BOUND BY FLESH

Transcription

Director: Leslie Zemeckis

VIOLET HILTON: I am Violet Hilton. This is my prospective bride, Bill Maurice Lambert. We tried very hard to procure a marriage license, both in the states of New York and New Jersey, but were refused in both places. I feel very, very unhappy about it because I love Maurice very, very dearly, and he loves me. And I don't see any reason in the world why we should be denied the pleasure of being happy.

VIOLET HILTON: The eyes of a curious world have been focused on us almost from the moment of our birth.

DEAN JENSEN: They were born on a February night in 1908.

AMY FULKERSON: In Brighton, England. Uh, their mother was unwed.

DEAN JENSEN: Kate Skinner, a grocery clerk, and also a barmaid, Kate worked for Mary Hilton, who operated a pub, and also worked as a midwife along with her husband Henry. Usually got the service of their, um, barmaids free because they promised the young woman that she would be there to attend to the births. She had a very difficult labor. Started early in the morning. They lived in row houses, and because she was tormented, people were pounding on the walls on either side of her, telling her to shut up. Twins actually ran in Kate's family, so it wasn't a great surprise when the delivery took place that twins were born. Mary Hilton, of course, detected immediately that something was peculiar here. They were joined back-to-back, and then when Kate discovered it moments later...

(screaming)

DEAN JENSEN: She was absolutely horrified, you know, that she had brought into the world freaks. She would not even hold the children, much less suckle the children. She thought that this was a punishment from God. She had these children out of wedlock. Doctor Ruth came, and while the babies appeared vigorous and healthy, he said the twins would die in a very short period. At that point in history, the mortality rate for conjoined twins was probably something like, uh, a thousand deaths per one survival. There had never been any successful separations. Kate was probably somewhat cheered knowing that her babies were going to die, and prayed that they would pass overnight. But in the morning they were always there, always squirming. Mary Hilton visited Kate every day to bathe the babies, and feed the babies, and the twins seemed to be getting ever stronger.

PHILIP MORRIS: She sold the girls to Mary Hilton.

DEAN JENSEN: Initially she just kind of took possession of them. Ultimately they were legally adopted, yes.

AMY FULKERSON: Did she have genuine affection for these, these little girls? Or, you know, was she always thinking that perhaps there was the opportunity to display them, to, uh, promote them?

DEAN JENSEN: She was a poorly educated woman, but a savvy woman at the same time. She saw from the beginning that these two little things were cash cows. Kate did ultimately name them, um, Daisy and Violet. They both had entirely separate organs. This kind of little ribbon of flesh through which the bloods and fluids would circulate from one to another. Initially they were rather tightly fastened to one another, but as they grew older that ribbon of flesh became more and more elasticized, just from the movements.

VIOLET HILTON: We seemed to move without much effort, because we propelled each other.

AMY FULKERSON: Mary a, a real promoter. She had, uh, a real knack for how to sort of sell the story. And she would have these little photo postcards, and you could buy one of these little postcards as a souvenir, and would set them up in, uh, one of the family rooms of the, the home. And you could go off and, you know, for a small fee you could go into the home, see the little girls. And if you wanted a souvenir you would buy one of these little postcards and see the, the Brighton United Twins.

DEAN JENSEN: Her pub was called the Queens Arms. She displayed the children, now a month old or so, in a back room of the pub. And people could come in, and for a couple of pence, have the opportunity to view the children. So it was this constant stream of people now coming to the bar.

AMY FULKERSON: One of their first memories is being little girls in the tavern, and having people lift up their dresses, and testing the connection between them to prove that they were really conjoined.

DEAN JENSEN: Little ribbon of flesh was sensitive to touch, so if somebody touched it, you know, it might bring about a movement. Brighton, England at this time was a popular seaside resort. There were wax museums, boardwalks, a great variety of entertainment. So it was a very glitzy place on the sea.

(fireworks)

AMY FULKERSON: One of the things that they did very, very early when they were quite small was appear in pit shows, which were popular among lower class communities.

WARD HALL:When you would come in, the performers would be on little stages that were only six inches above the ground, and there would be a railing, uh, almost the length of the tent, and the width of the tent, that enclosed these stages. And the people then would come in and lean on the railing.

AMY FULKERSON: As babies they weren’t doing much other than being in the, this space, with people looking down on them. It must not have been a very enjoyable experience.

VIOLET HILTON: Our earliest memory center about a doctor pleading with Andy to permit him to cut us apart.

JOHN BRAMHALL: Doctors always wanted to poke, and prod, and, um, talk openly in front of them about separating them.

CAMILLE ROSENGREN: Maybe it was primitive enough that one of them would have died. I don't know.

AMY FULKERSON: After she had been in the original pub, and they had made some money off of displaying the girls, they invested in, uh, in a larger property. But that was really kind of small potatoes.

DEAN JENSEN: Mary Hilton, ever the opportunist, decided after some several months to actually take them on the road.

AMY FULKERSON: When they decide that they’re going to leave England and travel to other parts of Europe, um, they’re making appearances more in sort of theatres, and, uh, uh, more established sorts of places.

VIOLET HILTON: There was a speech repeated to us daily, over and over again like a phonograph record. It was spoken by a big, curly haired woman who bathed, dressed, and fed us. She never petted or kissed us, or even smiled. She just talked. Your mother gave you to me. You are not my children.

AMY FULKERSON: She would remind them that their mother didn’t want them. That their mother had given them up, and that they should be grateful for anything that she gave them.

DEAN JENSEN: Mary was sort of a controlling, demanding person. And, of course, wouldn’t allow the twins any freedoms at all.

VIOLET HILTON: We were taught to call her Auntie, and each of her five husbands was "Sir."

DEAN JENSEN: They were afraid of her, but love her? No.

JAMES TAYLOR: They fan afoul of an assortment of "Sirs," as they were calling them, usually who were promoters. And they were simply used for their drawing power.

STEVE FREESE: The woman who cared for them really drilled into them, I think, that, you know, they’re going to be performers, they’re going to be exhibitioned, they’re gonna be on the road to make her money. There was a lot of brutality that was involved with it, just to so-called keep them in line.

DEAN JENSEN: Mary would get angry, tell them that they were so repellent.

VIOLET HILTON: Her temper was something that her daughter or her husband could not control. And when we displeased her, she whipped our backs and shoulders with the buckle and a wide belt.

DEAN JENSEN: They started showing elsewhere.

PHILIP MORRIS: Circuses, and sideshows, and became, uh, very, very big attractions. But the girls never saw any of the money.

VIOLET HILTON: At an early age we were taught to recite, read, and sing.

DEAN JENSEN: They studied violin and piano, saxophones, clarinets.

VIOLET HILTON: It was amazing how much training was crammed into our early lives. In preparation for our debut in Berlin, our first appearance in a theater, I, Violet, played a Princess Waltz, two and a half hours, without a mistake.

DEAN JENSEN

They became multi-talented, uh, by the time they were six, seven, and eight. Wax museums are all over at that time. Wax museums usually offered a variety of entertainment that changed periodically. So they might bring in magicians, they might bring in various, uh, freaks. Houdini had seen the twins at this wax museum and was absolutely fascinated with people with unusual and extreme anomalies. He was particularly drawn to Daisy and Violet. Not only did they have this curious anomaly, very rare for conjoined twins in that period to even have reached the ripe old age of six or seven or eight, but they were also such fetching things to look at. Like one of Raphael's paintings of cherubs, they were that lovely.

PHILIP MORRIS: If you go back to the turn of the century, to the twenties and thirties, if someone had a deformity, normally you did not see that person out on the street. Parents would maybe raise the child, but would not take them out in public. But here are two girls that are absolutely gorgeous. I mean, just marvelous, and, you know, if anybody saw them they would just fall in love with those girls.

JAMES TAYLOR: Those old dime museums that they performed in at kids, the audience could be tough. I mean, here you are, gorgeous young girls, out there on stage, appealing to not only the fancy of all the young men in the audience for legitimate reasons, but also for pretty freaky reasons.

WARD HALL: Ike Rose was, um, the operator of Rose's Midgets, a troupe of performing midgets.

DEAN JENSEN: Ike Rose visited Mary and asked for an opportunity to represent the Hilton twins, and Mary agreed to that. And at this point they were called the Brighton United Twins. They played in some quite impressive venues, concert halls, musical theatres. And Ike Rose, at the same time, was representing the Blazek Sisters, who were also conjoined twins. The Blazeks were grotesque, almost, the way they were joined together. Sometimes Ike would show both Daisy and Violet and the Blazek Sisters in the same venues. Ike Rose prevailed on Mary Hilton to take the pair to Australia.

AMY FULKERSON: They had initially been brought down to appear at Luna Park in Australia. And when that venture failed, and it looked like they weren’t going to make the money that they had been promised...

DEAN JENSEN: Ike Rose dropped from the picture.

AMY FULKERSON: They hooked up with, uh, another show, and they started traveling across Australia.

DEAN JENSEN: Traveling was just horrendous in the interior of Australia. Frying pan heat, traveling by train and by, um, by horse-drawn wagon. And it was while they’re out in the outback that they met Meyer Meyers, who was essentially a balloon salesman. He was instantly enamored of the twins. Meyer Meyers, another person that was very savvy, asked Mary Hilton, you know, if he could begin trouping with them. Mary would have been well into her fifties.

AMY FULKERSON: Mary wasn’t very happy traveling across the outback. There were certain troubles that, you know, she wasn’t quite prepared for.

DEAN JENSEN: She was there in this desolate country with her daughter Edith and herself, so she needed somebody else.

AMY FULKERSON: He kind of takes on this sort of protection and, role for, for Mary. He met Edith, Mary Hilton's daughter, and really pursued that as a relationship.

VIOLET HILTON: We thought that even when he begged Auntie to marry Edith, his eyes were cruel.

JOHN BRAMHALL: Edith was very much a, a maternal figure to the girls.

DEAN JENSEN: The twins were much fonder of her than they were of, of Mary Hilton.

JOHN BRAMHALL: Daisy had a, uh, twisted limb. Uh, one leg was bent or something, and she was kind of half crippled. And she talked about how she would rub it nightly with liniment, and, you know, have the, have her exercise, and finally the limb straightened out.

DEAN JENSEN: Edith was in her middle to late twenties. She had about as many curves as a corn stalk. He himself was pneumatically enlarged, because he was just this kind of, like, round man. Very short, but very stout.

AMY FULKERSON: And once he's married to Edith, he really starts to assert his influence over how they’re managed.

DEAN JENSEN: They started showing at country fairs.

JAMES TAYLOR: What we would now call the State Fair, and the County Fair, all those fairs that, that we think about now as being principally about carnivals and rides. But in their day, in their birth, they were all about farm folk getting together at the time of harvest and creating the fair. Not only to sell their produce, but also to compete, and were entertained thereby. Because it was the perfect excuse for the carnival folk, who were looking for a place to make their money, to be attracted to those state and county fairs.

AMY FULKERSON: Meyer was a big reason why they actually came to the United States.

DEAN JENSEN: About 1915 they landed in San Francisco. They got to Angel Island. Angel Island, of course, is like Ellis Island. They’d have to pass through customs to get into the country. When the twins got off the boat, the authorities initially refused to permit them to enter the country. So they were held there for several days. Mary, again, very sharp woman, went into San Francisco and started talking to the newspaper people there, and it became a bit of a cause celebre that these poor little children were being held in confinement. Ultimately the authorities agreed to let the two into the country.

AMY FULKERSON: Once they were in, and were booking gigs, you really see Meyer and Mary working jointly to try to promote the, the girls.

DEAN JENSEN: They began receiving offers, and one of them came from a traveling carnival, Clarence Wortham's World Of Wonder.

WARD HALL: C. A. Wortham, Clarence A. Wortham, was the king of the carnivals. And, uh, by 1910 to 1920 he had the most recognized, largest carnival in the United States. The Wortham Show was a Midwestern show. North and south, on up to Canada to Toronto. Carnivals were an outgrowth of the Columbia World Exposition in Chicago in 1893-94.

JAMES TAYLOR: They called The White City, the Columbia Exposition.

WARD HALL: They had lots and lots of shows. They had two rides. One was a water ride, one was the original Ferris wheel. The rest were all shows. They were all independently owned. And they had been booking at fairs in other places.

JAMES TAYLOR: When all those assorted dime museum operators, um, which were premiere forms of entertainment, the 19th century circuses which traveled, and dime museums which cost a dime to get in, uh, think Ripley's Believe It Or Not, and roadside attractions. That’s the kind of thing that were dime museums, smashed together with the Smithsonian. Because you saw items of natural wonder, and items of freakish wonder. And live performance.

WARD HALL: When they all were together for those two years, they got together, they got acquainted with one another, and they decided instead of us splitting up going our separate ways, let's stay organized.

JAMES TAYLOR: If they could clump together and move like circuses and create carnival, oh, we can make money off of this, because rural America has no other form of entertainment. It's before movies, it's before radio, it's before TV, it's before any of that stuff. It's before most towns even have a theater.

WARD HALL: And this was the start of carnivals as we know them.

JAMES TAYLOR: When your circus came to town, that drew thousands of people from the community. Now a carnival comes into the mix, and carnival is drawing thousands of people.

WARD HALL: There was an area that was midway between one part of the fair and the other. That’s where all these sideshows and the big wheel sat.

JAMES TAYLOR: The circus created the midway, because from that big top to the marquee out front, to the front door, that’s the mid way to the big show. 'Course, what carnival did was realize, you know, we can make an entire life off of the mid way.