Couney Links
Martin Arthur Couney
- Short biography of Martin Couney
- Martin Couney, Wikipedia – contains outdated information
- Martin Couney’s Obituary, from The New York Times, March 2, 1950 – contains outdated information
Primary Source Documents
- Gellert Ship Manifest, 1888
- US 1910 Census
- US 1920 Census
- US 1940 Census
- Marriage Certificate 1903
- Passport Application 1904
Business and Associates
Martin Couney Exhibits in World’s Fairs and National Expositions
- Victorian Era Exhibition at Earl’s Court, 1897
- Trans-Mississippi Exposition, Omaha, 1898
- Pan-American Exposition, Buffalo, 1901
- Lewis and Clark Exposition, Portland, 1905
- Panama-Pacific International Exposition San Francisco, 1915
- Century of Progress International Exposition, Chicago, 1933-34
- New York World’s Fair, New York, 1939-1940
Martin Couney Sideshows in Amusement Parks
- Asbury Park Boardwalk, New Jersey
- Coney Island Sideshow at Luna Park
- Coney Island Sideshow at Dreamland
- Lakeside Amusement Park, Denver.
- Luna Park, Pittsburgh
- Wonderland – Minneapolis and St. Paul
- Wonderland – Revere Beach
- Boardwalk – Atlantic City
- White City Amusement Park – Chicago
- White City Amusement Park, Indianapolis, Indiana
- White City Amusement Park, Cleveland, Ohio
Recent Books
- The Strange Case of Dr. Couney, by Dawn Raffel, Blue Rider Press, ISBN 0399175741
- Buy on Amazon (your purchase will support “Neonatology on the Web”)
- Miracle at Coney Island, by Claire Prentice (Kindle or audiobook)
- Buy on Amazon (your purchase will support “Neonatology on the Web”)
General Articles
General articles about Martin Couney and his exhibits are linked below. Additional links may be found in specific posts about his participation in expositions or sideshows.
Reader beware: many of these were written before the full facts about Martin Couney’s background became known, or have not incorporated that new information, so they include information from his self-invented background legend.
- Incubator Baby Sideshows, by William Silverman, from Pediatrics.
- Postscript to Incubator-Baby Sideshows, by William. Silverman, from Pediatrics
- Martin Couney’s Story Revisited, by AAP Perinatal Section Ad Hoc Committee on Perinatal History, from Pediatrics
- Martin Couney’s Obituary, from The New York Times, March 2, 1950.
- A Patron of the Premies, by A. J. Liebling, from The New Yorker
- The Coney Island Baby Laboratory, by Gary R. Brown, from American Heritage Invention and Technology Magazine
- American Characters: Martin Couney, by Richard Snow, from American Heritage Magazine
- The Man Who Ran a Carnival Attraction… by Claire Prentice, from Smithsonian Magazine
- Life under Glass, audio documentary by Claire Prentice, from the BBC
- Martin Couney and Incubator Exhibits from 1896 to 1943, from the Embryo Project
- The Incubator Baby and Niagara Falls, by Arthur Brisbane, from The Cosmopolitan
- Babies on Display, from NPR
- Beginner’s Luck, from Family Circle Magazine 1993
- Coney Island’s Incubator Babies, by Rebecca Rego Barry, from JSTOR Daily
- The Infantorium, by Katie Shornton, from 99% Invisible
- How One Man Saved a Generation of Premature Babies, from BBC News
- Baby Incubators: From Boardwalk Sideshow to Medical Marvel, by Erin Blackmore, from History.Com
- Babies in Sideshows, by Julie Andreson, from Engines of our Ingenuity
- Dr. Martin Couney, from Coney Island History Project
- “The Use of Incubators for Infants,” The Lancet, May 29, 1897.
- “The Victorian Era Exhibition at Earl’s Court,” The Lancet, July 17, 1897.
- Incubator Baby Shows: A Medical and Social Frontier, by Hannah Lieberman, from The History Teacher 35.1, November, 2001.
- The Child Hatchery, from City Pages.
- Good Old Coney Island, by Edo McCullough, excerpt from the book
- “And Next to the Bearded Ladies…” from The New York Times (captured as PDF)
- Kinderbrutanstalt: Leisure Space and the Coney Island Baby Incubators, by Scott Webel, Text, Performance, Practice, 2003. (captured PDF)
- Premie Road Shows from Hippocrates (captured PDF)
- Transferring the Incubator: Fairs and Freak-Shows as Agents of Change, by Katie Proctor, 2004. (captured PDF)
- Pan-American Exposition Baby Incubator Exhibit in Buffalo, New York, 1901 (from the U. of Buffalo Library web site)
Last Updated on 10/21/23