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A CONJOINED twin was forced to live with her dead sister attached to her for days after the pair were sold by their mother to a freak show.
Daisy and Violet Hilton were born joined at the hip in 1908 and were paraded on tours from the age of just three.
Conjoined twins Violet, left, and Daisy Hilton, right, were born in 1908; they are pictured wearing matching dresses in the early 1920s
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Violet Hilton, the right half of the twins, applied for a license to marry at the New York Marriage License Bureau, but was deniedThe girls’ mother sold them to another woman named Mary Hilton, who sold pictures of them from behind the bar she ran for money.
Mary paraded them on tours from when they were toddlers.
When she died, Brighton-born Daisy and Violet were left in her will – as if they were property – to Mary’s daughter Edith.
The girls managed to get out of the “contract” and found success working as musical performers, until their manager abandoned them and left them high and dry without a penny to their names in 1961.
After their final public appearance, believed to have been at a drive-in in Charlotte, North Carolina, the girls found work at a local shop.
They worked at the shop for seven years.
Violet was at one point engaged to an actor named Maurice Lambert, but couldn’t secure a marriage licence due to her conjoined state and he eventually left.
Daisy later married an actor named Harold Estep – but it was annulled soon after.
Both girls caught the flu and passed away from their symptoms around New Year’s in 1969.
Harrowingly, Daisy caught the flu first and died before Violet.
Violet stayed alive two to four days longer than Daisy, attached to her sister’s rotting corpse, until she too became fatally ill and died.
The disturbing situation would not occur in modern times, as conjoined twins can today be separated if one falls terminally ill and the surviving twin agrees to the surgery.
Conjoined twins are born physically attached to each other when one fertilised egg splits into two embryos but doesn’t fully separate.
They can be joined at the chest, abdomen, lower back, pelvis, or head, and may even share organs.
About one in 50,000 to 60,000 births result in conjoined twins – and half of conjoined twin pregnancies result in miscarriage or stillbirth.
The world’s oldest conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who were fused at the skull and shared various organs including parts of the brain, died last week in Pennsylvania, aged 62.
George’s career in country music saw the pair travel to places such as Germany and Japan for performances, while Lori enjoyed bowling and worked at a hospital laundry in the 1990s.
Despite being connected, they led independent lives and moved out of their parents’ home when they were 24 years old.
The twins lived in a two-bedroom apartment in Reading and took turns sleeping in each of the two bedrooms.
What does it mean to be a conjoined twin?
CONJOINED twins are twins born with their bodies physically connected.
Such twins develop after an early embryo only partially separates to create two individual fetuses.
Their condition is usually discovered early in pregnancy with a prenatal ultrasound.
Conjoined twins occur once in every 50,000 to 60,000 births, according to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
About 70 percent of conjoined twins are female, and most are stillborn.
Most are connected at the chest and abdomen – but others can be connected at the head, hips, pelvis, legs, or genitalia.
Conjoined twins often share one or more of their internal organs, which impacts survival rates and the success of separation surgery.
Twins with separate sets of organs are more likely to survive than those who share.
Well-known conjoined twin Abby Hensel, 34 – who is joined at the torso with sister Brittany – revealed last month that she married her husband US Army Veteran and nurse Josh Bowling in 2021.
Abby and Brittany share a bloodstream and all organs below the waist, with Abby controlling their right arm and leg and Brittany controlling their left.
The pair are fifth-grade teachers.
A recent tell-all Q&A hosted by conjoined twins Carmen and Lupita Andrade, 23, revealed some little-known truths about the reality of being connected to a sibling.
The women, who live in Conneticut, each control an arm but share organs and limbs below the waist.
Carmen began in the Q&A: “If one of us is tired, we both don’t have to both be tired because we have two separate brains.
“Yes, one of us can be awake and one of us can be asleep because, again, different brains. We are two separate people.”
She added that, because she has control over their right foot, she is the one who drives the pair places.
Violet and Daisy serenade officials of the British Embassy in Washington
The twins enjoy their first dip of the season in the pool at Palisades Park
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Marriage license clerk, Sidney Summerfield, refuses to issue a licence for Violet and her fiancee, Maurice Lambert, at the Cooke County Courthouse in Chicago
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