Viva Brighton Issue #66 August 2018

BITS AND BUSES
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ON THE BUSES #40:
DAISY & VIOLET HILTON (ROUTES 5B & 27)
Illustration by Joda (@joda_art)
Daisy and
Violet Hilton
were born
at home, in
Riley Road,
Brighton in
1908. Joined
at the base of
the spine, they
were, as far
as we know,
the UK’s first
surviving conjoined
twins.
Their mother,
Kate Skinner, a young single woman who worked
as a barmaid, quickly realised that she wouldn’t
be able to cope, and they were taken into the care
of Mary Hilton, the midwife at their birth. It was
by no means an act of altruism: Mary was also the
landlady of The Queen’s Arms, where she put the
babies on show, charging customers to see them
and handing punters a postcard which read ‘If we
have interested you, kindly tell your friends to visit
us’. They moved to The Evening Star in 1910 so as
to have more room to show the twins off.
In order to maximise their earning potential, the
twins were given music and singing lessons and,
by the time they were eight, had moved with the
Hiltons to the US where they toured as a side
show. After Mary’s death they were passed to her
daughter Edith, who, along with her husband
Myer Myers, continued to exploit the twins. In
1931 the pair took legal action to free themselves
from their ‘guardians’, settling for only a fraction
of the money that they had earned for the family.
They continued to perform on stage as a vaudeville
act and went on to appear in two films:
Freaks in
1932 and
Chained for
Life in 1952.
The twins
were initially
reluctant to
get involved
- they didn’t
consider
themselves
to be freaks
- but saw the
film, by big
time horror
director Tod Browning, as an opportunity to
feature in a mainstream movie.
They returned to Brighton only once in adulthood,
on a UK tour in 1933, headlining at the
Hippodrome for four sell-out shows. They tried to
find their mother whilst in town, only to discover
she had died when they were four years old.
Their appeal faded and by the 1960s they were
down on their luck and working behind the
checkout of the Park‘n’Shop in Charlotte, North
Carolina. In later life, they were offered the
opportunity to be surgically separated - by then a
simple operation - but they declined, preferring to
die, as they had lived, together. They succumbed
to the Hong Kong flu pandemic and died at home
in January 1969.
Lizzie Lower
Local resident Alf Le Flohic leads walking tours
about the twins and has secured permission for a
commemorative blue plaque at their Riley Road
home. If you’d like to know more about the twins,
or can donate towards the blue plaque fundraising
campaign, visit thebrightontwins.co.uk
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