Millie-Christine McCoy

A carte-de-visite portrait of the conjoined twins Millie and Christine McCoy.

Born into slavery in North Carolina in 1851, they were the daughters of a slave owned by blacksmith Jabez McKay. Joined at the lower spine, they learned to walk either on their rear pair of legs or on all four, in which case they progressed sideways. Their names were frequently hyphenated and throughout their lives they were referred to as often in the singular as in the plural. By the time they were four, they had been stolen from their parents, kidnapped once and sold three times, along the way becoming lucrative earners for their succession of owners to exhibit in sideshows.

Freed by Lincoln’s declaration of 1863, the girls remained with their last owner, J.P. Smith, who had bought them for $30,000. Under his care and management they continued their career. Mrs Smith taught them to read and write and honed their musical talents. They eventually became accomplished singers, pianists and even dancers, touring the world and becoming renowned performers. Fluent in five languages (‘she’ could even talk in two different languages at once), they danced and sang before the royal courts of Europe. They were a great favourite of Queen Victoria.

The twins soon earned enough money to support the rest of the family and for their father to purchase a farm. Returning to the States in 1882, they travelled with a circus for several years, receiving $25,000 a season, an extraordinary sum in those days. In 1884 they settled down in North Carolina, building a large house on the land they had bought for their father twenty years earlier. Until their death in 1912, they did charity work and toured intermittently.

Photographed by Louis Bertin of Brighton.