Samuel Michael Schenkein (1867-1938)

Editor’s Note: I have chosen to give Schenkein a more extensive entry than is typical in the People section of the web site because his early exit from the incubator business and Couney’s subsequent retellings of his origin story caused Schenkein’s role to fade almost into obscurity. I have spent hours researching Schenkein in on-line archives to try and recapture a more complete picture of his participation in early incubator exhibits.

Samuel Michael Schenkein was a promoter, businessman, and inventor who served as the commercial architect and active operational co-director of the Couney infant incubator enterprise across nearly two decades. Despite playing a foundational role in what became a significant chapter in neonatal history, he has attracted essentially no biographical attention in his own right; nearly everything known about him derives from records generated by his partnership with Couney and related legal proceedings.

Identity and Background

Full name: Samuel Michael Schenkein — confirmed by the Affidavit for License to Marry (1909), the New York death certificate (1938), and the marriage register.

Birth: July 1867, Kraków, Austria (now Poland). Confirmed by the 1880 U.S. census, the MyHeritage family tree, passport application No. 20343 (1900) examined by Dawn Raffel, his own handwritten declaration on the Affidavit for License to Marry (1909) where he wrote “Cracow, Austria” in his own hand, and the 1938 death certificate which records birthplace as Poland — consistent with Kraków, which was part of Austria at his birth but Poland by the time the certificate was issued.

Parents: Hyman (Herman) Schenkein, born Poland; Rebecca Schenkein, née Inchauser — rendered phonetically as “Schauser” in the 1909 marriage affidavit but written clearly as “Inchauser” on the death certificate. Both confirmed across the 1880 census, the Temple Israel/Leadville genealogical record, the 1909 marriage affidavit, and the 1938 death certificate.

Immigration: 1872–73, arriving as a child of approximately five years old, confirmed by the death certificate notation of 66 years in the United States. His formative years were entirely American.

Childhood residence: 89 Clinton Avenue, Brooklyn, New York, as enumerated in the 1880 U.S. Federal Census, where Samuel, age 13, is listed as a student in the household of Herman (50) and Rebecca (40) Schenkein, alongside siblings Bernard (20), Maurice (19), Oliver (18), Annie (16), Sceola (5), and Edward (7 months).

Siblings: The family’s transatlantic connections are notable — brother Morris/Maurice was born in London, UK, which may partly explain Samuel’s later ease of operation as a London-connected promoter. Brother Edward T. Schenkein appears as a witness at Samuel’s 1909 wedding, confirming continued family contact into adulthood.

Sources: 1880 U.S. Federal Census, Brooklyn, Kings County, New York; Temple Israel, Jewish Leadville — Schenkein family; Certificate of Death No. 21531, Borough of Manhattan, October 26, 1938.

The Family Business Background

The Schenkein brothers — Samuel, Morris, and Bernard — along with their father Hyman, operated a jewelry business dealing in diamonds, precious stones, watches, silverware, and bronzes, with locations in Leadville, Colorado (1886–1889), Denver, Pueblo, and New York. Samuel was the only brother who lived in Leadville for an extended period, residing above the shop at 313 Harrison Avenue. The Colorado operations were wound down by 1895, with Samuel returning to New York and the diamond trade. This background is directly relevant to understanding his later career: a man at home in the luxury goods trade, with transatlantic commercial connections and experience managing retail operations across multiple cities.

Source: Temple Israel, Jewish Leadville — Schenkein family.

Occupation: Diamond Dealer, Merchant, and Inventor

The Lowell Daily Courier, November 8, 1901, reporting on the McConnell litigation arising from the Pan-American Exposition, identifies Schenkein explicitly as “a diamond dealer of this city” (New York). The New York World, November 7, 1901, confirms the same. This ties directly to the Schenkein family’s entire documented commercial history and establishes his primary New York trade in the years around the turn of the century.

By the time of his 1909 marriage affidavit, he described his occupation as “Merchant” — a broader self-description consistent with a man whose commercial activities had expanded well beyond diamond dealing into the exposition and incubator business.

His death certificate (1938) records his occupation as “Inventor”, with the remarkable notation that this was his occupation for “Life” and that he last worked in this capacity in 1937 — just one year before his death. The “Life” declaration indicates that Schenkein understood invention as his core professional identity from the beginning to the very end of his career, not merely a late-life designation.

Sources: Lowell Daily Courier, November 8, 1901; The World (New York), November 7, 1901; Affidavit for License to Marry, No. 12342, May 29, 1909; Certificate of Death No. 21531, Borough of Manhattan, October 26, 1938.

First Documented Association with the Incubator Enterprise: Berlin, 1896

The traditional account — that Schenkein witnessed Couney operating an incubator exhibit at the Berlin Great Industrial Exposition and invited him to London — requires significant revision in light of current scholarship. Contemporary German sources, including the official daily bulletin of the Berlin exposition and associated newspaper accounts, attribute the 1896 incubator exhibit not to Couney but to Alexandre Lion of Nice, who had been operating incubator charity exhibits in Paris since at least 1891. Couney’s claim to have operated or managed the Berlin exhibit appears to be part of the same self-constructed origin myth as his claimed Leipzig medical degree and Budin apprenticeship.

The most likely backstory is that Schenkein attended or was otherwise aware of the Berlin exhibition, recognized its commercial potential, and subsequently recruited Couney — who was either present at Berlin as an observer or known in exposition circles as a willing operator — to bring a comparable exhibit to London. It was Lion’s concept, and the demonstrated crowd-drawing power of Lion’s Berlin exhibit, that Schenkein was actually backing.

Earl’s Court Victorian Era Exhibition, London, 1897

Schenkein served as the financial backer and co-promoter of the infant incubator exhibit at the Victorian Era Exhibition in London’s Earl’s Court — the first well-documented incubator exhibition in Britain, and the first well-documented exhibition attributed to Couney by name.

A contemporary Lancet editorial (July 17, 1897) named both men as co-operators, noting that “Messrs Samuel Schenkein and Martin Coney had opened an exhibition of baby incubators during the Victorian Era Exposition at Earl’s Court,” and that “Messrs Coney and Schenkein, and two physicians, attend” the exhibit. The Lancet further noted that Schenkein and Couney identified themselves as “the representatives in England of this the ‘Altmann Incubator'” — indicating they were using incubators manufactured by Paul Altmann of Berlin (instrument maker to Robert Koch) rather than Lion’s apparatus. The Altmann instruments were in all probability manufactured under license from Lion’s French patent, as the designs are visually identical to surviving Lion-nameplate incubators, including examples that survive in Spain; the rebranding likely reflects a territorial licensing arrangement or a deliberate effort to distance the enterprise from Lion’s prior claim.

The exhibit nearly collapsed before it opened. English hospitals declined to provide local infants. The traditional account credits Couney’s personal relationship with Budin for the solution — Couney obtaining Paris babies transported across the Channel in wicker baskets. A more defensible explanation, drawing on the biography of Solomon Fischel — Couney’s long-standing business associate — would run differently. According to the The New York Times obituary for Fischel (October 1913), Fischel was personally acquainted in the 1890s with Louise Recht, a nurse trained at the Maternité under Budin. The operational connection to the Paris Maternité, and the supply of both babies and nursing staff for Earl’s Court, probably ran through Fischel and Recht rather than through any personal relationship between Couney and Budin. Couney’s claimed Budin apprenticeship is further undermined by his 1888 immigration to the United States at age nineteen, which leaves no plausible window for substantive medical training in Paris.

The incubator exhibit’s financial success promptly attracted imitators. Schenkein and Couney co-signed a warning letter in the Lancet of September 18, 1897, cautioning the medical profession and public “not to entrust their children to any applicant whatsoever without first taking the precaution to assure themselves that they will not be made the victims of showmen, as well as inexperienced or irresponsible persons.”

Primary sources: The Lancet, July 17, 1897 (“The Victorian Era Exhibition at Earl’s Court”) and September 18, 1897 (letter by Coney and Schenkein), accessible via neonatology.net’s Silverman reprint and the NIH History of Excellence symposium PDF.

Louise Recht and the Paris Connection

When Louise Recht immigrated to the United States in 1903, Schenkein paid for her passage (Dawn Raffel, The Strange Case of Dr. Couney, and personal communication, April 2026). This establishes that Schenkein was actively recruiting and financially sponsoring the enterprise’s key medical personnel. The broader conclusion — that Recht’s operational connection ran through Fischel and Schenkein rather than through Couney — is well supported by multiple lines of evidence, including the Fischel obituary’s statement that she came from Paris with Fischel, and Schenkein’s sponsorship of her passage.

Source: Dawn Raffel, The Strange Case of Dr. Couney (2018).

Pan-American Exposition, Buffalo, 1901

Schenkein was Couney’s formal business partner for the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. The exhibit was enormously lucrative: gross receipts were $125,000 over the six-month run (The World, New York, November 7, 1901).

The financial structure is documented in a three-party agreement dated April 10, 1900, signed by Schenkein, Couney, and investor Emmett W. McConnell. Schenkein was the named formal concessionaire. McConnell agreed to lend up to $15,000 to install the plant in exchange for one-quarter of gross receipts — $31,250 on the actual receipts — and the agreement contemplated extending the exhibit to future expositions at Toledo, Ohio and St. Louis, Missouri.

The aftermath produced litigation on two fronts. McConnell alleged he had been paid only $14,000 of his $31,250 share, leaving a balance of $17,250. He additionally claimed $75,000 in damages for Schenkein and Couney’s repudiation of the similar agreement for the St. Louis Exposition — the larger component of the dispute — for a total claim of $92,250 (The World, November 7, 1901; Lowell Daily Courier, November 8, 1901). Attachments were issued against Schenkein’s New York assets, including funds on deposit at a New York trust company, and both men were briefly taken into custody by the Erie County sheriff before being released.

McConnell then filed a petition in involuntary bankruptcy against both men in the Western District of New York. The case — In re Schenkein, 113 F. 421 (W.D.N.Y. 1902), decided February 3, 1902 — turned on whether the three-party arrangement constituted a legal partnership. The court ruled it did not, effectively dismissing the bankruptcy petition. However, the litigation did not end there: court documents obtained by Dawn Raffel show that the Buffalo case continued through appeals and multiple further hearings, not reaching final closure until 1922 — twenty-one years after the original filing.

Sources: The World (New York), November 7, 1901; Lowell Daily Courier, November 8, 1901; In re Schenkein, 113 F. 421, vLex; US District Court Documents 1901, 1902, 1922.

Infant Incubator Company (New York), 1905

Couney formed the Infant Incubator Company to market and sell incubators and supply equipment for his various exhibits. Per the sworn deposition testimony of Louise Recht in the probate proceedings of Maye Couney’s estate, the certificate of incorporation bears date May 10, 1905; it was filed in the Office of the Secretary of State, Albany, New York, May 11, 1905, and in the Office of the Clerk of the County of New York on May 12, 1905. Its original capital stock consisted of 1,000 shares of common stock at $100 par value, total $100,000.

The New York Tribune, May 12, 1905, published the incorporation notice: “Infant Incubator Company, New-York; capital, $100,000. Directors: Solomon Fischel, Samuel Schenkein and H. H. Kaufman, of New-York.” (Although the print is not clear in the archived scan of the Tribune notice, Recht’s sworn testimony confirms $100,000 as the correct figure, and the two are consistent when a printing defect is accounted for.)

Sources: New York Tribune, May 12, 1905; Deposition of Louise Recht, probate proceedings of Maye Couney estate, per Dawn Raffel personal communication, April 2026.

Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition, Portland, 1905

For the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition in Portland, Oregon, a separate Oregon corporation was incorporated: “Infant Incubators, Portland, capital stock $50,000; incorporators, B. B. Beekman, S. Schenkein, C. C. Egan” (The Sunday Oregonian, April 16, 1905). The stated purpose was “to construct and operate incubators for the care of weakly and prematurely born children,” with the article noting the company would exhibit at the Lewis and Clark Fair.

The incorporation of a separate Oregon entity — filed just days before the New York incorporation — with local co-incorporators Beekman and Egan likely serving as nominee directors to satisfy Oregon legal or concession contract requirements, reflects sophisticated legal structuring: isolating each major exposition’s liabilities in a discrete corporate shell, separate from the New York parent company. Schenkein’s presence as a named Oregon incorporator confirms he traveled to Portland and handled the legal formalities personally.

The Butte Miner, May 15, 1905, confirms Schenkein’s active operational role at Portland, reporting that “Doctor M. A. Couney and Doctor Schenkein, of Berlin, superintend and direct the work” and — in a separate passage, with characteristic journalistic imprecision — that “the incubators are wonderful bits of mechanism, invented by Mrs. M. A. Couney and S. Schenkein, who have charge of the institution.” Whatever the inaccuracies of attribution, the coverage confirms Schenkein was physically present and publicly recognized as co-director of operations. The “of Berlin” tag likely reflects journalistic confusion about his origins or the Altmann incubator connection.

Sources: The Sunday Oregonian, April 16, 1905; The Butte Miner, May 15, 1905.

Marriage, 1909

On June 1, 1909, Samuel M. Schenkein married Augusta Laura Eckstein at 46 East 68th Street, Manhattan, in a ceremony performed by Rabbi Stephen Strose. Witnesses were Mary Bettiger and Ed. T. Schenkein — brother Edward, the youngest sibling from the 1880 Brooklyn household, by then approximately 29 years old.

The Affidavit for License to Marry (No. 12342, sworn May 29, 1909) provides the following details in Samuel’s own hand:

• Residence: 244 Riverside Drive, Manhattan — a prestigious Upper West Side address indicating comfortable circumstances
• Age: 42
• Occupation: Merchant
• Place of birth: Cracow, Austria
• Father: Hyman
• Mother’s maiden name: Rebecca Schauser (phonetic rendering of Inchauser)
• Number of marriage: First

Augusta Eckstein was 23 at the time of marriage, nearly twenty years younger than Samuel. Her father William A. D. Eckstein was born in Berlin, Germany. This was also her first marriage. The marriage was indexed September 10, 1909 and filed and recorded February 2, 1910.

Sources: Affidavit for License to Marry, No. 12342; Certificate and Record of Marriage; New York Times, June 3, 1909.

Departure from the Incubator Enterprise, c. 1922

Per Louise Recht’s sworn deposition testimony in the probate proceedings of Maye Couney’s estate: in or about the year 1922, the capital of the Infant Incubator Company was reduced from 1,000 shares ($100,000) to 200 shares ($20,000). At that point there were just four stockholders — the Couneys, Louise Recht, and the Couneys’ cousins — with neither Schenkein nor Fischel (who had died in October 1913) among them. This capital reduction of 80% is almost certainly the mechanism or final reflection of Schenkein’s exit, with his shares retired or bought out as part of the restructuring. Dawn Raffel’s narrative of the 1920s chapter of The Strange Case of Dr. Couney notes simply that “Schenkein was out.”

The convergence of two events in 1922 is notable: the final closure of the Buffalo McConnell litigation after twenty-one years of proceedings, and the Infant Incubator Company’s capital reduction and change in stockholder composition. Whether these events are causally connected — whether the closure of the case prompted a restructuring of the company — remains undocumented. The temporal correlation is suggestive but should not be stated as an established connection without further evidence.

Sources: Deposition of Louise Recht, per Dawn Raffel personal communication, April 2026; Raffel, The Strange Case of Dr. Couney (2018); United States District Court documents.

The “Inventor” Designation

Schenkein’s 1938 death certificate records his occupation as “Inventor”, with two details of particular significance: the total time spent in this occupation is recorded as “Life”, and the date last worked is recorded as 1937 — just one year before his death. Together these indicate that Schenkein understood invention as an important part of his professional identity, not merely a late-life or honorary designation.

At least one documented patent confirms this identity. On May 15, 1914, Schenkein and co-inventor Otto Paul Richard Lehmann filed a UK patent application for “Improvements in and relating to Gem Polishing Machines” (GB191412058A, published July 15, 1915). The patent describes a machine for polishing bruted diamonds comprising a rotating lap, an eccentrically mounted table with internal rack and pinion drive, and adjustable dop holders for presenting diamond facets at precise angles to the lap — sophisticated precision machinery squarely within the diamond trade in which Schenkein had been active since the 1880s. The 1914 filing date is notable: nine years after the Infant Incubator Company incorporation, it confirms that his diamond trade career continued in parallel with and persisted beyond his incubator enterprise activities. He also appears as an assignee on several US patents, though in those cases the inventive work was by others. The co-inventor Lehmann’s German name is consistent with the transatlantic diamond trade networks in which the Schenkein family had long operated.

The McConnell agreement of 1900 had explicitly included a clause giving McConnell a one-quarter interest in any “lotions, foods, powders, or other preparations” used in infant care that were protected by trademark, copyright, or patent — suggesting patent activity in the incubator sphere was also contemplated from the outset of the enterprise, though no such patent has yet been identified in Schenkein’s name. Such a discovery is unlikely, given that Couney, Fischel, and Schenkein’s exhibits all used Paul Altmann and Kny-Scheerer incubators, which were all based on the Alexandre Lion design.

Sources: Certificate of Death No. 21531, Borough of Manhattan, October 26, 1938; UK Patent GB191412058A, filed May 15, 1914; Ancestry.com International Patents, 1890–2020.

Later Life and Death

Following his exit from the incubator enterprise in or before 1922, Schenkein continued to reside in Manhattan. His residence at the time of his 1909 marriage was 244 Riverside Drive; by the time of his death he was living at 138 East 60th Street, Manhattan — a solid midtown address near Central Park — where both his residence and his death occurred.

His attending physician was Dr. Alex Weiss of 455 West End Avenue, who attended the deceased from February 1938 to his death and last saw him alive on October 25, 1938. Death occurred at 5 AM on October 26, 1938.

The death certificate records the principal cause of death as Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia, with a duration of 10 years — meaning Schenkein had been living with the disease since approximately 1928, well into his post-incubator years. The contributory cause was Coronary Artery Disease. Augusta Schenkein, as wife and next of kin, employed the undertaker — Memorial Chapel, 110 West 76th Street — and served as executor of his estate. He was buried on October 27, 1938 at Beth El Cemetery, Long Island.

Samuel Michael Schenkein predeceased Martin Couney by nearly twelve years — Couney died March 1, 1950 — and died five years before the Luna Park exhibit closed in 1943, without seeing the end of the enterprise he had helped build. His wife Augusta died in Saddle Brook, New Jersey on December 21, 1972, at the age of 87. They had no children.

Source: Certificate of Death No. 21531, Borough of Manhattan, October 26, 1938.

Summary of the Documentary Record

Assessment

Schenkein was more than the background financial promoter that the sparse historical literature has implied. He was an active operational co-director of the Couney incubator enterprise across nearly two decades: identifying the commercial opportunity in Berlin, recruiting Couney, arranging the London venue, structuring the financial arrangements for multiple expositions, sponsoring and recruiting the enterprise’s key nursing figure, incorporating the enterprise in both New York and Oregon, and appearing in person at exhibitions as co-superintendent. The three formal roles he held — concessionaire (1900), director of the New York Infant Incubator Company (1905), and named incorporator of the Oregon entity (1905) — reflect a man who was not a passive investor but an active business principal. His exit around 1922 — circumstances not fully documented, possibly connected to the final resolution of the long-running Buffalo litigation — left Couney, Recht, and the Couney family as the remaining principals for the final two decades of the Luna Park operation.

In his personal life he was a Brooklyn-raised, Kraków-born member of New York’s German-Jewish commercial community, a diamond dealer and inventor who parlayed family experience in the luxury goods trade into a career as an exposition promoter and entrepreneur. He married late, at 42, to a woman nearly twenty years his junior, and lived in comfortable Manhattan circumstances — 244 Riverside Drive in 1909, 138 East 60th Street at death — until his death in October 1938 from leukemia, a disease he had carried for approximately a decade, predeceasing Couney by twelve years and dying before the enterprise he helped build came to its close.

• Schenkein Family – US 1880 Census
• Schenkein Family – US 1900 Census
• Schenkein Family – US 1910 Census
• Schenkein Familiy – US 1930 Census
• Schenkein – Marriage Certificate
• Schenkein – US District Court
• Schenkein – Death Certificate
• Schenkein – Patent
• Schenkein Family – Temple Israel

Last Updated on 04/23/26