Read The Lives and Loves of Daisy and Violet Hilton: A True Story of Conjoined Twins Online
Authors: Dean Jensen
The Lives and Loves of Daisy and Violet Hilton: A True Story of Conjoined Twins (5 page)
The document was signed by Kate Skinner and Mary Hilton and bore the signatures of two witnesses, those of Kate’s mother, Mary Ann Skinner, and F. Webb, an employee, most likely a secretary, of the law firm of J. G. Bramhall.
If, as some evidence suggests, it was Edward Andress’s son, Frederick, who fathered the twins, then his father’s newspaper, the
Brighton Times
, should have had the inside track on the story. In fact, it was another newspaper, the
Brighton Herald
, that broke the news. The
Herald’s
account could hardly be viewed as a scoop. The twins were already six weeks old when the
Herald’s
front page story appeared on March 22, 1908. To the relief of the Skinner family, the account did not refer to Kate by name but instead referred to the mother only as a “servant girl.” The papers report appeared under a two-tiered headline:
BRIGHTON’S “SIAMESE TWINS”
An Extraordinary Birth!
An extraordinary freak of nature has just seen the light at Brighton. A servant girl has given birth to twins who are united at the hips by an indissoluble bond of flesh and bone. The twins are girls. The lower parts of their backbones are grown together so that just behind the hips, the two otherwise independent bodies are one. The union is all the more complete since, between them, the two children have but one set of certain vital organs. In other respects, the children are quite normal. In fact, they are a very healthy lusty young pair, and seemed possessed of uncommonly vigorous life.…
From Dr. James Rooth, who was kind enough to answer the questions of our representative, we learn that the two
children obviously possess entirely distinct individualities. One has been noticed to be crying while the other is asleep; one has had certain infantile troubles at a time when the other was unaffected.…
Whether they can be separated or not is a matter at present of grave doubt. Separation would almost certainly mean that one would have to be sacrificed. At present, both youngsters are full of life; and it cannot be said that one is more vigorous than the other.
We understood from the doctor that the case is one of an entirely exceptional kind, and is arousing intense interest in the medical profession. Before long the infants will be photographed under the X-rays so that doctors can see exactly how the union has been effected.
The children have been adopted by Mrs. Hilton, the motherly lady who helped bring them into the world; and one found her keenly excited and solicitous over the welfare of her extraordinary foster children. In all her wide experience, she has never known of such a thing; and she confesses that her emotions were very perturbed when she saw what had come into the world. But she never saw finer babies, and could not wish to have them doing better than they are now.…
In a sense, Daisy and Violet were adopted not just by Mary and Henry Hilton, but by all of Brighton. As word of the “extraordinary birth” spread, people began appearing at the Queen’s Arms to drop off such items as hand-knit booties, quilts, and dolls. Brightonians were beginning to take pride in the notoriety their town was attracting as the birthplace of genuine Siamese twins. There was a tradition in Europe of celebrating human oddities, among them Chang and Eng, the original Siamese twins; General Tom Thumb, the twenty-eight-inch-tall midget; Millie-Christine, the Two-Headed Nightingale; and John Merrick, the Elephant Man. They were embraced by royalty and lionized by the press. Whenever such “celebrities” appeared anywhere
in public, they were swarmed by crowds who did not see themselves as being unusually rude or snoopy. They were simply uninhibited in their fascination.
Mary had arranged for the baptism of Daisy and Violet to take place on the evening of March 24, 1908. She was mindful of the harm that could come to the seven-week-old babies from overly enthusiastic curiosity seekers. She plotted the details of the christening with the secrecy of a military general planning a sneak attack.
Minutes before the ceremony, a horse-drawn cab rolled up in front of the Countess of Huntington Church, a large and imposing stone edifice on North Street, and disgorged Mary, Henry, and Edith Emily Hilton, Kate Skinner, and the twins. The party avoided the church’s main entrance into which others were streaming for an evening service. Instead, with Edith carrying the twins cocooned in a blanket, the baptism celebrants walked briskly to the vestry at the rear of the church.
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Mary Hilton may have been fearful about the babies being mobbed in public, but she had no reservations about gaining more publicity for her new charges. She had alerted the
Brighton Herald
of the christening and a reporter was already on hand when the group entered the vestry.
Daisy and Violet were dressed in white christening gowns with silk ties at the cuffs. Mary fussed with the infants in the moments before the ceremony began, removing the white woolen shawls that covered their heads. The
Herald
correspondent was love-struck at the sight of them. He ravished them with this line: “They are, as far as is known, the most wonderful couple in the world.”
The christening was presided over by the Reverend F. J. Gould, a visiting minister from the Lewes Road Congregational Church. Violet slept throughout the entire ceremony. Daisy was not so blasé. She gazed up at the minister, while sucking on a pacifier, with what the
Herald
called “a volley of smack, smack, smacks.”
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The reporter
did not have any compunction about declaring which twin would be the hands-down victor in any beauty contest in which the two were the finalists. “Were they older,” the writer observed, “one would hesitate to draw comparisons, but Daisy is undoubtedly the prettier of the two. She has a better forehead and her features are better moulded. She is indeed quite a charming little baby. Violet is not so well favoured. Still … she is quite a winsome and appealing little lady.”
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The
Herald
piece may have ranked with the fullest accounts of any baptism ever recorded. The story ran almost two full columns. The reporter even recorded the twins’ passing of gas.
The newborn sisters in their pram, 1908. Already sensing an income opportunity, Mary Hilton sold this two-penny postcard to visitors at the Queen’s Arms and later at the Evening Star pub
. (
Author’s collection
)
Following the baptism, Gould took Kate Skinner aside. In what the newspaper called “the kindliest words,” the minister assured her that she was showing great love for the children by surrendering them to a family that would be able to take care of their special needs and provide them with a caring home.
Before leaving the clergyman, Mary reached into her purse and pulled out a deck of postcards that carried a photograph of Daisy and Violet in a buggy. The cards were printed with the a title, “Brighton’s United Twins.” She presented one of the postcards to the minister as a memento of what the
Herald
called “the most extraordinary christening he is ever likely to perform.”
Gould was not alone in seeing Mrs. Hilton as a saint for adopting a pair of wretches that might otherwise have ended up in an institution. As word spread that the pub hostess and midwife had taken the children into her own home, there were those who believed that she was deserving of canonization. Soon, however, some of her neighbors and patrons began to suspect that maybe Mary had not adopted the twins entirely out of pureness of heart, but rather because she felt it might be good for business. Day and night, people queued at the Queen’s Arms’ door, waiting for a chance to see “Brighton’s United Twins.” It had also become apparent why Mary had invited a newspaper reporter to observe the christenings. She was hoping for some free advertising. The
Brighton Herald
obliged. It concluded one of its stories about Daisy and Violet with this plug:
Brighton’s United Twins are thriving abundantly, as persons interested may ascertain for themselves on giving Mrs. Hilton a call any day between eleven and seven at the Queen’s Arms at 8 George Street. The twins are not really on public view, but Mrs. Hilton is prepared to let interested persons see them. And they can bring away a souvenir in the form of a photograph of them as they lie in their perambulator all in readiness for one of their periodic airings.
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A SURPRISING GIFT FOR SHOWMANSHIP
T
he grown-together babies swiftly became a cause célèbre not just in Brighton, but in all of England. Within days after the
Brighton Herald
reported on “Brighton’s Siamese Twins—An Extraordinary Birth,” the story was picked up by other regional newspapers, including the
Yorkshire Observer
, the
Leicester Daily Post
, and the
Leeds Mercury
. These accounts were retold by other papers, and, in turn, reprinted by still others.
The Queen’s Arms came to be regarded as a national shrine of sorts, with Mrs. Mary Hilton its presiding saint-in-residence. Callers from every part of England flocked to the pub, a handsome two-story white stucco building with a bowed, mullioned window overlooking George Street. Many of the visitors were tourists already in the resort town for a holiday. But others, as though on a religious pilgrimage, came to Brighton expressly to see the freak sisters and the remarkable woman who had taken them into her care.
As long as the callers were willing to drop some coins into her tin, Mary was happy to interrupt her saloon work and lead them to the family living quarters where Daisy and Violet were always on view. Their naps were often disturbed as Mary lifted their gowns and pulled down their diapers to show the curious how the children were joined. It is impossible to know if these public barings caused psychological stress to the sisters during their infancy, of course. But by the time they
reached the toddler stage, Daisy and Violet would reveal years later, they suffered shame each time their backsides were exposed to strangers:
Violet and Daisy in their christening gowns, 1908. (Author’s collection)
Our earliest and only recollections are the penetrating smell of brown ale, cigars and pipes, and the movements of the visitors hands which were forever
lifting our baby clothes to see just how we were attached to each other. The customers could not be convinced that it was no fake, and they often lifted the baby clothes in order to find out whether or not there was some trick about our odd condition. This exhibition lasted for years and years.… It is little wonder that we can remember … so deeply is the memory of it impressed on our minds.”
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Mary encouraged every visitor to take a souvenir, a two-penny picture postcard showing the United Brighton Twins in their pram. The coins that the curious plinked into Mary’s tin added up to sizable sums by the end of each day, but that was just one reason for the rise in her fortunes. The Queen’s Arms was now always swarming with new customers.
In addition to her newfound source of income, Mary Hilton was now widely regarded as a bona fide saint. In their Sunday sermons, Brighton’s ministers referred to Mary as a heavenly helper, a selfless spirit of virtue, humility, and piety. The newspapers were equally adoring. They characterized her as an innocent who was on a crusade to wipe out human misery wherever she found it. Who else but a saint, after all, could be so sacrificing and great-hearted that she would take such untouchables into her home and life?
Mary was perfect at assuming the new role as a martyr. She reminded interviewers that even though she was not a young woman and had health problems of her own, including severe arthritis in her legs and hands, she wouldn’t have been able to live with herself if, after bringing Daisy and Violet into the world, she had allowed them to be warehoused in an orphanage for the crippled, diseased, blind, deaf, and dumb. Besides, she said, the grown-together girls were such angelically beautiful babies, so pert and lively even at the instant of their births, that she couldn’t help losing her heart to them. “I fell in love directly I saw them,” she said.
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