelle, Marseille), 2e année, no. 16 (“Numéro de l’Exposition Coloniale”), 1er août 1906, p. 69 ff.
Sources – Press
  • Le Petit Marseillais, 10 juin 1906 (Jean Servien, “La Mission Chinoise à Marseille”) — 50 francs left at the couveuse pavilion.
  • Le Petit Provençal, 10 juin 1906 (“A l’Exposition Coloniale”) — Chinese mission, 50 francs “au Pavillon des Couveuses d’enfants.”
  • Le Petit Provençal, “Balade-Exposition” column (J.M.), issues of 1 sept., 8 sept., 15 sept., 22 sept., 6 oct., 20 oct. (1,500 visitors one Sunday), 27 oct., 3 nov. 1906 (>800 infants) — promotional; “M. Lion, directeur / l’inventeur.”
  • Le Petit Marseillais, 20 septembre 1906 (cropped) — eight babies present, right of the Grand Palais.
  • Le Petit Marseillais, 14 avril 1906 (“L’inauguration officielle de l’Exposition coloniale,” Gaspard Galy) — opening set for 14 April, public admitted 15 April, escadre.
  • Le Petit Journal, Le Radical, Le Soleil, 15 avril 1906; La Croix, Le Voltaire, 17 avril 1906 — inauguration accounts (several mis-dating the ceremony to “dimanche”).
  • Le Petit Marseillais, 19 avril; 7 juin 1906 — guide-catalogue, carte-faveur list (Couveuse d’enfants = 1 entrée), school caravans.
  • La Dépêche coloniale, 11 juin 1906 — Indo-Chinese banquet, Pentecost crowds.
  • Paris, 1er juillet 1906 — Comité supérieur session of 8 June: receipts (~3,400 F/day), land-use scheme.
  • Les Annales politiques et littéraires, no. 1206, 5 août 1906 (Robert Eude, “L’Exposition Coloniale de Marseille”) — 23 ha, 132 m façade, fifty palais, dragon procession.
  • Le Petit Provençal, 29 août; 13 sept. (Fallières visit program, 15 Sept); 15 sept. (exhibitors’ banquet, Charles-Roux’s 1,500,000-visitor toast) 1906.
  • La France de Bordeaux et du Sud-Ouest, 3 sept. 1906 (Reader); La Politique coloniale, 3 sept. 1906 (A.G. / Reader) — promenade accounts, 23 ha.
  • Le Petit Parisien, 5 sept. 1906.
  • Le Petit Provençal, 1er sept. (full page), 6 oct., 27 oct., 3 nov. 1906.
  • Le Petit Marseillais, 17 novembre 1906 (“La journée de clôture”) — closing ceremony announced for Sunday 18 November.
  • Le Figaro, L’Opinion nationale, Le Radical, 19 novembre 1906 — closing ceremony held 18 Nov (Milliès-Lacroix; palmarès read; lighting-contractor incident).
  • Le Sémaphore de Marseille, 22 novembre 1906. “Exposition Coloniale de Marseille — Palmarès. Groupe III, Classes 13–16, L’hygiène aux colonies (président du jury, Dr Viry). Grands prix: … Couveuses artificielles d’enfants, Lion, directeur.” — Contemporary press reproduction of the official palmarès; independent confirmation of the Grand Prix.
  • La Dépêche coloniale, 27 novembre 1906. “Exposition Coloniale — Palmarès (suite). Groupe III, Classes 13–16, L’hygiène aux colonies. Grands prix: … Couveuses artificielles d’enfants, Lion, directeur.” — Second contemporary press reproduction of the official palmarès; independent confirmation of the Grand Prix.
More Information about Alexandre Lion

French primary sources were machine-translated, then checked against the originals and edited by the author. Portions of this page were drafted with machine assistance; the final text was reviewed, verified, and edited by the author.

Last Updated on 09/12/26