Daisy and Violet Hilton, the joined twins from Tod Browning's "FREAKS" movie..

Did you ever wonder what happened to the sideshow performers from FREAKS? Schlitzie always fascinated me but this really upsets me. What a horrible end.

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Daisy Hilton and Violet Hilton (5 February 1908 – January 1969) were a pair of conjoined twins who toured in the U.S. sideshow and vaudeville circuit in the 1930s.


The girls were born in Brighton, England (East Sussex) on 5 February 1908. Their mother was a single barmaid named Kate Skinner. 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 Queens Head in Brighton, but later moved to the Evening Star.

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.

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. In the true sideshow manner, their performance was accompanied with an imaginative "history". Their controllers kept all the money the sisters earned. 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. They kept the twins from public view for a while and trained them in jazz music. They lived in a mansion in San Antonio, Texas until the early 1930s.

In 1931, the sisters gathered enough courage to sue their "managers", gaining USD$100,000 in damages—and independence. They 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. They had numerous affairs, failed attempts to get a marriage license and a couple of short marriages. In 1932, the twins appeared as themselves in the movie Freaks. In 1951 they starred in Chained for Life, an exploitation film loosely based on their lives.

The Hiltons' last public appearance was at a drive-in movie theater in Charlotte, North Carolina. Their tour manager abandoned them there, and with no means of transportation or income, they were forced to take a job in a nearby grocery store.

On January 4, 1969, after they failed to report to work, their boss called the police. The twins were found dead in their home due to the Hong Kong flu. According to forensics, Daisy died first; Violet died less than a week later.

 

I always wondered what happened to the 'freaks' later in their lives. Were any of them able to make a living outside of sideshows?

 

One of my grammar school teachers told the class about the movie Chained For Life and I eventually saw it many years later. I think that she believed that the murder and trial was real!

 

I'll have to read that, thanks David.

Actually yesterday for some reason Schlitzie came into my mind. Why, I have no idea. I wondered if there was any info on him (a him, right?) I guess Schlitzie had a long carnival career as a "pinhead" and wanted to know how long Schlitzie lived. To 70. Then I started reading about others from the film FREAKS and stopped on the twins. It was so depressing I stopped researching altogether.

 

Like I said, upsetting.



I saw FREAKS in film school. The missing 23 minutes of that film are so crucial and we will just never be able to see them. They really butchered the movie on release, even removing the MGM Lion at the beginning and reshooting the opening scene. It bugs me that we can't see the excised footage. Now THAT would have been some move, especially the castration scene.. Ah well.