According to The Lives and Loves of Daisy and Violet Hilton: A True Story of Conjoined Twins, Daisy became pregnant. The twins’ agent tried to convince Daisy that her life was in danger and she should therefore have an abortion, with abortions in those days being illegal except to save the life of the mother.
Daisy and Violet Hilton. The twins were born at 18 Riley Road, Brighton, 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.
Daisy and Violet Hilton were born conjoined twins. Partying, burlesque and two sham marriages: The life of conjoined twins Violet and Daisy Hilton. When Daisy and Violet Hilton were born in 1908, their mother, Kate Skinner, called them “monsters”.
Daisy and Violet Hilton. Daisy and Violet Hilton (5 February 1908 – 4 January 1969) were English entertainers, who were conjoined twins. They were exhibited in Europe as children, and toured the United States sideshow, vaudeville and American burlesque circuits in the 1920s and 1930s.
Why did Violet and Daisy Hilton divorce?
According to the Biography of Daisy and Violet Hilton, Oliver’s wife filed for divorce on the grounds that her husband was “spending too much time” with the twins, and she also filed a lawsuit against the Hiltons in the amount of $250,000.
Daisy and Violet Hilton were pygopagus twins, which means they were back-to-back. According to a paper published by their physician in The British Medical Journal, the pair were attached by a “fleshy and cartilaginous” mass. The sisters shared a circulatory system, but otherwise had their own separate internal organs. Still, doctors were unsure of the risks of separating them, so elected not to try, especially since the prognosis for conjoined twins in 1908 was poor and they weren’t expected to survive long anyway.
Daisy and Violet had an advance agent named Bill Oliver, and their relationship with him may or may not have been completely platonic. In their autobiography, the twins claimed that the relationship was strictly professional, but Oliver’s wife sure didn’t seem to think so. According to the Biography of Daisy and Violet Hilton, Oliver’s wife filed for divorce on the grounds that her husband was “spending too much time” with the twins, and she also filed a lawsuit against the Hiltons in the amount of $250,000. Daisy and Violet got a lawyer, and that was when the truth about their appalling situation finally came out. The lawyer was shocked that the twins — who were over the age of 21 and legal adults — were still tied to Myer Myers and essentially penniless, while he was living high on the hog.
The twins’ agent tried to convince Daisy that her life was in danger and she should therefore have an abortion, with abortions in those days being illegal except to save the life of the mother. The doctor’s conclusion, though, was that Daisy’s life was not in danger, so her pregnancy was allowed to continue.
In 1931 , Violet and Daisy became emancipated and got the equivalent of $80,000 for their troubles. Myers got to keep his mansion.
The Hilton sisters thought of themselves as someone else’s property. Progress Studio, New York – Wikipedia. One of the many tragedies of people who are brought up in abusive and exploitative circumstances is that they often don’t realize that they’re being abused and exploited. According to the Huffington Post, …
One of the saddest cases of a circus sideshow act was that of the Hilton sisters — conjoined twins who were beautiful, talented, exploited, and eventually forgotten. This is the untold truth of the Hilton sisters’ tragic lives.
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Who were Daisy and Violet Hilton?
Kate Skinner (mother) Daisy and Violet Hilton (5 February 1908 – early January 1969) were English entertainers, who were conjoined twins. They were exhibited in Europe as children, and toured the United States sideshow, vaudeville and American burlesque circuits in the 1920s and 1930s. They were best known for their film appearances in Freaks …
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 husband “Sir”. They trained the girls in singing and dancing.
They were variously called or referred to as The Siamese Twins , The Hilton Sisters and The Brighton Twins or The Brighton Conjoined Twins .
The marriage lasted ten years on paper, but it was eventually annulled. In 1941 Daisy married Harold Estep, better known as dancer Buddy Sawyer, who was also gay. The marriage lasted ten days. In 1951 they starred in a second film, Chained for Life, an exploitation film loosely based on their lives.
The Hilton sisters toured first in Britain in 1911 (aged 3) as “The United Twins”. Mary Hilton took them on to a tour through Germany, then to Australia, then in 1916 to the US. In true sideshow manner, their performance was accompanied by an imaginative “history”. Their controllers kept all the money the sisters earned. In 1926, Bob Hope formed an act called the Dancemedians with the sisters, who had a tap-dancing routine. When Mary died in Birmingham, Alabama, the girls were bequeathed to Mary’s daughter Edith Meyers, and Edith’s husband Meyer Meyers, a former balloon salesman.
A medical account of the birth and a description of the twins was provided for the British Medical Journal by physician, James Augustus Rooth, who helped deliver them.
It starred Emily Skinner as Daisy and Alice Ripley as Violet, and received four Tony nominations, but closed after 91 performances.
