Daisy Hilton and Violet Hilton (5 February 1908 – January 1969) were a pair of conjoined twins who appeared in sideshows and vaudevilles in the 1930s.
Life
Daisy and Violet were born in Brighton, England (East Sussex) on 5 February 1908. Their mother was a single barmaid named Kate Skinner. The sisters were pygopagus twins - conjoined at the hips and buttocks. They shared blood circulation and were fused at the pelvis but shared no major organs.
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.
Their birth name was Skinner however their impoverished and unmarried mother, Kate, could not fathom the responsibilities involved in raising a pair of girls joined. She sold the twins to her boss and midwife Mary Hilton who helped in childbirth, and apparently saw commercial prospects in them.
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. Soon after acquiring the twins, Mrs. Hilton put them on exhibition. The girls first stayed above the Queens Head in Brighton, but later moved to the Evening Star. The Hilton sisters toured first in England at the age of three as "The United Twins".
Mary Hilton took them to a tour through Germany, Australia and to the USA. They were managed by Ike Rose of Rose's Royal Midgets fame and exhibited alongside Rosa and Josefa Blazek, probably the first time in history that two sets of Siamese twins were ever shown together. Daisy and Violet were later taken on an Australian tour with Mary Hilton, her husband Henry, and their daughter Edith. While in Australia, Edith married Myer Myers, a carnival balloon salesman. In 1926 Bob Hope formed an act called the Dancemedians with the Hilton Sisters, who had a tap dancing routine.
When Mary died in Birmingham, Alabama, her daughter and her husband took over. The Myers relocated to the United States and used part of the twins' fortune to built a luxurious, Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired home in San Antonio, Texas. Daisy and Violet spent the majority of the 1920s touring the United States on vaudeville circuits, playing clarinet and saxophone, and singing and dancing. The sisters were a national sensation, counting among their friends a young Bob Hope and Harry Houdini, who allegedly taught them the trick of mentally separating from one another. They kept the twins from public view for a while and trained them in jazz music.
The twins had befriended their advance agent, William Oliver. Oliver’s wife Mildred was suspicious of the relationship and accused William of improper acts. A postcard from the twins signed to William ‘with love’ prompted Mildred to file for divorce and sue the twins for $250,000.
On the orders of Mrs. Myers, Daisy and Violet asked for the help of a San Antonio lawyer, Martin J. Arnold. Arnold inquired as to why the sisters, who were over 21 years old and legal adults, remained bound to Mr. and Mrs. Myers, and he was shocked to learn of their situation. He took on the twins' case in January of 1931, helping them file suit against the Myers to break their contract and legally separate from their abusive guardians. Judge W.W. McCrory decided the case in April, awarding the equivalent of nearly $80,000 to the sisters and allowing the Myers to keep their San Antonio home.
The sisters then left the sideshows and went into vaudeville as "The Hilton Sisters' Revue". Daisy dyed her hair blonde and they began to wear different outfits so they could be told apart. failed attempts to get a marriage license and a couple of short marriages. In 1932, the twins appeared as themselves in the movie Freaks.
They had numerous affairs, Violet, the more outgoing of the pair, had a string of celebrity boyfriends, including the musician Blue Steel, boxer Harry Mason, and guitarist Don Galvan, before becoming engaged in 1933 to bandleader Maurice L. Lambert. She and Lambert began a nationwide search for a clerk who would issue them a marriage license. Each of her requests - in 21 states - was denied on moral grounds, and lawyers were brought in to argue on Violet's behalf. One New York clerk refused to issue the license because Daisy was not also engaged. Though briefly engaged to Jack Lewis, another bandleader, she deemed him too shy for marriage to a Siamese twin.
After the decline of vaudeville, the twins, like countless others, turned to Hollywood. In 1950 the sisters appeared in an exploitation film Chained for Life as Dorothy and Vivian Hamilton, vaudeville singers. Through loosely based on their lives, the movie flopped and the pair further failed in an attempted food franchise, The Hilton Sisters' Snack Bar, in Miami, that briefly opened in 1955.
In 1962 they arranged to appear at a drive-in movie theater in Charlotte, North Carolina. Here they were abandoned, penniless, by an unscrupulous agent. A kind grocery store manager, Charles Reid, hired the sisters to work in his shop, where they checked and bagged groceries. Reid bought work dresses for the twins, since all they had were show clothes. On January 6, 1969, after battling the Hong Kong flu for some weeks, the twins failed to report for work. Their boss called the police and the sisters were found dead in their small trailer.
In 1997, a Broadway musical loosely based on the sisters' lives, Side Show, with lyrics by Bill Russell and music by Henry Krieger, received four Tony nominations.