The Lives and Loves of Daisy and Violet Hilton: A True Story of Conjoined Twins by Dean Jensen

their home to play with other kids. They never had a chance to interact with any peers. They were prisoners. There were times when I joined my mother and Aunt Dorothy in visiting the Myers’ home. These occasions may have been the only ones when Daisy and Violet had a chance to socialize with anyone from outside the gates of their home.” 16
    Camille Rosengren said she was never clear about how it was that her father and mother came to know the Myers but speculated that the introduction was probably made through Dorothy Lodovico, an aunt who was a dancer in vaudeville and later a chorine in the Busby Berkeley movies. “Except for the people who entered their tent, Daisy and Vi had no chance to relate with anybody from the outside world,” Rosengren said. “As a result, they formed a strong attachment to Aunt Dorothy and my mother. They were such sweet girls. When my mother became pregnant with me, the girls became very solicitous of her. They asked if they could be godmothers to me. Of course, Mother said yes.” 17
    After presenting the Royal English United Twins for two seasons with Clarence Wortham’s empire, in 1918 Myer decided to switch to the midway of another mammoth carnival, the Johnny J. Jones Exposition of Amusements. Not only did he bring along his Congress of Human Wonders but a brand new third unit, Myer Myers’ Fat Folks’ Chatauqua. It struck some carnival employees as odd that Myer would assemble a show that was wholly made up of grossly obese men, women, and children when his own circumferential measurement seem to exceed that of his verticality.
    The switch to Johnny J. Jones’ carnival probably did not signify a rift with Wortham but rather a sound business decision by Myer. Wortham’s carnivals mostly traveled the western part of the United States. Jones’ colossus—advertised as an exemplar of “Meritorious Attractions, Cleanliness and Square Dealing”—criss-crossed the Atlantic side of the country, along with Canada’s eastern provinces. With the move to the Jones enterprise, Myers could gather new audiences for his attractions.
    Percilla, the Monkey Girl, Bejano, six years old at the time, was one of the attractions on the Jones midway. “The Johnny J. Jones show was one of the biggest carnivals of that time or any time,” she said. “Forty railcars, I think. Maybe this is going to sound like bragging, but no carnival or circus ever had two attractions on its midway that were bigger than me and the Hilton Siamese twins. It was like having Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly or Margot Fonteyn and Cyd Charisse on the same stage. I mean, how do you get bigger and better than that?” 18
    It was natural enough for Percilla to invoke the name of famous dancers when explaining the excitement she and the Hilton sisters brought to the midway. Dancing, or something resembling it, was the performing art she valued above all others. In her adult years, when she and her husband, Emmitt, the Alligator Boy, Bejano weretraveling as the World’s Strangest Married Couple, she entertained sideshow crowds with approximations of Salome’s Dance of the Seven Veils. “Percilla learned to dance early,” said Ward Hall, her one-time manager. “As a youngster, she used to sneak into the tents of the girlie shows. She marveled at the affect the dancers had on men.” 19
    Percilla said that on Sunday mornings, before the Jones midway opened, there were times when Myer allowed Daisy and Violet to invite her over to play. “Mostly we entertained ourselves by having tea parties,” Percilla recalled. 20 Surely Alice’s teas with the Mad Hatter, March Hare, and the Dormouse could not have been any more curious than the picnics outside the Myers’ Pullman car. Not only did the attendees around the table include Siamese twins and a bearded six-year-old girl, but also Percilla’s pet monkey, Joanna.
    Bejano said she thought it was unfair to judge Myer Myers harshly because he never let the twins out of his or