Every pregnancy is considered a miracle, but a child born with six toes instead of five on one foot is thought of as an unsightly aberration. Conjoined twins, however, often have it even worse, constantly subjected to gawking and cruelly referred to as freaks of nature.
Most conjoined twins live quiet lives away from the public eye, though a few, such as Brittany and Abigail Hensel, have embraced the spotlight. About a century earlier, Daisy and Violet Hilton became the original conjoined celebrities, but their lives are a heartbreaking tale of rejection and exploitation.
Record-Breaking Twins
The odds of having identical twins are approximately 1 in 250, though the probability becomes higher through fertility treatment. But conjoined twins are even rarer, occurring in an estimated 1 in 60,000 births. Around half of all conjoined twins are stillborn, and about a third of those born alive don't live past 24 hours.
In February 1908, Kate Skinner gave birth to twin daughters, Violet and Daisy, with the help of her employer, Mary Hilton. Joined at the hip and the posterior, the two girls were the first conjoined twins in Britain known to survive longer than a few weeks after birth.
Rejected At Birth
Violet and Daisy's mother, Kate, was a single barmaid. She thought the twins' condition was a form of divine punishment for having children before she was married, so she didn't hesitate to give them up for adoption when Mary, her boss, offered to take them in.
Kate went on to have two more children: a son named Frederick Skinner, born two years later, and a daughter named Ethel Kate Skinner, born two years after Frederick. Sadly, she died at 25 years old of childbirth complications a month after delivering Ethel Kate.
Life As Exhibits
Under the care of Mary, their adoptive mother, the twins stayed at upstairs apartments in the Queen's Arms pub in Brighton and later the Evening Star pub. Mary, whom Daisy and Violet called Auntie, soon discovered the girls were a cash cow, and she wasted no time making money off of them.
At the tender age of three, Daisy and Violet became exhibits at the sideshow circus, where they went by the stage name "The United Twins" and were given a highly embellished life story. Their extensive tours through Britain, Australia, and Germany were met with moderate success.
It Was Their Choice To Live Conjoined
James Augustus Rooth, a doctor who also served as part of the Royal Army Medical Corps, helped to deliver Daisy and Violet Hilton. He reported in the British Medical Journal that separation of the conjoined sisters had been considered. However, medical professionals decided not to do it because they were certain it wouldn’t be successful.
Given that the twins only shared blood circulation, with each girl having their own set of major organs, they could have easily been separated later in life and gone their separate ways. But in their autobiography, Daisy and Violet declared that they wanted to be together to the end.
Mistreated By Their Guardians
Tragically, Daisy and Violet were severely abused and exploited by their Auntie Mary and her various partners, whom they always called Sir. Over the years, Mary made it painfully clear that she saw the girls only as a financial investment, beating the girls when they failed to perform well.
Even as infants, Daisy and Violet were displayed in a rear room of the pub Mary owned, where she charged a fee of two pennies to examine the girls. The degrading sideshows involved people lifting up the girls’ skirts to see where their bodies were connected.
Unfit To Travel To The United States
Unsatisfied with the twins' earnings, Auntie Mary sought to expand their tours to the United States in 1916, but they were denied access to America because they were considered medically unfit for travel. In response, Mary orchestrated a public outcry to pressure American authorities to let Daisy and Violet into the country.
Her scheme worked, and the girls were allowed to come to San Francisco, California. It would have been interesting to know whether they flew to America. While private planes had started taking to the skies in 1903, regular commercial flights were relatively new, having begun operations in 1914.
Their Vaudeville Career
In 1926, comedian and vaudeville entertainer Bob Hope put together an act called The Dancemedians that featured Daisy and Violet in a tap-dancing routine. Vaudeville shows consisted of a variety of entertainment, often in the form of slapstick or burlesque comedy interspersed with song-and-dance sequences.
The twins' vaudeville career proved to be highly successful, earning them as much as $5K a week. By the standards of the time, the two could set aside plenty of income for an emergency savings account and lead a comfortable life on the rest.
Robbed Of Their Earnings
But in a cruel twist of irony, the sisters never enjoyed the fruits of their labor because Auntie Mary and her family took all the money for themselves. Even though Daisy and Violet were top-earning entertainers in the vaudeville genre, they didn't have a penny to their name.
To ensure that only they would reap the rewards of their "business," Mary's family kept the twins under close supervision and never let them see their earnings. Daisy and Violet were also completely cut off from mass media so they wouldn't know how famous they had become.
Treated Like Chattel
Daisy and Violet eventually settled in Birmingham, Alabama, with their Auntie Mary and her family. There Mary died, leaving the twins to her daughter Edith Myers in her will as if they were just another of her possessions. But as bad as Mary was, Edith and her husband, Myer Myers, treated the girls even worse.
The Myerses, whom the girls referred to as their "owners," forced Violet and Daisy to practice their vaudeville acts all day, allowing no time even for proper schooling. They were so paranoid that they never let anyone else go near the girls, and Myer threatened to institutionalize them if they ever tried to run away.
Harry Houdini’s Invaluable Advice
Over the course of their performances, Daisy and Violet became friends with magician Harry Houdini. Horrified by the way they were living, he urged the twins to investigate their circumstances. After learning that they had made headlines in the mass media, they finally understood the extent of their fame.
Realizing that the Myerses had been manipulating them, in 1931 Daisy and Violet sued for their freedom with the help of attorney Martin Arnold. As a result, they were awarded not only emancipation from their "owners" but also $100K in damages. At 23 years old, the girls could finally choose their own path.
Life On Their Own
Once Violet and Daisy had gained their freedom, they formed their own vaudeville act, calling it The Hilton Sisters Revue. To make it easier to tell them apart, Daisy became a blonde and they stopped wearing matching clothes. However, vaudeville had begun declining in popularity.
The twins then ventured into burlesque, which also featured a blend of performances but leaned more toward the risque. Daisy and Violet went back to Britain to seek their fortunes in 1932, sailing there aboard the Berengaria, then returned to the United States a year later.
Their Film Debut, Freaks
At the height of their popularity, Daisy and Violet debuted in the 1932 horror film Freaks. The full movie originally ran for 90 minutes but turned out to be too disturbing for the general public, so several cuts were made that reduced its running time to 64 minutes.
Sadly, the twins’ appearance in the film proved to be the peak of their career, and it became harder for them to make a decent living in showbiz. In 1951, they appeared in Chained for Life, a film loosely based on their life story, then began appearing in theaters to promote the two movies.
Unable To Marry
Violet got into a relationship with Maurice Lambert, a musician, and they were soon engaged to be married. They applied for a marriage license in 21 states, but they were denied on the grounds that it would be akin to bigamy. However, Violet and Daisy didn't remain single for long.
As a publicity stunt, Violet had a wedding with actor James Moore in 1936. Though their marriage lasted for 10 years, it was eventually annulled because James was gay. Daisy then married renowned dancer Buddy Sawyer, also a gay man, in 1941. This too may have been a publicity stunt; the marriage lasted only 10 days.
They Penned An Autobiography
Daisy and Violet undeniably led unique lives filled with glorious highs and abysmal lows, so they decided to write an autobiography sharing their life story. In fact, most of what we know about their lives is based on the book that they published in 1941.
In a particularly memorable excerpt from the autobiography, Violet and Daisy stated that during their childhood they had seemed to want for nothing yet actually lived under slavish conditions. They then declared that they were women, not robots, and deserved to be treated as such.
Their Business Venture
At one point, the sisters tried their luck in the vending industry, setting up a hot dog stand in Miami, Florida, in 1955. Their business was moderately successful, which could be expected considering that their unique condition naturally attracted curious potential customers to their stand.
But as could also be expected, the twins' competitors were none too happy about all the attention they were getting. When the other vendors complained that the “freaks” were stealing their business, Daisy and Violet shut down the stand, perhaps to prevent the situation from escalating.
Their Last Public Appearance
In 1961, Daisy and Violet made their last public appearance at a drive-in theater in Charlotte, North Carolina. Their popularity had greatly diminished by then, and they were just barely getting by. Unfortunately, their tour manager quit and left them stranded with no money or means of transportation.
To make ends meet, the twins became cashiers at a grocery store, where they worked for the next eight years. The store owner even set up a special desk for them to use. During their breaks, they would perform some of their old acts to entertain their co-workers.
Their Untimely Death
One day in 1969, Daisy and Violet never showed up for work, which was unlike them. Concerned, their boss called the authorities, who went to their house and discovered their dead bodies. The twins had contracted the deadly Hong Kong flu, which was a widespread health problem back in '68 and '69.
The forensic investigation also revealed that Daisy had been the first to die of the illness, with Violet passing away two to four days afterward. It is thought that Violet was too sick to call for help. The sisters were buried at Charlotte's Forest Lawn West Cemetery.
Their Media Legacy Hit Broadway
Daisy and Violet became a legend, with several productions based on their lives. In 1989, a musical about the sisters, featuring music by Michael Dansicker, ran for 35 performances. The 1997 Broadway musical Side Show also loosely told the story of the famous conjoined twins.
Side Show earned four Tony Award nominations, and a rewrite of the musical ran on Broadway in 2014 and '15. In the more recent version, singer and actress Erin Davie played the role of Violet, while actress and dancer Emily Padgett played the role of Daisy.
Bound By Flesh, The Documentary About Their Lives
Bound By Flesh was a 2012 documentary filmed by director Leslie Zemeckis that told the story of Daisy and Violet. It received very good reviews, with critics particularly appreciating the documentary's exploration of how the sisters created their own niche in the American entertainment industry.
Violet and Daisy have been described as the early 20th-century version of YouTube stars who attracted millions of fans in a specific medium but whose success didn't translate well to other types of media. Unfortunately, their failure to adapt left them destitute in the end.
Honored In Their Hometown
Brighton & Hove, a bus service company that operates in southern England, has named a Scania OmniCity vehicle in honor of Daisy and Violet, and the vehicle operates in the twins’ hometown of Brighton and Hove. The city also owns the property where they had been born.
In May 2018, the city council and the resident of the property announced intentions to put up a blue plaque commemorating the twins' birth. These blue plaques are permanent signs placed in public places within the United Kingdom, linking the places with famous people or historical events.