Biddenden Maids - Belief and Scepticism

Belief and Scepticism

In almost all drawings and Biddenden cake designs, the twins are shown as conjoined at both the hip and the shoulder. Although such a fusion is theoretically possible, in that twins fused at one point may form a secondary fusion elsewhere, no case of a viable double fusion has ever been documented.

Although Clinch believed that the evidence pointed to the twins having genuinely existed but that they had lived in the 16th century, rather than the early 12th century as generally claimed, they are not mentioned in any journals or books from the period. This points against their having lived in the 16th century; the case of Lazarus and Joannes Baptista Colloredo (1617 – after 1646) had prompted great interest in conjoined twins, and conjoined sisters surviving to adulthood in south east England would have been widely noted.

In 1895, surgeon J. W. Ballantyne considered the case of the Biddenden Maids from a teratological perspective. He suggested that they had in fact been pygopagus (twins joined at the pelvis). Pygopagus twins are known to put their arms around each other's shoulders when walking, and Ballantyne suggested that this accounted for their apparently being joined at the shoulders in drawings. The pygopagus Millie and Christine McCoy had lived in Britain for a short time before going on to a successful singing career in the United States, and it was known from their case that such twins were capable of surviving to adulthood.

Jan Bondeson (1992 and 2006) proposed that, while the names "Eliza and Mary Chulkhurst" are not recorded in any early documents and are likely to have been a later addition, the existence of the twins and the claimed 1100 year of birth cannot be dismissed. Although mediaeval chronicles are unreliable, he noted multiple reports in the Chronicon Scotorum, the Annals of the Four Masters and the Annals of Clonmacnoise of a pair of conjoined sisters born in or around 1100, although all three are records of Irish history and none mention Kent as the location. He concluded that the case of Christine McCoy, who survived for eight hours following the death of her polypagus twin Millie, shows that the claimed six hours between the deaths of the Biddenden Maids is plausible, and agreed with Ballantyne's proposal that the idea that the twins were joined at the shoulder is a later misinterpretation of the figures on the Biddenden cake. He also pointed out that although there is no recorded version of the legend prior to 1770, there would have been no possible motive for the villagers of the 18th century to fabricate the story.