The Dionne quintuplets (born May 28, 1934) are the first quintuplets known to survive their infancy. They are the only female identical set of five ever recorded. The sisters were born just outside Callander, Ontario, Canada near the village of Corbeil.
The Dionne girls were born two months premature. After four months with their family, they were made wards of the King for the next nine years under the Dionne Quintuplets' Guardianship Act, 1935. The government and those around them began to profit by making them a significant tourist attraction in Ontario.
The quintuplets
The identical quintuplet sisters were:
- Annette Lillianne Marie Dionne (Allard) (age 75)
- Cécile Marie Emilda Dionne (Langlois) (age 75)
- Émilie Marie Jeanne Dionne (died August 6, 1954 (aged 20) of accidental suffocation during an epileptic seizure at her convent)
- Marie Reine Alma Dionne (Houle) (died February 27, 1970 (aged 35) of an apparent blood clot of the brain in Montreal)
- Yvonne Edouilda Marie Dionne (died June 23, 2001 (aged 67) of cancer)
Emilie had a series of seizures while she was a postulant at a convent. She had asked not to be left unattended but the nun who was supposed to be watching her thought she was asleep and went to Mass. Emilie had another seizure, rolled onto her stomach and, unable to raise her face from a pillow, accidentally suffocated.[1]
Marie was living alone in an apartment and her sisters were worried because they hadn't heard from her in several days. One of the other sisters' husbands broke down the window and found Marie who had been dead for days. The coroner determined it was a blood clot in the brain.
Biography
The Dionne family
The family, headed by father Oliva and mother Elzire Dionne, married September 15, 1926, lived just outside of Corbeil, in a farmhouse in unregistered territory. The Dionnes were a farming family with five previous children named Ernest, Rose Marie, Therese, Daniel, and Pauline who was only eleven months older than the quints, (a sixth, son Léo, died of pneumonia shortly after birth). The Dionnes also had 3 sons after the quintuplets. Oliva Jr., Victor, and Claude (the last son born when the quintuplets were 12.)
Birth
The quintuplets were born three months premature and the family was not even aware that Elzire was pregnant with quintuplets. They are identical and were created from one single egg cell. Dr. Allan Roy Dafoe is credited with the birth of the quintuplets. However, originally, his diagnosis of Elzire was only a "fetal abnormality". He delivered the babies with the help of two midwives, Aunt Donalda and Madam Benoit Lebel, who were retrieved by Oliva Dionne in the middle of the night. The births were registered in nearby Corbeil. The order that they were born is not known. All that is known is that the three bigger ones were born first. The babies were not weighed or measured. The quintuplets were immediately wrapped in cotton sheets and old napkins and laid in the corner of the bed. Dr. Dafoes didn't think that the babies would survive. At the time of the birth, the father could not be found and shortly after, Elzire went into shock. Dr. Dafoe thought that Elzire was also going to die, but she was better within two hours. The babies were kept in an ordinary wicker basket borrowed from the neighbors with heated blankets. They were soon brought into the kitchen and set by the open door of the stove to keep warm. One by one, they were taken out of the basket and massaged with olive oil. Every two hours, for the first twenty-four, they were only given sweetened water. By the second day they were moved to a laundry basket, which was slightly larger, and heated with hot-water bottles. They were watched constantly and often had to be roused when it seemed that they were losing life. They were then fed with seven-twenty formula. It consisted of cow's milk, boiled water, two spoonfuls of corn syrup, and one or two drops of rum for stimulant. News spread quickly and the family benefited from much assistance during the first several months.
At the Dafoe Nursery
Four months after the birth of the sisters, the Ontario government intervened and, in an unprecedented fashion, found the parents to be unfit for the quintuplets, and custody of the five babies was withdrawn from their parents by the Ontario government of Mitchell Hepburn in 1935, originally for a guardianship of two years. Although Oliva Dionne remained part of the guardianship, they were put under the guidance of Dr. Dafoe and two other guardians. The stated reason for removing the quintuplets from their parents' legal custody was to ensure their survival into healthy toddlers. The government realized the massive interest in the sisters and proceeded to engender a tourist industry around them. The girls were made wards of the provincial crown, planned until they reached the age of 18.
Across the road from their birthplace, the Dafoe Hospital and Nursery was built for the five girls and their new caregivers. The girls were moved from the farmhouse to this nursery at the end of September. The compound had an outdoor playground designed to be a public observation area. It was surrounded by a covered arcade that allowed tourists to observe the sisters behind one-way screens. The facility was funded by a Red Cross fundraiser. It was a nine-room nursery with a staff house nearby. The staff house held the three nurses and the three policemen in charge of guarding them. A housekeeper and two maids lived in the main building with the quintuplets. The buildings were surrounded by a seven foot barbed wire fence. The sisters were brought to play there for 30 minutes two or three times a day. They were constantly being tested, studied, and examined with tedious records taken of everything. The Dionne sisters, while living at the compound, had a somewhat rigid lifestyle. They were not required to participate in chores. They were privately tutored in the same building as they lived, and had occasional contact with their parents and siblings across the road. Cared for primarily by nurses, the children had limited exposure to the world outside the boundaries of the compound except for the daily rounds of tourists, who, from the sisters' point of view, were generally heard but not seen. Every morning they dressed together in a big bathroom, had doses of orange juice and cod-liver oil, and then went to have their hair curled. They said a prayer before breakfast, a gong was sounded, and they ate breakfast in the dining room. After thirty minutes, they had to clear the table, even if they weren't done. Then, they went and played in the sunroom for thirty, took a fifteen minute break and at nine o'clock was their morning inspection with Dr. Dafoe. Every month they had a different timetable of activities to do. They bathed every day before dinner and put on their pajamas. Dinner was served at precisely six o'clock. Then, they went into the quiet playroom to say their evening prayers. Each girl had a color and a symbol to mark what was hers. Annette's color was red with a maple leaf. Cecile's color was green and her design a turkey. Emilie had white and a tulip, while Marie had blue and a teddy bear, and Yvonne had pink and a bluebird.[[2][3]
Approximately 6,000 people per day visited the observation gallery that surrounded an outdoor playground to view the Dionne sisters. Ample parking was provided and close to three million people walked through the gallery between 1936 and 1943. Oliva Dionne ran a souvenir shop and a concession store opposite the nursery and the area acquired the moniker of "Quintland". The souvenirs invariably pictured the five sisters. There were spoons, cups, plates, plaques, candy bars, books, postcards, dolls, and much more at this shop. Oliva Dionne also sold stones from the Dionne farm for $0.50 that were supposed to have some magical power of fertility. They sold autographs and framed photographs. Midwives, Madam LeGros and Madame LeBelle opened up their own souvenir and dining stand.[4]. In 1934, the Quintuplets brought in about $1 million, and they attracted in total about $51 million of tourist revenue to Ontario. Quintland became Ontario's biggest tourist attraction of the era, at the time surpassing the Canadian side of Niagara Falls. It was only rivaled by Radio City, Mount Vernon, and GEttysburg of the United States. Hollywood stars who came to Callander to visit the Quints include Clark Gable, James Stewart, Bette Davis, James Cagney and Mae West. Amelia Earhart also visited Callander just six weeks before her ill-fated flight in 1937.
The sisters, and their likenesses and images, along with Dr. Dafoe, were used to publicize commercial products such as Karo corn syrup and Quaker Oats among many of other popular brands. They increased the sales of condensed milk, toothpaste, disinfectant, and many other products through their promotions. They starred in four Hollywood films:
- The Country Doctor (1936)
- Reunion (1936)
- Five of a Kind (1938)
- Quintupland (1938)
Return to family
The quintuplets in 1947 with the parents and priest in the background.
In November 1943, the Dionne parents won back custody of the sisters. The entire family moved into a newly built house within walking distance of Quintland. The yellow brick, 20-room mansion was paid for out of the Quintuplets' fund. The home had many amenities of the time, including telephones, electricity and hot water. The mansion was nicknamed "The Big House." The building is now a retirement home.[5]
The nursery was eventually converted into an accredited school house where the sisters finished their secondary education along with ten girls from the area that were chosen to attend. Years after, it was used by the Recluses of Corbeil as a convent.
The quintuplets became emotionally closest to their sister, Pauline. While the parents sought to integrate the quintuplets into the family, the sisters frequently traveled to perform at various functions, still all dressed the same, and the parents often treated them at home as a five-part unit. They were sometimes denied privileges the other children received, received a heavier share of the house and farmwork, and were often dressed alike. In particular, the father was resentful and suspicious of outsiders for having lost custody of his children.
Museum
A sibling of the Quintuplets was the first to open the Dionne home as a museum. The original family homestead was moved around 1960 to a location on Highway 11B (near the present Clarion Resort), and again in 1985 to North Bay and converted into the non-profit Dionne Quintuplets Museum. The museum is located at the intersection of Highway 11 and the Trans Canada Highway.
Adult years
The Quintuplets left the family home upon turning 18 years old and had little contact with their parents thereafter. Émilie and Marie both died before reaching middle age. Marie had married before passing to Florian Houle. Annette and Cécile went on to marry and have children (Cécile having twins Bertrand and Bruno), but both eventually divorced.
In 1965, author James Brough wrote a book, in cooperation with the four surviving sisters, called We Were Five. Pierre Berton published a biography called The Dionne Years: A Thirties Melodrama in 1977 and narrated a 1978 National Film Board of Canada documentary.
John Nihmey and Stuart Foxman published the fictional Time of Their Lives--The Dionne Tragedy in 1986. Nihmey and Foxman's book was the basis for the 1994 TV miniseries, Million Dollar Babies (1994), produced by CBS and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and starring Roy Dupuis and Céline Bonnier.
The surviving sisters prefer to be referred to as the Dionne sisters instead of quintuplets.
In 1995, the three surviving sisters revealed that they believed their father had sexually abused them during their teen-aged years.[6]
In 1997, the three surviving sisters wrote an open letter to the parents of the McCaughey septuplets, warning against allowing too much publicity for the children.[7][8] In 1998, the sisters, living together in the Montreal suburb of Saint-Bruno-de-Montarville reached a monetary settlement with the Ontario government as compensation for what was perceived to be their exploitation.[9][10]
In popular culture
References to the quintuplets appear in the Three Stooges' shorts False Alarms (1936), and Oily to Bed, Oily to Rise (1939), the screwball comedy My Man Godfrey (1936), Preston Sturges' The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1944), and Agatha Christie's The Adventure of the Cheap Flat. During the "contract scene" in the Marx Brothers' A Night at the Opera (1935), Groucho asks Chico if he knows what "duplicates" are. Chico replies, "Sure, those five kids up in Canada." In "Dumbo (1941) during the song "Watch Out For Mr. Stork": Remember those quintuplets / And the woman in the shoe / Maybe he's got his eye on you /.
References
- ^ We Were Five and Family Secrets by Cecile, Yvonne, and Annette Dionne
- ^ They were five: The Dionne Quintuplets revisited Cynthia Wright, Winter 1994
- ^ The Dionne Quintuplets 2007
- ^ "The Dionne quintuplets: A Depression-era freak show". CNN Interactive (CNN). 1997-11-19. http://www.cnn.com/US/9711/19/dionne.quints/. Retrieved on 2007-06-21.
- ^ Nipissing Manor former home to Dionne quintuplets November 1, 2003
- ^ Three Dionne Quintuplets Say Father Sexually Abused Them Clyde H. Farnsworth, September 26, 1995
- ^ Advice from the Dionne Quintuplets December 1, 1997
- ^ Open Letter from the Dionne Quintuplets 1997
- ^ Dionnes Get Justice March 16, 1998
- ^ St. Bruno Journal: The Babies of Quintland Now: Broke, and Bitter The New York Times, March 4, 1998
- Family Secrets: The Dionne Quintuplets' Autobiography (1997) ISBN 0425156907
External links
Media
I don't believe the accident of birth makes people sisters or brothers. It makes them siblings. Gives them mutuality of parentage. Sisterhood and brotherhood is a condition people have to work at.
