What changed the direction of his research was his discovery, several years later, of how his son, Lionel, was being treated by the nanny, a woman known as Nanny Gibson. Dacey himself had been raised by an affectionate nanny, and for years assumed that the woman he’d hired was treating his son in the same way, occasionally reminding her not to be too lenient. He was shocked to learn that Nanny Gibson routinely beat the boy and administered Gregory’s Powder (a potent and vile-tasting laxative) as punishment. Realizing that his son actually lived in terror of the nanny, Dacey immediately fired her. He carefully interviewed several prospective nannies afterward and was surprised to learn of the vast range in their approaches to child-rearing. Some nannies showered their charges with affection, while others applied disciplinary measures worse than Nanny Gibson’s.
Dacey eventually hired a replacement nanny, but regularly had her bring Lionel to his workshop so he could keep her under close supervision. This must have seemed like paradise to the child, who demonstrated nothing but obedience in Dacey’s presence; the discrepancy between Nanny Gibson’s accounts of his son’s behavior and his own observations prompted Dacey to begin an investigation into optimal child-rearing practices. Given his mathematical inclination, he viewed a child’s emotional state as an example of a system in unstable equilibrium. His notebooks from the period include the following: “Indulgence leads to misbehavior, which angers the nanny and prompts her to deliver punishment more severe than is warranted. The nanny then feels regret, and subsequently overcompensates with further indulgence. It is an inverted pendulum, prone to oscillations of ever-increasing magnitude. If we can only keep the pendulum vertical, there is no need for subsequent correction.”
Dacey tried imparting his philosophy of child-rearing to a series of nannies for Lionel, only to have each report that the child was not obeying her. It appears not to have occurred to him that Lionel might behave differently with the nannies than with Dacey himself; instead he concluded that the nannies were too temperamental to follow his guidelines. In one respect he concurred with the conventional wisdom of the time, which held that women’s emotional nature made them unsuitable parents; where he differed was in thinking that too much punishment could be just as detrimental as too much affection. Eventually he decided that the only nanny that could adhere to the procedures he outlined would be one he built himself.
In letters to colleagues, Dacey offered multiple reasons for turning his attention to a mechanical nursemaid. First, such a machine would be radically easier to construct than a teaching engine, and selling it offered a way to raise the funds needed to perfect the latter. Second, he saw it as an opportunity for early intervention: by putting children in the care of machines while they were still infants, he could ensure they didn’t acquire bad habits that would have to be broken later. “Children are not born sinful, but become so because of the influence of those whose care we have placed them in,” he wrote. “Rational child-rearing will lead to rational children.”
It’s indicative of the Victorian attitude toward children that at no point does Dacey suggest that children should be raised by their parents. Of his own participation in Lionel’s upbringing, he wrote, “I realize that my presence entails risk of the very dangers I wish to avoid, for while I am more rational than any woman, I am not immune to the boy’s expressions of delight or dejection. But progress can only occur one step at a time, and even if it is too late for Lionel to fully reap the benefits of my work, he understands its importance. Perfecting this machine means other parents will be able to raise their children in a more rational environment than I was able to provide for my own.”
For the manufacture of the Automatic Nanny, Dacey contracted with Thomas Bradford & Co., maker of sewing and laundry machines. The majority of the Nanny’s torso was occupied by a spring-driven clockwork mechanism that controlled the feeding and rocking schedule. Most of the time, the arms formed a cradle for rocking the baby. At specified intervals, the machine would raise the baby into feeding position and expose an India-rubber nipple connected to a reservoir of infant formula. In addition to the crank handle for winding the mainspring, the Nanny had a smaller crank for powering the gramophone player used to play lullabies; the gramophone had to be unusually small to fit within the Nanny’s head, and only custom-stamped discs could be played on it. There was also a foot pedal near the Nanny’s base used for pressurizing the waste pump, which provided suction for the pair of hoses leading from the baby’s rubber diaper to a chamber pot.
The Automatic Nanny went on sale in March 1901, with the following advertisement appearing in the Illustrated London News:
Do not leave your child in the care of a woman whose character you know nothing about. Embrace the modern practice of scientific child-rearing by purchasing
· It teaches your baby to adhere to a precise schedule of feeding and sleeping.
· It soothes your baby without administering stupefying narcotics.
· It works night and day, requires no separate quarters, and cannot steal.
· It will not expose your child to disreputable influences. Consider these testimonials from customers:
“Our child is now perfectly behaved and a delight to be near.”
“An immeasurable improvement over the Irish girl we previously employed. It is a blessing for our household.”
“I wish I had been raised by one myself.”
It is worth noting that, rather than promoting the raising of rational children, the advertising preys on parents’ fears of untrustworthy nursemaids. This may have just been shrewd marketing on the part of Dacey’s partners at Thomas Bradford & Co., but some historians think it reveals Dacey’s actual motives for developing the Automatic Nanny. While Dacey always described his proposed teaching engine as an assistive tool for governesses, he positioned the Automatic Nanny as a complete replacement for a human nanny. Given that nannies came from the working class while governesses typically came from the upper class, this suggests an unconscious class prejudice on Dacey’s part.
Whatever the reasons for its appeal, the Automatic Nanny enjoyed a brief period of popularity, with more than one hundred and fifty being sold within six months. Dacey maintained that the families that used the Automatic Nanny were entirely satisfied with the quality of care provided by the machine, although there is no way to verify this; the testimonials used in the advertisements were likely invented, as was customary at the time.
What is known for certain is that in September 1901, an infant named Nigel Hawthorne was fatally thrown from an Automatic Nanny when its mainspring snapped. Word of the child’s death spread quickly, and Dacey was faced with a deluge of families returning their Automatic Nannies. He examined the Hawthornes’ Nanny and discovered that the mechanism had been tampered with in an attempt to enable the machine to operate longer before needing to be rewound. He published a full-page ad in which—while trying not to blame the Hawthorne parents—he insisted that the Automatic Nanny was entirely safe if operated properly, but his efforts were in vain. No one would entrust their child to the care of Dacey’s machine.