Early Life
The girls were born in Brighton, Sussex, England, on 5 February 1908. Their mother was Kate Skinner, an unmarried barmaid. The sisters were born joined by their hips and buttocks; they shared blood circulation and were fused at the pelvis but shared no major organs. Skinner's boss Mary Hilton, who helped in childbirth, apparently saw commercial prospects in them, and thus effectively bought them from their mother and took them under her care. The girls first stayed above the Queen's Head pub in Brighton, but later moved to the Evening Star pub.
According to the sisters' autobiography, Mary Hilton with her husband and daughter kept the twins in strict control with physical abuse; they had to call her "Auntie Lou" and her current husband "Sir". They trained the girls in singing and dancing.
A medical account of the birth and a description of the twins was provided for the British Medical Journal by Dr James Augustus Rooth, the physician in charge at the time of their birth. He reported that subsequently the Sussex Medico-Chiurgical Society considered separation, but unanimously decided against it as it was believed that the operation would certainly lead to the death of at least one of the twins. He notes that these twins were the first to be born in the United Kingdom conjoined and to survive for more than a few weeks.
Read more about this topic: Daisy And Violet Hilton
Famous quotes related to early life:
“... goodness is of a modest nature, easily discouraged, and when much elbowed in early life by unabashed vices, is apt to retire into extreme privacy, so that it is more easily believed in by those who construct a selfish old gentleman theoretically, than by those who form the narrower judgments based on his personal acquaintance.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)