In the first half of the twentieth century, thousands of tiny babies lived their first few weeks among the smell of hotdogs and the sound of carnival music as they desperately fought for their lives.

Dismissed as ‘weaklings’ and given little chance of survival, many were simply left to die.

But one man, Dr Martin Couney, had the technology, the know-how and the motivation to save them. So, with parents’ permission, he took pre-term babies from their homes and hospitals and admitted them to his child hatchery – a precursor to today’s neo-natal unit.

It was through his own experience of having a premature baby with his wife, who was a nurse, that Dr Couney recognised the need for sustenance, human contact and warmth to survive, and decided to set up rooms full of incubators where they cou

See Full Page