The Lives and Loves of Daisy and Violet Hilton: A True Story of Conjoined Twins (24 page)

The entrance of Daisy and Violet Hilton could hardly have been
more dramatic. They entered the courtroom from the rear, ringed by five or six deputy sheriffs. They were wearing silver fox coats with outrageously large collars. Their eyelids were kohled and their cheeks were heavily rouged. They had recently had themselves shorn of their waist length, schoolgirl curls. Their brunette hair was now short and bobbed in the style of flappers.

A few spectators poked their hands through the cordon of bodyguards just to touch the two. Daisy and Violet seemed unfazed by the stir their entry caused. They smiled brightly and waved to the spectators calling out their names. After they made their way beyond the rail, the deputies helped them remove their furs. The hubbub in the seating section quieted as the crowd got its first good look at the sisters. Daisy and Violet were wearing ankle-length, dark blue silk dresses that were joined together at their waists to conceal the fleshy tie between them. It was not just the close fusing of their bodies that made them such a sight to behold. They were so child-like, so achingly pretty and so tiny, standing barely five feet tall even in their high-heeled shoes.

Judge W. W. McCrory was tall and gaunt and had lank gray hair that fell down the right side of his head. His eyes were sunken into deep, dark sockets, and his face was so chalky and so tightly stretched that, from just a few feet away, his head appeared to be a naked skull.

McCrory had hardly settled into his place behind the bench when Martin J. Arnold charged forward. He immediately directed the judge’s attention to the defense table where the Myers’ two attorneys, T. J. Saunders and Will Barber were seated. Myer and Edith Myers were nowhere to be seen.

“The arrogance of this man and his wife,” Arnold bellowed, his voice crackling with indignation. “The effrontery. A good part of San Antonio is here with us this morning, but the defendants themselves
didn’t show up for their own trial! They’ve tried to turn these proceedings into a sham.”
¹

Violet and Daisy in the packed San Antonio courtroom, 1931. (Author’s collection)

Arnold demanded that Myer and Edith be cited for contempt for their failure to appear in court and asked the judge to immediately issue a bench warrant for their arrest. He also moved that the two defense attorneys be held in contempt because of their failure to ensure their defendants were present for the proceedings. Long practicing attorneys in San Antonio, T. J. Saunders and Will Barber knew McCrory didn’t have a reputation for being lenient with anyone who tried to subvert the legal process. Even they appeared to be disconcerted
by their clients’ absence from the courtroom. Still, they felt that they had to make some effort at damage control. They conferred with one another in whispers.

Finally, Saunders addressed McCrory. “We’re here to represent them,” he said of the missing defendants.

Arnold pirouetted a quarter turn so he was facing the defense attorneys. He placed his hands on his slightly rounded waist and scoffed. He insisted the trial could not proceed without having the defendants in the courtroom and accused the defense lawyers of concealing the whereabouts of Myer and Edith Myers in the hope they would not have to testify.

“I intend to use Myers as the first witness,” Arnold declared. “I also demand that Mrs. Myers be present as I intend to use her as a witness.”
²

As Arnold carried on, Saunders rose from his chair and once again tried to persuade the judge that there was no need for the Myers to be present.

“We’re here to represent them,” he repeated.

Arnold looked to Saunders and sneered.

“Do you mean to say that the defendants are trying to dodge these proceedings?”
³

“They’re not trying to dodge anything!”

Arnold countered with a surprise blow.

“Since Mr. Thomas J. Saunders claims there is no need for the Myers to be here, your honor, and since Mr. Saunders would have the court believe that he knows fully how the defendants would testify if they were here, then, your honor, I would like to put Mr. Saunders on the witness stand.”
⁴

Saunders suddenly looked ill. He tried to interpose an objection, but McCrory was clearly irritated that Saunders and Barber had not been able to ensure the presence of the defendants in the courtroom.
McCrory granted Arnold’s motion for an opportunity to examine Saunders on the witness stand.

Cheers and applause rang from the spectators’ section as Saunders left his place behind the defense table and climbed the steps to the stand. The crowd’s sympathies were clearly on the side of the twins. There was a twinkling in Arnold’s eyes.

“Have you seen Myers this morning?” he asked his witness.

Saunders was visibly humiliated, but he muttered a reply. “Yes, I saw him. About an hour ago.”

“Here?”

“Here in San Antonio.”

“Did you see him in your office?”

“Yes.”

“Where did he go after he left?”

“I do not know.”

“Where is he now?”

“I do not know.”
⁵

Saunders kept cutting imploring looks at his colleague to do something to get him off the witness stand. Barber sensed his partner’s discomfort, but he seemed at a loss for what to do. Finally, Barber asked the judge for a recess to see if the two sides could enter some kind of truce. The lawyers met in McCrory’s chambers.

Saunders did not return to the witness stand when the hearing resumed in the courtroom fifteen minutes later. Instead he stood before McCrory and made two announcements. He said the defense was joining with Arnold in asking that the hearing be adjourned for a couple of days. Saunders also assured the judge that Myer and Edith Myers would be present if the proceedings could be delayed.

When he referred now to Martin J. Arnold, Saunders’ tone, at least for the moment, had turned decidedly more deferential. He had been humbled when Arnold placed him on the stand. He certainly didn’t
want to cross his adversary in a way that might return him to such a humiliating predicament.

“We will furnish counsel for the plaintiffs with any document in our possession if he will furnish us with a list of those desired,” Saunders volunteered solicitously.
⁶

McCrory agreed to adjourn the hearing for two days, until the following Monday.

The opening day proceedings lasted just forty-five minutes. Like boxing fans who had paid good money to see a championship fight only to see a knockout in the first round, the crowd seemed resentful that the drama was over so soon. Ignoring the bailiffs who ordered them to stay back, they rushed past the rail to more closely ogle the twins. The first person to shake Daisy and Violet’s hands and wish them luck was the judge’s wife, Ethel, and right behind her was W. W. McCrory himself.

Daisy and Violet chatted amiably with the fans swirling around them as they autographed copies of the
San Antonio Light
and
San Antonio Express
that carried their pictures on the front page. They were swarmed by press photographers and newsreel cameramen. When some of their well-wishers blocked the view of the photographers, the twins, always intent on selling themselves to the largest public possible, politely directed their fans to move to the side. Over and over, they were asked how it felt to be in the spotlight of a courtroom.

“It’s different from a stage,” Daisy answered. “You don’t have the footlights and all. But we like it. It’s fun finding out how many friends you have in the world.”
⁷

Just before the trial started, the twins had moved from their suite in the St. Anthony Hotel to an apartment on Burr Road. There they received hundreds of letters and telegrams from people across the country who had read the newspaper accounts of their lives and wanted to wish them success in their battle with the Myers. Among
the letters were several from old acquaintances in the carnival and vaudeville worlds who offered to appear as witnesses to support the twins’ charges that they had been kept in bondage. The most unexpected wire of all came from someone of whom the twins had only the dimmest memories, Ike Rose. The showman was in Waterloo, Iowa, where he was presenting his latest stage venture, “Ike Rose and His Twenty-Five Royal Midgets.”

Rose had not forgotten that nearly two decades earlier, while the twins were touring Australia under an exclusive contract with him, Myer had “kidnapped” the girls. In wires to their attorney as well as to the twins, Rose said he would travel to San Antonio to “tell the true story of the girls.”
⁸
He claimed in his communication that he had suffered incalculable losses because Myer pirated the twins from him and said that when Daisy and Violet finished the suit against their warders, he, too, was going to bring Myer to trial and demand half a million dollars in damages.

When he heard that Rose was threatening to start a second action against Myer Myers, Thomas J. Saunders said neither he nor his clients had the slightest fear. Indeed, Saunders seemed almost to dare the twins’ one-time manager to start a lawsuit. He said Rose had the chance to promote the twins to stardom and, because he was an “inferior showman,” botched the opportunity. He further observed that the Hilton sisters had become nationally famous only because of Myers’ brilliance as a talent presenter and promoter.

“My clients say that Ike Rose … is only a notoriety seeker,” Saunders told the press, “and if he manifests any interest in the twins, it will be for a selfish purpose, hoping to gain employment from them. My clients vehemently deny all statements made in his telegram.… My clients are well-acquainted with him and his past activities. We do not believe for a moment that Ike will appear on the scene during the trial and take the stand and subject himself to cross-examination.”
⁹

It isn’t known whether Rose ever consulted a lawyer about filing a lawsuit. And for all Rose’s bluster about getting even with the Myer, he never made his promised appearance in San Antonio.

Because accounts of the opening day of the trial so dominated the newspapers and radio broadcasts in San Antonio, the public interest in the case swelled over the weekend. By the time the sun rose on the morning of January 19, 1931, there were thousands of people in the courthouse square. Many mothers had small children in tow, hoping they could give their kids a look at real Siamese twins, and the city’s schools reported high rates of absenteeism.

Judge McCrory’s courtroom was absolutely jammed a minute after the bailiff unlocked its door. A few women found their way into an anteroom and, by standing on a table they had pushed before a locked door, peered into the courtroom through a transom window. Many of the San Antonians who didn’t make it into the courtroom became testy when uniformed deputies ordered them to clear out of the corridors and leave the building.

As Saunders and Barber had guaranteed the preceding Friday, Myer and Edith Myers were in the courtroom that day. There were hisses from the onlookers when Martin Arnold called Myer to the witness stand. McCrory banged his gavel. He warned that he would eject any spectators who could not keep their opinions to themselves while in his courtroom.

“This is not a show,” he lectured sternly.
¹⁰

Myer’s anger at having been made to stand trial was only intensified by the crowd’s hostility toward him. After settling his portly frame into the witness chair, he glared at Daisy and Violet for a moment and then turned his head away in disgust.

Attorney Martin Arnold’s objective became apparent from the start of his examination. He set out to show how the Myers had become wealthy by cheating the twins. He began his inquiry by asking Myer
about a receipt signed by Daisy and Violet in 1927 that indicated they had received $36,142 from their warder.

“Isn’t it a fact that they signed this receipt, but never received the money?” Arnold asked, waving a slip of paper in the air with a well-manicured hand.

“I don’t know. They were paid through my bookkeeper in New York.”

“Don’t you know where the $36,000 went?”

“I don’t know.”

“What bank do you do business with?”

“I don’t know.”
¹¹

The audience guffawed at the preposterousness of this claim. Arnold continued to probe, and the witness continued to profess ignorance of any bank or banks in which he had funds, stating that all his financial affairs were handled by Herman Klein, whom he identified as a New York bookkeeper and the husband of a cousin.

Arnold returned to the subject of the $36,142 receipt. He spaced his words and even the syllables of his words apart, like a sharpshooter carefully squeezing off rounds to confine all the bullets to the bull’s-eye.

“I—am—ask—ing—a—gain: Did—the—girls—get—that—mon—ey?”

Myer was silent for fully thirty seconds. Finally, he admitted that they had not.

“Where is that money, Mr. Myers!?” Arnold asked, his voice rising.

Myer’s face seemed to flatten momentarily as though squashed by the force of Arnold’s words. “All my money was deposited in the Trade Bank of New York or the City-Central Bank of San Antonio.”