Exhibiting monstrosity: Chang andEng, the ‘original’ Siamese twinsSarah Mitchell

History Department, Virginia Tech, 428 Major Williams Hall, Blacksburg, VA 24061, USA

Chang and Eng, the two young men who would even-

tually be known around the world as the ‘original’

Siamese twins, arrived in the West in 1829. They were

brought to the West to be examined by medical men

and to be exhibited to the general public. Throughout

the 19th century in Britain and the US, ‘monstrosities’

such as Chang and Eng, as well as a host of other

people with unusual anatomies, were considered both

spectacles worthy of public display and edifying medical

subjects with the potential to build on medical knowl-

edge. The unique case of Chang and Eng illustrates

that the boundary between what is of legitimate medi-

cal interest and what is considered merely spectacle is

often blurred.

In September 1829, two young men from Siam arrived inBoston Harbor, aboard the American ship, the Sachem.A contemporary newspaper account described them asabout five feet tall, ‘of well proportioned frames, strong andactive, good natured, and of a pleasant expression ofcountenance, and withal intelligent and sensible.’ Theywere said to possess ‘a good appetite, appear lively, and runabout the deck and the cabin of the ship with the samefaculty that any two healthy lads would do, with theirarms over each other’s shoulders.’ In the same article,they are also described as a ‘very strange freak of nature’and as ‘one of the greatest living curiosities’ [1].

These apparently contradictory statements begin tomake sense when we realize that the two young men inquestion are none other than Chang and Eng, the ‘original’Siamese twins, born joined at their chests by a narrowband of flesh. Although they would become known all overthe world as the ‘original’ Siamese twins, they were by nomeans the first conjoined twins to come to public attention.Nor were they the first ‘monsters’ to be displayed to thepublic. They were ‘discovered’ in the East and transportedto the West for the express purpose of being exhibited forprofit, both to the medical community and to the generalpublic. Throughout the 19th century in both Europe andthe United States, men, women and children with unusualanatomies, including conjoined twins, exhibited them-selves to the public, some more voluntarily than others.This exhibition took place in several contexts and venues,including the backs of public houses, in theatres, inmuseums, at private showings and at medical andscientific meetings, to name a few.

Background

The early lives of Chang and Eng have been told frequentlyin biographies, articles and scholarly works, and aretypically recounted in stories concerning the birth ofmodern-day conjoined twins. Their story is worth retellinghere because the narrative of their background helpsexplain their initial reception and representation in thewest. Chang and Eng were born in May 1811 in a smallvillage in Siam, the country we now know as Thailand.Their parents were Chinese and the two boys were namedChang and Eng. Shortly after their birth, the usualaccount goes, the King of Siam heard of their existence anddetermined to have them put to death as he imagined that‘the existence of such beings portended some evil to hiskingdom’ [2]. He later changed his mind upon hearing thatthey were harmless.

Chang and Eng were ‘discovered’ by Mr Robert Hunter,a British merchant living in Siam, who first saw them ‘in afishing-boat on the river Minam’. In March 1829, Hunterjoined forces with Captain Abel Coffin, an American seacaptain, and succeeded in persuading the Siamesegovernment to allow Chang and Eng to accompany themto the West. In some accounts, this is presented very muchas a financial transaction, with the boys’ mother beingcompensated for the family’s anticipated lost incomecaused by their absence, and in others it is actuallyreported that they were ‘bought’. By this point, Chang andEng had lost their father and were supporting the familyby fishing and selling duck eggs. Although they werecuriosities in their homeland, it doesn’t seem to havebenefited them financially.

So, having received permission, Captain Coffin andMr Hunter departed with Chang and Eng for Boston inApril 1829, on board the Sachem. The boys were 18 yearsold. Their itinerary included stops in Singapore, Batavia,Anjier, Mauritius, Capetown and Bermuda [3]. More thanfour months after leaving Siam, they arrived in Boston inAugust, where they stayed for eight weeks, during whichtime ‘they excited the greatest interest among scientificand professional men.’ Wherever they went in thefollowing months, they were examined by renowneddoctors and were the subjects of intensive publicitycampaigns. A Philadelphia physician described Changand Eng’s initial reactions to being the subjects of suchintensive investigation. ‘They evinced a great degree oftimidity at their introduction to so large a number ofphysicians as had assembled by appointment to inspectthem. Much of it, Captain Coffin informed us, was theCorresponding author: Sarah Mitchell (smitch@vt.edu).

Review Endeavour Vol.27 No.4 December 2003150

http://ende.trends.com 0160-9327/$ - see front matter q 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.endeavour.2003.10.001

result of fear lest we should disjoin them. After manyassurances that nothing of the kind was contemplated,they submitted to our examinations, but with evidentmodesty in the exposure of their persons’ [4].

The results of these examinations were reported widely,which helped, no doubt, convince the public of the validityof the claims about these two youths. To the public, theywere initially a bit of a hard sell in America. ‘At first thegreat majority of the public utterly discredited the realityof the union between them, and were confident that theremust be some deception in the matter.’ [5] In October theysailed from New York for England and arrived in Londonon 19 November1829. On the 24 November, they were thefeatured attraction at a by-invitation-only event, attendedby ‘some of the most eminent members of the faculty, and aconsiderable body of literary and scientific gentlemen’ [6].

In December, Chang and Eng were first displayed to thegeneral public following an extensive publicity campaignof advertisements, playbills and newspaper articles. Andthey proved to be popular exhibits. We can catch a glimpseof their reception in the following brief excerpt from thefollowing satirical poem titled The Siamese Twins: A Taleof the Times [7]:

From ten, to five o’clock each day,There throng’d to see them such a bevy,Such cabs and chariots blocked the way,The crowd was like a new King’s levee…In each engraver’s shop one sees,Neat portraits of ‘the Siamese;’And every wandering Tuscan carries,Their statues case in clay of Paris.

More than 100 000 people saw them in London andperhaps twice that many when they left the city and touredthe British Isles.

So, what did a visit to Chang and Eng actually entail?Onlookers could look at the twins and ask them questions,which they answered at first with the aid of an interpreter.Then, as they grew more confident (and perhaps bored)they developed an act which incorporated a number ofphysical tasks, including acrobatics and weight lifting,battledore and shuttlecock (Fig. 1). They added stuntssuch as somersaults and back flips, and enjoyed carryingthe heaviest audience member around the room todemonstrate their strength. Sometimes they engagedmembers of the audience in games of checkers or chess.Chang and Eng were on display for four hours each dayduring their seven months in London. At times Chang andEng treated the spectators as spectacle. According to onepromotional brochure, ‘Indeed, there are few who visitthem who escape their observation’ it read, ‘and theygenerally amuse themselves for an hour or two on theirreturn home, by repeating any remarks they have heard atthe exhibition room, and in observations upon those whomthey have seen during the day’ [8].

Chang and Eng, in the narrative of their ‘discovery’ andearly exhibition, can be seen as part of a larger tradition ofvoyages of discovery and exploration in which exoticcuriosities deemed of scientific interest were brought hometo the west. The results of these gathering expeditions

ended up in museums, in zoological gardens, in privatecollections, and at anatomical schools. These collectionswere seen as key to the developing sciences of comparativeanatomy, natural history and zoology, and figured in thescientific classificatory schemes that were being con-structed at the time. Chang and Eng were doubly curious– they were both conjoined and from Siam, a place thatmost Europeans would have known little about. WhenChang and Eng arrived in the West, first in Boston andlater in London, they entered a cultural environment thatboth sought and valued human curiosities.

The necessary components of exhibition were, of course,the exhibits themselves, the audience, and in the case ofexhibiting monstrosity, medical men and scientists playeda vital role as well. Potential visitors to exhibition hallslooked to medical men to authenticate that twins ondisplay were actually conjoined and, therefore, worth theprice of admission. At the Egyptian Hall in London (Fig. 2),a book of testimonials was available for visitors to inspect.One typical statement, signed by a physician, assures thepublic that Chang and Eng ‘constitute a most extraordi-nary Lusus Naturae’, are ‘totally devoid of deception,afford a very interesting spectacle, and are highly

Fig. 1. Chang and Eng, the Siamese Twins, aged eighteen, playing badminton.

Lithograph. Reproduced, with permission, from the Wellcome Library.

Review Endeavour Vol.27 No.4 December 2003 151

http://ende.trends.com

deserving of public patronage’ [8]. These endorsementswere especially valuable to Captain Coffin and RobertHunter owing to the initial skepticism with which theywere greeted when exhibited in America. Hunter andCoffin sought successfully to avoid this criticism. Thepublic looked to doctors to provide meaning to what theysaw when attending an event whose prime attraction wasthe exhibition of conjoined twins.

Maternal impressions

What caused the birth of monsters? This was one of themain questions that teratology – the science of monstersbeing formed in the early- to mid-19th century – sought toanswer. One theory that was shared by medical men andthe public alike was that of maternal impressions. Thiswas the theory that a pregnant woman’s imagination couldaffect her developing child. It is an unconscious act on thepart of the mother, and can occur if she witnesses atraumatic or shocking person or event, or even if shepossesses an unfulfilled longing. This is most commonlyseen as a mark on the child or in the form of a deformity,even to the extreme of two bodies joined together. Changand Eng were not allowed to visit France during theirinitial Western tour due to the fear that pregnant Frenchwomen seeing them would give birth to double monsters[9]. Although this theory had been discredited in themedical literature in the 18th century, it kept popping upin the 19th.

Throughout the 19th century, the taste for monstros-ities among the public and the medical community alikeseemed boundless. The introduction to a popular medical

text proclaimed, ‘in our day, the taste seems to beinsatiable, and hardly any medical journal is without itsrare or “unique” case’ [10]. There was not yet widespreadmoral opposition to the display of monsters, although thereseems to have been a gendered aspect to it, concerning whoshould and should not be exposed to exhibitions ofmonsters. Promotional material for Chang and Eng’sexhibition emphasized that ‘the most fastidious femalewill find nothing in the exhibition, which is calculated towound her delicate feelings. Ladies of the first rank in thekingdom visit them daily, and of all who honor them withtheir company, none appear more gratified, than thefemale sex’ [11]. The taste for the display of monstrositieswas not without its critics. In 1848, Punch published apiece entitled ‘The Deformito-mania’ in which it bemoanedthat ‘The walls of the Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly areplacarded from top to bottom with bills announcing theexhibition of some frightful object within, and the buildingitself will soon be known as the Hall of Ugliness. We cannotunderstand the cause of the now prevailing taste fordeformity, which seems to grow by what it feeds upon.…We understand that an exhibition consisting of the mostfrightful objects in nature is about to be formed at theEgyptian Hall, under the…title of the Hideorama. PoorMadame Tussaud, with her Chamber of Horrors, is quitethrown into the shade by the number of real enormitiesand deformities that are now to be seen, as the showmensay, ‘Alive! Alive!’’ [12] This humorous example is a goodindication that the popularity of the exhibition ofmonstrosities far exceeded the level of support to endsuch exhibition.

Fig. 2. The Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly in 1828 at which Chang and Eng were first exhibited. Reproduced, with permission, from the Wellcome Library.

Review Endeavour Vol.27 No.4 December 2003152

http://ende.trends.com

Visual representations were an important aspect ofexhibition. Images of monstrosities featured prominentlyon broadsides, advertisements, promotional brochures andcartes de visites, or small picture postcards that werepopular souvenirs. Early images of Chang and Eng arestriking. They are typically portrayed as very exotic looking,and not just because of their unique formation. Their skincolor, features and place of origin are emphasized and oftenexaggerated. They are often pictured in an idealized‘Oriental’ setting, although clearly the artists never actuallysaw them in that environment. Instead, the artists relied onstereotypes of an exotic ‘otherland’ – Siam. In the earlierimages, theyalso appear to haveexaggeratedAsian featuresand significantly darker skin than in later pictures. Theyappear dressed in ‘native’ garb and sport hairstyles tomatch. According to one typical account of a viewing, ‘Theywere dressed in a short loose green jacket and trousers, thecostume of their country, which is very convenient andallows the utmost freedom of motion, but does not show theform of the boys to advantage’[13].

Supporting these physical representations, contempor-ary newspaper accounts frequently described them asresembling the Chinese (Fig. 3). For example, ‘in the colorof their skin, in the form of the nose, lips, and eyes, theyresemble the Chinese, whom our readers may probably haveseen occasionally about the streets of London, but they havenot that broad and flat fact which is characteristic of theMingol [sic] race. Their foreheads are higher and narrowerthan those of the majority of their countrymen’ [14]. Inanother account, ‘The color of their skin and the form of theirfacespoint themoutatonce as belongingto theChineserace.They have high but narrow foreheads, and are below themiddle height,’ and ‘they have the Chinese complexion andphysiognomy’ [15]. Another author explicitly suggests thatChang and Eng may be of interest, not just because of thefact that they were conjoined but also ‘as presenting aspecimen of a race of men little known to Europeans’ [16].In the same vein, American accounts sometimes comparedtheir appearance to Native Americans.

Medical men and monstrosities

Although an obvious fascination with monstrosities wasshared by the public and medical professionals, physicianswere persistent in their efforts to stress that their interestin the monstrous body was of a different sort altogetherthan that of the common man. According to Historian RoyPorter, it was a matter of ‘professional pride amongst menof science that they, unlike the crass herd, did notsensationalize monstrosities but viewed them coollythrough eyes philosophical and detached’ [17]. In fact,doctors and natural philosophers may have been ‘seducedby public interest in marvels’ and actively sought to carveout a niche for themselves as the experts of choice [17]. Or,in other words, their professional activities may have beenpartly in response to public demand for a closer look atmonstrosities. In both the US and Britain, this was a timeof great activity for the medical professions as they workedto establish authority, respect and the prospect of long-evity. Medical doctors were determined to distinguishthemselves from competing practitioners espousingdifferent philosophies of health. Their efforts included

forming medical societies, medical journals and attemptsto regulate and reform the profession. Because of theircultural authority in such matters, medical men weregiven special access to monstrosities. They used this accessto set themselves apart further.

How did Chang and Eng become the ‘original’ Siamese

twins?

They were not the first conjoined twins to be exhibited to thepublic, but Chang and Eng left their mark for severalreasons. They became well-known quickly owing to storiesabout them in newspapers, which were being printed inincreasingnumbers everyyear. They toured extensively andreceived a great deal of publicity everywhere they went. Theterm‘SiameseTwins’soonenteredthepopularvocabularyasa metaphor for a variety of interpersonal relationships,appearing in political satires and caricatures (Fig. 4).

Fig. 3. Chang and Eng as they appeared in The Mirror, Saturday, 28 November

1829. Reproduced, with permission, from the Wellcome Library.

Review Endeavour Vol.27 No.4 December 2003 153

http://ende.trends.com

Mark Twain wrote of them that during the American CivilWar, they ‘both fought gallantly all through the greatstruggle – Eng on the Union side and Chang on theConfederate. They took each other prisoners at SevenOaks, but the proofs of capture were so evenly balanced infavor of each that a general army court had to beassembled to determine which one was properly the captorand which the captive. The jury was unable to agree for along time; but the vexed question was finally decided byagreeing to consider them both prisoners, and thenexchanging them’ [18].

The term ‘Siamese Twins’ was soon also adopted in themedical literature. At first, it was used as a point ofcomparison to similar cases, but over time it became avirtual synonym for ‘conjoined twins’ [19]. Because theylived so long, until the age of 63 in 1874, and in spite of thefact that they retired from the business of exhibition andlived as private citizens, they remained cultural icons.After their retirement, they moved to North Carolina,adopted the surname Bunker, became American citizens,

and settled down to farm. News of their marriage tosisters in 1843 and the subsequent births of their children(Eng had 12 and Chang had 10), speculation aboutwhether they would be separated, and their brief stintworking with P.T. Barnum, ensured that they reappearedperiodically in the news. Later images of them present astriking contrast to earlier ones. They are dressed inwestern clothes with short haircuts. Sometimes they arepictured with their wives and children, the image ofrespectability.

After their deaths in 1874, a team of physiciansaffiliated with the College of Physicians of Philadelphiatraveled to Mount Airy, North Carolina and met with thewidows of Chang and Eng, convincing them to allow adissection of the conjoined bodies of their husbands. Theysucceeded in their quest and returned to Philadelphia withChang and Eng and the autopsy was performed. As part ofthe agreement, Chang and Eng were not separated andtheir bodies were returned to their families for burial.However, as testimony to the often contentious yetseemingly inseparable relationship between medicineand spectacle, the conjoined livers of Chang and Engwere left behind in Philadelphia. They, along with apostmortem plaster cast of their torsos, remain on displayto the public at the Mutter Museum of the College ofPhysicians of Philadelphia.

References

1 The Times, 19 September 1829, 2,e2 Bolton, G.B. (1830) On the united Siamese twins. Phil. Trans. Lond.,

1773 Wallace, I. and Wallace, A. (1978) The Two: A Biography, Simon and

Schuster, New York4 Aurora and Pennsylvania Gazette, Philadelphia, Saturday 24 October

18295 Strong, T.W., (1853) Life of the Siamese Twins, New York, p. 576 The Times, 25 November 1829, 2,f7 Bulwer, E.L. (1836) Poetical Works of E.L. Bulwer, Paris, pp. 147–149;

quoted in Altick, R.D. (1978) The Shows of London, Cambridge andLondon

8 Hale, J.W. (1830) An Historical Account of the Siamese Twin Brothersfrom Actual Observation, London

9 By 1835 they were allowed to tour in France.10 Gould, G.M. and Pyle, W.L. (1896) Anomalies and Curiosities of

Medicine, New York, p. 211 Hale, 13.12 ‘Deformito-mania’ Punch, 4 September 1847, p. 90; quoted in

O’Connor, E., (2000), Raw Material: Producing Pathology in VictorianCulture, Duke University Press, p. 149

13 The Times, 23 November 1829, 314 The Times, 23 November 1829, 2,f15 The Times, 17 November 1829, 4,a16 From the Medical Gazette, quoted in The Times, 23 January 1838, 3d17 Porter, R. (2001) Bodies Politic: Disease, Death and Doctors in Britain,

1650–1900, Reaktion Books, London, p. 5518 18 See ‘The Siamese twins’ In Mark Twain’s Sketches, New and Old.

The American Publishing Company, Hartford, CT, 1875, pp. 208–21219 See, for example, Mitchell, T.D. (1832–1834) Newport Twins,

analogous to the celebrated Siamese twins. Western Medical Gazette,Cincinnati. 1, 295; Anon., (1857), A variorum edition of the SiameseTwins. Lancet 2, 510; Ball, W.B. (1858) A new edition of the SiameseTwins. Virginia Medical Journal 10, 197–199

Fig. 4. Daniel O’Connell and the devil as the Siamese Twins joined at the chest;

satirizing the ‘No popery’ atrocity allegations. This image satirizes O’Connell’s sup-

port of the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829 that allowed Roman Catholics to be

elected to the House of Commons for the first time since the 17th century. Note the

images in the background of a burning church and a woman being burned at the

stake. Reproduced, with permission, from the Wellcome Library.

Review Endeavour Vol.27 No.4 December 2003154

http://ende.trends.com