It’s always exciting to find a relative with links to celebrity.
I discovered a connection between my great-grandmother’s first cousin, Myer Myers (born Myer Rothbaum – July 21, 1890, Clifton Hill VIC) and the Hilton sisters! No, not Paris and Nicky… The original Hilton sisters, Daisy and Violet (B: Feb 5, 1908, Brighton UK)! Never heard of them? In the 1920s and 30s Daisy & Violet Hilton were one of the most famous sets of conjoined twins in the world. And thanks to Dean Jensen, author of the biography, The Lives and Loves of Daisy & Violet Hilton, I now know a lot more about them, and the life of my Nan’s cousin.
Violet and Daisy Hilton captured the hearts of millions of people across Europe, Australia, and the USA, finding fame as Vaudeville and Broadway stars before sinking into ignominious poverty and obscurity. They were born in the seaside town of Brighton in the UK, in 1908, to an unwed waitress. When their mother rejected them, Mary Hilton, the midwife who helped them into the world, adopted them as her own.
Mrs Hilton immediately saw their earning potential. She promptly put them on display in the pub she owned and charged people to look at them. The girls were joined at their lower back by bone and cartilage, and before they were two years old she took them on tour, exhibiting them before the curious public and, more interestingly, to packed halls of doctors – many of whom offered to try and separate the twins, although most admitted one of the girls would likely die during the operation. Mary declined these offers. She knew the girls were worth much more just as they were.
During their first five years, Mary took Violet and Daisy on tour around England and the continent, putting them on display at country fairs and exhibitions. Thankfully, Mary did see some value in educating them. Daisy and Violet were taught to read and write and were subjected to an array of other lessons including singing, dancing, saxophone, clarinet, and piano. They developed into extremely competent performers.
A famous impresario of the day, Ike Rose, took on the management of the girls and they were invited to come to Australia, to appear at the opening of Luna Park, on the beachfront in St Kilda, Melbourne. The promoters of this event assumed the girls would be as popular here as they had been in the UK. Unfortunately, they were not received with the rapturous applause that had been expected. Ike Rose abandoned Mary, her daughter Edith, and the twins, leaving them in the care of an aide. He left Australia in search of a troupe of midgets.
Thankfully Mary was nothing if not resourceful and soon secured a tour for the girls with an outback circus. The rigours of the Australian outback almost undid her though, and the summer of 1913 was particularly harsh. Drought was ravaging communities in the far-flung townships the circus visited, so there were few people around who could afford to see the show. Mary soon realized the outback was no place for two single women and a pair of ‘freak’ five-year-olds.
This was the moment Myer Myers came into their lives. Born Myer Rothbaum on July 21st, 1890, in Clifton Hill, Victoria, Myer was barely 6 months old when his mother, Theresa Rothbaum (nee Taube Cypres b.1864 in Krakow) died of “spinal disease, paraplegia, and tuberculosis”. Myer’s father, Gershon, eventually took him and his two older siblings, brother Isaac Henry and sister Bluma, to Western Australia, where he established a farm.
Myers next appearance in public records comes with an entry in the West Australian newspaper in August 1912 when he was arrested, along with 10 other men, and charged with being a “person of evil fame”! Myer, by then a shopkeeper, and his co-accused were charged with and eventually convicted of, collusion in an auction scam. He was fined £25 plus court costs.
We can only speculate that after this incident Myer hit the road (In his book about the Hilton sisters, Dean Jensen claims Myer ran away with the circus at the age of 12 or 13… it’s a romantic thought but I am yet to find evidence of this).
In 1913, as Mary, Edith, Violet, and Daisy were braving the outback heat, Myer was following the circus selling balloons and candy to whoever showed up. He was almost a decade younger than Edith, who was so painfully shy she almost disappeared into the furniture. It took two and a half years for Myer to convince Edith (or perhaps more importantly her mother) to consent to marriage. They finally married in December of 1915 in South Melbourne.
Like his mother-in-law, Myer seemed to be a natural-born salesman. He took over the management of the girls and soon secured an engagement for them at the opening of the White City Amusement Centre in Sydney, where the family resided with Myer’s aunt and uncle (my great great grandparents) Meier and Leah Myers at 42 George Street West.
Myer realised there were limited opportunities in Australia. He could clearly see their fortune lay in the US. The family left Australia aboard the Sonoma in June 1916. Unfortunately, their hopes were almost dashed on the doorstep of America as the twins were initially refused entry because of their “disability”. Edith was left to care for the girls in an immigration detention centre while Myer and Mary went ashore to try and secure their release. Their canny use of the media pressured the authorities to allow entry to the girls on the grounds that, contrary to the assessment of the immigration clerk – that they would be a burden on the US health system – their very disability would ensure they could earn an excellent living and look after themselves and their family. Their strategy succeeded and they were all granted entry.
Myer proved to be a true impresario and developed the brand of the Hilton Sisters beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. At the height of their popularity Daisy and Violet were the toast of Broadway. They were feted across the country and proved to be much more than ‘just’ conjoined twins. They were stars!
The girls grew into charming young women and many remarked on their uncommon beauty. It was also recognised that they had distinct personalities and much speculation was made of their romantic interests… and of these, they appeared to have had many.
Behind all the positive spin in the media, though, was a darker story that finally came to a head in 1931, when Daisy and Violet were 23 years old. Their adoptive mother, Mary, died in Alabama in 1919 and effectively bequeathed the twins to Myer and Edith in her will as if they were chattel. Myers viewed the girls as his personal possessions and, like Mary before him, profited hugely from their efforts. The family lived in a palatial mansion in San Antonio, Texas, and Myer purchased numerous other properties across the country, all of it in his name, with the money earned by the girls on their tours. The relationship, however, was strained, with Myers ruling by fear. When the girls learned Myers had warned off a potential suitor – one whom Daisy was particularly keen on – they were furious. They turned on him, scratching and beating him until Edith managed to pull them off and calm everyone down. Sensing they were finally in a position of strength they demanded more autonomy. Myers assigned a manager, William L Oliver, for their next tour and sent them off on their own for the 1928/29 season.
In 1930 a subpoena arrived naming Daisy and Violet as co-respondents in a divorce suit. The papers alleged that “by wiles and deceits they had conspired to alienate the affections of a married man”, the aforementioned Mr. Oliver – the tour manager Myers had hired to protect them. Myers was furious. He called the girls every name under the sun. The media lapped up salacious details of the sordid affair… and made up what they couldn’t verify. It seemed that Oliver, twice the twins’ age and married, may have been romantically involved with both girls… at the same time!
In the course of preparing their defense against these charges the girls’ lawyer, Martin Arnold, asked them about their relationship with Myer and Edith. When he realised they were effectively indentured to their guardians he was horrified and concocted a plan to ‘free’ the girls from their apparent servitude.
The subsequent lawsuit was reported from coast to coast. The twins sought a full accounting of all their earnings pocketed first by Mary, and then Myer and Edith. The newspapers described them as being sold into slavery by their destitute birth mother and exploited throughout their lives by their guardians.
The Myers vehemently denied all the charges leveled against them, claiming the twins wanted for nothing and had never expressed a desire to leave their care. Their defense lawyer, T J Saunders, “portrayed Myer Myers as a martyr who had dedicated much of his life to Daisy and Violet Hilton only to be betrayed by them.” [Jensen pg 185.]
In the end, Judge W W McCory awarded the twins $80,000 in cash and all their personal effects, worth another $20,000. The Myers managed to hold on to all the properties, including the San Antonio mansion, but that was the end of their association with the Hilton Sisters.
What happened to Myer, Edith, and their daughter Theresa, after that is largely unknown. They appear to have remained in their Vance Jackson Road mansion in San Antonio where Myer passed away on October 11, 1943. Edith, died on August 2nd, 1966. REVISE WITH MARRIAGE DETAILS FOR Theresa Mary Myers.
Daisy and Violet went on to lead turbulent lives. They were always curious about their birth parents, and at times invented fanciful stories about their identity. In 1932, after obtaining their American Citizenship, the twins traveled back to the UK. Their one hope was to meet their birth mother, Kate Skinner. Sadly this dream would never be realised as Ms. Skinner had died two decades earlier, on August 1st, 1912, after complications during the birth of her fourth child. Violet and Daisy’s sister, Ethel Kate Skinner, and their brother Albert (born 1910) were alleged to have been fathered by Frederick Andress, a local hairdresser. He is thought most likely to be the twins’ father as well.
Sadly, none of their birth family were interested in meeting them. Jensen quotes one relative – their aunt’s son, Joseph Haestier – recalling the girls “… must have been heartbroken upon realising that, after all these years, they were still regarded as untouchables by their blood relatives… I suspect my family felt embarrassment at being related to girls whom others regarded as freaks.” [Jensen pg 228]
The girls’ romantic lives were always of great interest to the press. They had several very public affairs and while in England, Violet became engaged to prominent British boxer Harry Mason. Daisy, in the meantime, had been receiving daily letters from band leader Jack Lewis. Unfortunately, like so many of their relationships, these men failed to honour their declared intentions.
Both girls experienced short-lived marriages. In 1936 Violet married James Moore, a close friend, in a highly publicised event on the 50-yard line of the Cotton Bowl during the Texas Centennial Exposition. Unfortunately, James had concealed the fact he was homosexual and, while he adored Violet. the marriage was annulled a few months later.
Daisy was visibly pregnant at Violet’s wedding. She gave birth to a son in Minnesota in December 1936, who was immediately given up for adoption. She never revealed the identity of the father but it’s s[eculated to have been a member of their touring band, a married man. In 1941 Daisy married the considerably younger Harold Estep in New York. This marriage too only lasted a couple of weeks before Harold realised he was ‘unsuited’ to marriage to a celebrity Siamese twin. Daisy and Violet never stopped looking for love but as their stars faded and their fortune trickled away fewer suitors came calling.
Work also became harder to find. They were forced to take on almost anything to make ends meet, including a stint in the burlesque scene (they were once billed as the world’s first Siamese twin strippers), cruise ships (the closest they came to their old life), and even, briefly, setting up a fast food concession (they ran the Hilton Sisters Snack Bar, a hot dog stand, in Miami in 1956).
The girls made a couple of unsuccessful attempts to break into the movie business too. Not long after their release from their guardianship, they were cast in the now-classic 1932 horror film Freaks, directed by Todd Browning. In the early 1950s, they were talked into staking their life savings on the film “Chained for Life“, a courtroom drama in which one twin is accused of the murder of her lover. The jury must decide whether to free the guilty twin or send the innocent twin to jail. The film failed to recoup its budget leaving the girls, once again, on the edge of destitution.
Daisy and Violet lived the last decade of their life in North Carolina where, after having their earnings stolen by yet another unscrupulous tour manager, they found themselves destitute, friendless, and alone. Thankfully a few kind souls took pity on them and they were offered a job at a local grocery store in Charlotte. The owner of the store also arranged housing for them. Daisy and Violet passed away in Charlotte in 1969, during an epidemic of the Hong Kong Flu. According to the medical reports, it’s thought Daisy may have died a day or so before Violet. How must Daisy have felt not being able to feel her sister breathing beside her on that last day?
The story of the Hilton Sisters has been immortalised in the Broadway musical Side Show (1997) and in an award-winning documentary Bound By Flesh (2013) directed by Leslie Zemeckis.
And somewhere out there is the son Daisy gave up for adoption. With luck, he or his children will one day discover his birth mother, and her sister, and proudly associate themselves with these remarkable women.