To think "baby cages" look quite dangerous?

[TabithaStephens]

The baby cage, for hanging babies out of the window for families without a garden, 1937

oh my Jesus no.. who the hell would do this.

'Everybody' did it back then where they lived in places that had them fitted, because it was perfectly acceptable. It was just normal. Things change, we wouldn't do it now, but they did back then.

Ooooh the baby cages! Here is a delightful little film from the period:

Well yes but a lot of things were considered fine a long time ago that we now know to be dangerous. Things like smoking, drinking while pregnant, not using seat belts. Hell my parents used to turn the back seat of the car into a bed and put us to bed in pjs, duvets etc no seatbelts and drive down the bloody motorway! Wouldn't do that now. It was a perfectly normal thing to do then, it isn't now.

Oh they're brilliant! They should be reinforced so the whole family could sit out there! I wonder why they went out of fashion, was there any accidents?

Im lost for words (and that take a lot)...

Maybe I could build a cage just outside my patio doors, dd would quite like that!

Isn't it just a pint sized balcony with a lid on?

Is there a version for DHs too? :)

ooh just oooh!! I won't even let the baby out on the balcony ha. And that's been fitted with concrete ;)

How did it stay up?!!

Well presuming its strong, attached properly etc there is nothing wrong with in principle. Looks a bit scary tho!

Yanbu to think they look dangerous but yabu to be bothered about the fact that they look dangerous seeing as they were used in the early part of the 20th century.

I am sure like anything else there was a generation whose parents had them and according to them they never did them any harm

Do they do one mil sized ?!! :)

LOL @Fairylea. Even better, a MIL-sized one that will fit on the roof rack of the car. And has one of those water-dropper things like the ones you see in hamster cages so that MIL can be left unattended

Depends, @Maryz, do you mean the one for the baby or the MIL?

Oh I like that idea :) ... happy thoughts!

Like a pint sized version of the julienne balconies you get now

They look really precarious, especially when the older child got in as well. I wonder if they really caught on. If they did, the air raids 2 years later would have put an end to that. They certainly weren't revived after WW2 although mums in multi-tenanted houses did just leave babies outside the front step. Love the idea of the MiL sized one!

I'm sure they must have been solidly fixed so I think I'd have been more worried about the baby falling in off the windowsill which was quite high rather than the cage falling off. There didn't seem to be anything keeping the baby in the cage. Bigger toys would have been good too, those ones looked as though they could fall through the mesh .
Lovely bit of film though, wasn't the boy sweet in his little shorts and jumper?

Loved the film clip, especially how mum briskly fixed Sally into her warm clothes! My nan used to line up her babies under a tree in the garden at nap time..