Here I thought that I would have to wait for next summer for True Blood season 4 to satiate my need to obsess over things, but HBO once again fulfills my needs with their new series 'Boardwalk Empire'. I already had an existing obsession with the 1920's, and although I'm not a huge gangster movie fan, with a show set during in Atlantic City during Prohibition, I am hooked by the opening credits.I love the scenes on the Boardwalk with all the vintage ads and shops. In one scene, Nucky Thompson passes by a storefront that had preemies (prematurely born babies) on display, and for 25 cents admission one can go in and see them in incubators. This reminded me of an episode of 'History Detectives' (PBS) where a woman claims to be one of the babies displayed in incubators in the 1933 Chicago World's Fair. The baby incubator was invented around 1890, and before its use to help premature babies, these precious under-weight infants would usually die . As far as I can tell, babies have been displayed in incubators since the 1904 World's Fair (maybe even before that).
It is seems so strange (and maybe a little unethical) to have human beings on display, but at the turn of the last century their were many attractions that displayed human beings. There were the sideshow 'freaks' in the carnivals, and most famously Coney Island. In one of my favorite blogs 'Old Picture of the Day', one theme of the week was Coney Island. There the author put up old pictures taken from Coney Island's heyday. One of them was of a sideshow and another showed a display of native Filipinos. Boardwalk Empire actually touched upon this in a later episode. Apparently at this time, there were many exhibits like this around the world called 'human zoos'. In the same episode of the 'History Detectives' they mentioned a pygmie man named Ota Benga who lived at the Bronx Zoo in the monkey exhibit for a while before people were upset and sent him to live in an orphanage.
Crazy, crazy stuff
