Baby cage

A baby cage was a wire-mesh cage fitted with a bed, suspended outside an apartment window, designed to give infants living in crowded cities access to fresh air and sunlight when no garden or yard was available. The device appeared in the early twentieth century and became especially popular in 1930s London, where community groups such as the Chelsea Baby Club distributed them to families without outdoor space. Its use reflected the medical thinking of the time, which stressed ventilation and sunlight as defenses against tuberculosis and as generally important to child health in dense urban housing.