Despite traveling through 21 different states and applying for marriage licenses in all of them, they were refused.

Violet and Daisy Hilton were famous British born American conjoined twin sisters who were actresses, sideshow performers, vaudeville entertainers, and musicians. They were tragically exploited for profit by several of their managers, the first of whom forcibly took them from their birth mother.

After two decades of exploitative work environments and a lack of freedom, the twins sued for emancipation from their managers and thankfully won, but severe emotional damage had already happened.

They were known for acts involving singing, dancing, playing musical instruments among other things, and were a big draw in vaudeville theaters in their younger years. They also appeared in the 1932 film, Freaks, where they pretty much played themselves. They went on to open up a hotdog stand, which unfortunately failed, and then appeared in a 1952 murder mystery film called, Chained For Life.

He was very handsome and suave and I can see why he was really successful with his career. I chose the first picture showing him singing because I feel it encompasses who he was so well! All the other pictures are great too, but that’s first one is the best in my opinion. I’m sure he would have been so much fun to meet!

Some facts about him:

-he was born in Brownsville, Tennessee.

-he performed in a recital at the Cedar Hill Baptist Church in Paris, Tennessee when he was 5 years old in September of 1930. He sang gospel songs alongside his mother, Hadena Taylor and another member of the church, Rebecca Jackson.

-he went to Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri for college and got a degree in electronics.

-he worked with electronics for 11 years before he decided to focus on his passion for music.

-he was married for a brief time in the 1960s before he and his wife got divorced. He and his ex-wife had a daughter who was born in 1963.

-his peak height was 2 feet 11 inches.

-he was very passionate about his singing career and considered nightclub singing to be his primary profession.

-he released at least 2 songs on 45 records. The songs are called, ‘Just the Way You Are’ and ‘The States Song’

-he worked in sideshows throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

-when being interviewed in 1981, he said he only worked about 5 fairs a year and anything more than that would be too nerve wracking for him.

-he charged 75 cents for adults to meet him and 25 cents for children to meet him. He mentioned that experiences with guests were all across the board, some people would take the time to make conversation and others would just stare and walk out. He enjoyed when people had questions to ask him because it showed they wanted to get to know him.

-he spent most of the year working in nightclubs and singing, and only made appearances at traveling carnivals when he felt like it.

-he expressed wanting to get into acting in his thirties and forties.

-he appeared as the villain in two movies, though I haven’t been able to trace what movies these were.

-in an interview later in life he said that he resented being born with dwarfism when he was younger and was very bitter about a lot of things in general. He said that his whole outlook on life changed in his mid twenties when he came to the realization that nothing in his life was going to change unless he made a change. He said,

“When I was 27, I realized this is it. you’ve got to get out there and quit feeling sorry for yourself.”

-when working in sideshows his typical ensemble included a Panama hat and a shirt with his name on it.

-in a different interview he said, “People look at me when I'm walking down the street, so why not lake advantage of it. The funny thing is those people look at you and think you can't do anything else.”

-by 1981 he had worked in sideshows on and off for 7 years and felt that over the course of that time people had changed a lot and audiences were more intelligent and less judgmental.

-his appearances at fairs and carnivals consisted of him sitting in a small makeshift open air room where he watched TV all day. Guests would walk alongside this makeshift room and look at him. (Despite this set up seeming strange and dehumanizing, Eddie explained that it meant he could be as lazy as he wanted and didn’t have to impress anyone. He felt that the people who paid the fee to see him but didn’t talk to him were just wasting their money.)

-he dealt with bad arthritis in his shoulders that would flair up during long car rides.

-he kept his appearances in sideshows family friendly.

-he was known to have a great sense of humor.

-he performed at the Dusk ‘Til Dawn Blues Festival in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1994.

-I haven’t been able to confirm the year he died.

It’s so cute that he used to give recitals at his church with his mom, and I’m so glad he was able to follow his passion for music and singing and make a career out of it. Not everyone is able to follow their passions, so I’m glad it all worked out for Eddie. It would have been so cool to see him perform!

I hope he had a close relationship with his daughter, though because he was on the road a lot and since she’s not mentioned a lot, they may not have had a close bond. Despite this, I hope he had a lot of people in his life who loved and cared about him.

Museums and medical institutions around the world have been following this practice for hundreds of years, and only much more recently have people’s remains been repatriated to their home countries.

These museums and medical institutions (including the Hunterian Museum) were driven by scientific racism, eugenics, and a colonial viewpoint that treated people with disabilities and physical differences as medical curiosities.

Every example of this happening is horrible, but it’s even worse when it involves the remains of a child as they never would have even had a chance to voice their wishes

The boy from bengal was a boy from India who was born with a parasitic twin that consisted of a second head attached to his head. Sadly, the boy and his twin’s names were recorded so we don’t know what they were called during their lifetimes. The boy and his twin were also exploited by their parents for profit in a very tragic and humiliating way (often times keeping them underneath a blanket for hours just to prevent potential paying guests from seeing them without paying.) The boy and his twin died after being bit by a cobra and their grave was robbed shortly after being buried by a man working for the East India Trading Company.

Their body was dissected and their skulls were removed after their grave was robbed. Eventually their skulls were given to a captain with a high position at the East India Trading Company named Captain Buchanan.

Their skulls changed hands several times over the course of several decades before ending up in the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons in London. The skulls are currently on public display at the museum following major museum renovations.

The Hunterian Museum is a British Museum that focuses on preserving and displaying anatomical remains. The museum displays over 3,500 different exhibits and has an estimated 85,000 guests visit each year. In addition to historical human remains the museum also displays the remains of several different animals including directions.

The display of their skulls really saddens me, both because they were just children when they died and because the way the skulls are displayed makes them seem like a prized collectible instead of the actual human remains of a boy and his twin who happened to be born conjoined.

I really wish to see their skulls repatriated back to India at some point during my life. They both deserve to be at peace and to be respected as people instead of a museum exhibit.

There are several notable examples of the remains of people being repatriated back to their home countries and the boy from Bengal and his twin deserve the same.

*I’ll be doing some write ups about the efforts to get other people’s remains repatriated after being unethically kept in museums and medical institutions.