The Lives and Loves of Daisy and Violet Hilton: A True Story of Conjoined Twins (31 page)

The sockets around Mason’s eyes were marked with scars, his nose had the appearance of being pushed about a third of the way back into his head, and his left ear was cauliflower. He was chipped and worn, but, like the British Museum’s battered Elgin Marbles, he was still an impressive specimen. His chest appeared to be almost double the circumference of his waist, and his legs and arms were rounded like oak logs. He had gentle brown eyes, wore his thick, chestnut hair slicked back with grease and, when he was outside the ring, was snappily turned out in suits and hats from the finest haberdashers on Savile Row.

There are no known accounts of exactly what transpired in that initial meeting between Harry Mason and the Hilton sisters, but clearly the encounter went well, especially between Harry and Violet. They had their first date the same night.

Harry and Violet could have flipped through a thousand file cards at a professional matchmaker’s establishment and not found better suited companions than they were for each other. Violet was dazzled by the professional pugilist who was already a national hero. He was equally awed at having made the acquaintance of a woman who was not only a walking encyclopedia of world boxing, but also 50 percent of the world-famous Hilton Sisters. Mason was always starstruck in the presence of genuine show business luminaries as he himself was an aspiring entertainer. As a sideline to boxing, he made occasional appearances in the lowlier English variety halls, playing a fiddle and declaiming doggerel. One of his music hall recitations went as follows:

Mason had no shortage of trophies and medals for his triumphs in the square ring, but even he knew it was unlikely he would ever be knighted as a man of letters. After each of his recitations, he summed up his gifts as a belletrist honestly, if succinctly: “It’s not exactly Keats, but it’s my own composition.”
⁸

Mason had grown up in the Jewish ghetto in Leeds, a breeding ground for scores of youths who later distinguished themselves as professional boxers. He was twelve when he started receiving his first earnings as a fighter. His earliest bouts were bare-knuckle affairs at the local greyhound racetrack. Men gathered there everyday to place bets with one another on the outcome of the fights. Before each contest, the gamblers tossed a few bob onto the pitch. The antes were intended as the jackpot for the winning combatant.

Mason turned professional in 1920, when he was seventeen. By the time he was twenty, he held both the British and European lightweight crowns. Two years later, still undefeated as a lightweight, Mason beefed up from 135 pounds to 147 pounds, simultaneously developing what one boxing writer called “the stomach of an alderman.” He was forced to start fighting as a welterweight. There were fighters who had punches that were more devastating than Mason’s, but none were more elusive than he was. He became known as the “Jewish Box of Tricks,” a sobriquet conferred on him by other boxers. Like the magicians Howard Blackstone and Harry Thurston, he seemed to be able make himself vanish into thin air when the need arose.

The fight writer and boxing historian Nate Fleischer ranked Mason with the world’s all-time greatest light- and welterweights. The
encomium was not to be lightly regarded since Fleischer’s talent for assaying pugilistic excellence was unerring.

British welterweight champion Harry Mason proposed to Violet only a few minutes before the sisters left England’s shores and returned to the United States where Daisy expected to be reunited with her fiancé Jack Lewis. (Author’s collection)

Mason held Britain’s welterweight crown in 1925 and 1926, but then came defeat, and he had to surrender the title. By 1933 he was well along in his crusade to regain his country’s welterweight championship title when Violet came into his life. Although not yet thirty, he already had more than 400 professional bouts to his credit, probably more than anyone else his age.

Because of her longing for the unobtainable Blue Steele, Violet was implacably melancholic when she arrived in England. But she began brightening immediately after meeting Mason. On their first date, the two mostly talked about boxing and show business. But soon their discussions turned to matters of the heart. “To my great relief—and Daisy’s—I got a crush on Harry …,” Violet said. “Harry dimmed
my torch for Blue, although he did not quite put it out. One thing, he had no objection to my being a Siamese twin. In fact, he liked Daisy.”
⁹

On those occasions when Violet and the boxer were caressing and talking amorously, Daisy always found ways of mentally absenting herself from the proceedings. She thought it was important that the lovers have the same space in which to operate as she and the bandleader Jack Lewis had enjoyed. Most often when Harry and her sister were cuddling and cooing, Daisy drew out her fountain pen and her lilac-scented stationery and wrote long letters to Jack back in Chicago, sketching what she foresaw as the life they would have together, with a house in the country, a large flower garden, and lots of babies. “I used to go on dates with Violet and Harry,” Daisy said, “and never hear a word they said.”
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In reality, Violet and Harry weren’t able to spend much time together as they always seemed to be moving in different directions. Soon after Violet and Harry started dating, the twins were signed by Moss Empire, Ltd., a huge British entertainment conglomerate. They started criss-crossing the United Kingdom, appearing wherever Moss Empire operated theaters. During the same period, Mason was off to wherever he could find fights. Before he got another opportunity to fight for the welterweight championship, he had to prove to the British Boxing Board of Control that he was a worthy contender. This threw him into a mode of almost constant motion, traveling to different boxing emporia each week to eliminate, one by one, the dozens of other welters who also hoped for a chance to earn a championship bout.

Among the first cities Daisy and Violet visited on their tour of Moss Empire theaters was the place of their birth. A huge crowd was on hand to greet them as they stepped off the train in Brighton station.

“They were a grand pair with a great air of cheerfulness and broad
American accents,” remembered Albert Dunk, an attendant and call-boy at Brighton’s Hippodrome where the Hiltons were slated to perform.
¹¹

On their walk to the taxi rank, the sisters kissed babies, gave out autographs, and thanked their welcomers for being so hospitable. They were moved to tears by the size and warmth of the crowd that had turned out for their homecoming. Twenty years had passed since, as five-year-olds, they had left Brighton in the custody of Mary Hilton.

Daisy and Violet hadn’t been back in Brighton for more than a few hours, when they were stricken with grief so great their first impulse was to cancel all their remaining bookings in Britain and return to America immediately. Their primary reason for returning to England had been to reunite with their mother. For years they had rehearsed how the first meeting with her was likely to play out. They would approach their mother cautiously, perhaps arranging the first contact through a minister or someone close to her. They expected her to still feel at least a little ashamed and remorseful at having abandoned them. They would tell her they understood why she felt she had to give them up. They would reassure her that, if they had ever felt any bitterness toward her, the feelings had dissolved long ago. They loved her, had always loved her, always would love her. There would be crying on both sides. Finally they would embrace, Daisy and Violet feeling their mother’s warmth for the first time, she feeling theirs.

After making inquiries, Daisy and Violet did locate their mother, but there would be no reunion. Their mother lay in a small hillside cemetery under a stone monument, simply incised: Kate Skinner, 23 August 1886–1 August 1912. She had died in the Steyning Union Infirmary of complications from childbirth after bringing forth her fourth illegitimate child, Ethel Kate Skinner. She and Frederick Albert Skinner, born in 1910, were thought to be the children of
Frederick Andress, the Brighton hairdresser who was popularly believed to have fathered the twins.

Kate Skinner had been dead for twenty years. For Daisy and Violet, who had kept her alive in their imaginations from the time of their earliest memory, it was as though she died on the very day they came back to Brighton. Their sorrow was deeper than any they had ever known. There would not be, there would never be, a chance to tell her the past was over and that they only felt love for her.

Their brother, Frederick Albert, would have been twenty-two at the time of Daisy and Violet’s return to Brighton; their sister, Ethel Kate, would have been twenty-one. It can’t be absolutely determined the twins had no contact with their siblings during their stay in Brighton, but it seems most improbable. The newspapers chronicled the sisters’ most quotidian comings and goings but made no mentions of any siblings. Indeed, it seems unlikely Daisy and Violet had contact with any relatives, whether close or distant, while they were visiting the city of their birth. The twins, according to Albert Dunk, didn’t stay with kin, but rather roomed “with one of the theatrical landladies in Middle Street.”
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“The poor girls must have been heartbroken upon realizing that, after all those years, they were still regarded as untouchables by all of their blood relatives,” said Joseph Haestier, whose mother, Margaret, was an aunt to Daisy and Violet. “When I was a boy, I was often present for family gatherings during which my mum and other relatives talked about the twins, but I don’t remember anyone ever talking about a time when Daisy and Violet came back home to Brighton. I’m quite certain that no one from the family ever made any effort to see them during their stay in the city. To be honest, I suspect my family felt embarrassment at being related to girls whom others regarded as freaks. They didn’t want their friends and neighbors to know that Siamese twins were in our family tree.”
¹³

As forsaken as Daisy and Violet felt after learning of their mother’s death and then being shunned by their Brighton relatives, they were persuaded by the Hippodrome’s management to honor their contract to perform in the city. They may have taken at least a small measure of joy from the reception they received from the broader community. As the
Brighton Herald
remarked:

Daisy and Violet presented four shows at the Brighton Hippodrome, and each was a sellout.

“I remember them at two grand pianos, playing back to back, and as talented saxophonists and clarinetists,” said Albert Dunk, who saw all the performances. “They would sing, dance, and entertain us with their comic patter, too. They were a couple with plenty of talent. I doubt if we’ll see another act like theirs in a thousand years.”
¹⁵

The show the Hilton sisters headlined had been packaged by Moss Empire Theaters under the name “Britain’s Siamese Twins & Variety Company.” The program included appearances by such entertainers as Donald Stuart, the World’s Tallest Conjurer; Al Ray, a ventriloquist who exchanged repartee with three wisecracking dummies at once; Alma Victoria, a trick cyclist; and others. These acts were mere garnishments as it was the twins who were attracting the sell-out crowds.

The sisters’ British shows were closely patterned after their presentations on America’s vaudeville stages, but they introduced at least one
new wrinkle. In the opening portion of their act, they were interviewed by two young men who displayed press cards in their felt hats and posed as newspaper reporters. The format enabled Daisy and Violet to reveal what their lives were like as conjoined twins. In reply to a question posed by one of the mock journalists, Daisy said that the most difficult thing about being physically connected to Violet was adjusting to her sister’s sleeping pattern.

“Unfortunately, I wake up very early in the morning, and, as Violet refuses to sacrifice her sleep, I lie in bed reading a detective story until she wakes up,” she said.

Violet drew laughter when she told the “newsmen” that the most hateful thing about being a Siamese twin was that, over and over, the press subjected her to the same “stupid questions.” Later, the same two men returned to the stage in dinner jackets and joined with the sisters in dazzling displays of the tango, fox trot, and charleston. The spectacle of the foursome moving as one, gliding and whirling onstage, had the same effect on the British as it had on Americans. They surrendered their natural reserve and applauded, stomped their feet, and rose from their seats, cheering and shouting, summoning the twins and their partners over and over to return to the stage to take more bows.