Jennifer Gibbons

Yemen black second born twin, born breech. The girls were shy children and by age 11, spoke only to each other. By late 1979, they totally withdrew from social contact into a self-imposed emotional isolation. They were the daughters of parents from the Barbados, their dad a staff technician for the R.A.F. A daughter, Greta, had been born in 1957 and a son, David in 1959 before the twins. A younger sister, Rosie, was born in 1967. The first or only West Indian kids in their schools, they were subjected to unrelieved racism, teased, derided and even physically abused. "Eight or nine we started suffering, and we stopped talking," June said. Later, from listening to tapes, their "secret language" was discovered to be a mixture of Barbadian slang and English spoken very rapidly. In March 1978, psychologists separated the 14-year-old girls, putting them into different schools. Their anguish and despair was so extreme that June became catatonic. They had a love-hate relationships that was so intense that they identified with each, the other, as their friend, their enemy, their self. By the winter of 1978, both girls had left school forever and were on the dole. They retired to their room, even taking their meals there and leaving cryptic notes for the family they were tearing apart. They began shoplifting on 12/12/1980. In April 1981 the girls had a five-week period of coming out, of talking, getting dressed up, flirting and having fun, pursuing three young brothers in a white family. They managed to have their first sex with the same boy, Jenny on 6/07/1981 and June, two weeks later. By 1981 they were stealing, drinking, sniffing glue and having indiscriminate sex. They spent their dole money on food, gorging and purging. Rejected by a local gang, they made up their own gang of two, stealing bicycles, ringing doorbells, smashing windows and painting graffiti. On 10/24/1981, they burned down the tractor garage and in November, were caught in the act of setting a fire. They were sent to prison 11/08/1981. They were tried in May 1982 on 16 counts of burglary, theft and arson. No one knew quite what to do with the 19-year-old girls and finally, they were sent to Broadmoor insane asylum on 6/21/1982. Uncooperative and manipulative, they made suicide attempts and were put on sedation. Remarkably, the girls wrote incredible prose in minute script in their diaries, untrained but powerful imagery. They were kept in Broadmoor for 12 years. Jennifer and June were nearly 30 when they were released on the morning of 3/09/1993 in Bridgend, South Wales. On the bus, Jennifer rested her head on her twin's shoulder and said, "At long last we're out." Less than 12 hours later, she was dead of acute myocarditis. Link to Wikipedia biography