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The silent twins

Their arrest and subsequent trial revealed the second secret — although perfectly able to speak and write the girls had maintained a mysterious silence towards the outside world. When alone, they would speak to each other, but in the presence of anyone else they would not say a word, no matter what the threat or inducement, a condition known as “elective mute syndrome.”

Their parents were at a loss what to do with them and when they came to trial, so was the legal system. The experts did their best to penetrate the emotional walls the girls had erected around themselves but failed. The court, recognising that the twins posed a risk to society, decided that the only place where they could be kept safely and treated was Broadmoor hospital for the criminally insane.

The fact that two attractive, unusual, vulnerable girls had such power to puzzle and infuriate the world that the only place to keep them was Broadmoor, attracted the attention of the media and a journalist called Marjorie Wallace went to talk to the girls’ parents in Wales. There, in the girls’ bedroom she discovered boxes and bagfuls of their writing: diaries, sort stories, poems, novels and plays. Wallace thus discovered a third secret about the twins — they were immensely talented. Their writing was charged and poetic, full of wit, insight, startling images and extreme emotion.”

Concerned that their treatment in Broadmoor might inhibit or even destroy this talent, Wallace went to visit them there. Thrilled by her interest in their writing, they broke their silence, spoke to her and gave her more of their work, written in a minute, densely-packed, almost indecipherable handwriting.

The girls’ writing revealed an intense lifelong “love-hate” relationship. “They were inextricably bound together, each feeling that the other was trying to control her. On the one hand they loved each other deeply. On the other, they each wanted to be free from the other’s control.”

Wallace felt compelled to write a book about the girls, “The Silent Twins”, and in 1986 the BBC made this into a film. Many found the drama disturbing and the reaction was mixed, which may explain why it was buried in the BBC archives until a few weeks ago when it was shown at the National Film Theatre as part of London’s Eighth International Disability Film Festival. Wallace was there and sprang a surprise on the audience in a question-and-answer session after the screening: she revealed what had happened to the twins in the intervening years.

After eleven years’ treatment, the authorities decided that it was safe to release the twins. Wallace went to see them at Broadmoor for the last time. There they had revealed to her that they had jointly reached a momentous decision. The only way they would ever be free from one another and able to lead a normal life would be when one of them died. They had discussed which one it would be and had jointly agreed that it should be Jennifer. Wallace says that she had taken this in, but felt that it was the girls’ dramatic sense talking. Wallace says, “But on the very day that they left Broadmoor in an ambulance, Jennifer had some sort of a turn. She was treated but lost consciousness, went into a coma, deteriorated rapidly and died suddenly. Don’t ask me to explain it. I can’t.” As for June, she is now 42 and lives a quiet, mundane life with her family back in Wales. But she has never written another word.

Phillip Knightley is a veteran British journalist and commentator