Remembering The Exploitation Of The Dionne Quintuplets
Posted: Friday, January 30, 2009
by Joel Hendon
http://hebronics.org/index.html
Three and one-half years after my birth, there was born five identical baby girls to Oliva and Elzire Dionne. They were delivered by Dr. Allan Dafoe assisted by two midwives, Mesdames Legros and Lebel in the family farmhouse near Callander, Ontario, Canada. They were two months premature and their total weight amounted to 14 pounds. It was unlikely that any would survive but amazingly, they all did. This was the first known set of quintuplets who all survived. It is reported that any one of them could be held in an adult palm. They were placed around a wood burning heater to keep them warm.
Annette Lillianne Marie (married Germain Allard Oct. 1957. Divorced-4 children)
Cécile Marie Emilda (married to a man named Langlois No further details found)
Émilie Marie Jeanne (entered convent-died of accidental suffocation due to seizure at age 20)
Marie Reina Alma (married to man named Houle. She died of blood clot of the brain in 1970-No further data found)
Yvonne Edouilda Marie (Apparently never married. Died in 2001 from cancer)
The Dionne family already had five living children and another one who had died from pneumonia shortly after birth. As it became obvious that they would all live and so much world wide attention was drawn towards them, the government of Ontario stepped in and removed the children from the custody of the family. This was originally specified and intended to be for two years to assure that the girls would not be exploited plus keeping a watch on their health.
However, as it developed, the quintuplets were so widely publicized and caused so much excitement worldwide, the government recognized that there was the potential for huge financial rewards from them. The government constructed a hospital building across the road from their birthplace, for their own care and named it the Dafoe Hospital and Nursery. They remained in the hospital to age 9 where they were not allowed to leave nor to associate with any outsiders, including their family. They were not permitted to go to the local school but were tutored in the hospital. There was a special observation gallery section where visitors could come and watch the quintuplets play twice daily through mesh screens. There were thousands of visitors and it became a veritable "theme-park" where they also sold souvenirs and merchandise of the quintuplets.
They were finally restored to the family's custody where they lived until age 18. Shortly after their reaching that age they went their separate way as described above. Following is two paragraphs from Wikipedia briefly describing their adult lives from 1965.
In 1965, author James Brough wrote a book, in cooperation with the four surviving quintuplets, called We Were Five. Pierre Berton published a biography called The Dionne Years: A Thirties Melodrama in 1977. John Nihmey and Stuart Foxman published 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 next year, in their book Family Secrets, the three remaining sisters alleged they were victims of sexual abuse at the hands of their father, and that a member of the clergy urged them to cope by wearing thick coats. In both We Were Five and Family Secrets, they accused their mother of physical and verbal abuse, described their siblings as envious and cruel, and claimed that they were told the family would have been better off if they had not been born. They reported that their father was a "selfless pig who ate too much" and said he abused the dog in sexual ways. By their report and that of their closest sister, Pauline, their upbringing in the Big House was filled with double messages; their father said repeatedly that they would receive no special treatment and were to think of themselves as equal to his other children, yet in daily life they were treated by their parents as a five-part unit. They were denied privileges the other children received as a matter of course, received a heavier share of the house- and farmwork, and were invariably dressed alike. According to the surviving sisters, any attempt to become independent was prevented by their father when he could; he blamed "outsiders" for their "disloyalty" to the family.
To view a huge gallery of photos from their infancy to adulthood of these girls go to the following website. The photos are thumbnail but can be enlarged by clicking on them.
http://news.webshots.com/album/553769824kbmPVF
I can recall during my life as a youth, hearing of the quintuplets. What I read and heard made it appear that they were extremely happy and living in luxury with gifts and money beyond imagination. I envied them. Little did I realize that my life as a hillbilly farm boy was infinitely happier and more content than theirs ever were.
My earnest prayer is that the two who still live can find peace and happiness for the rest of their days. It is such a shame that their lives were so intruded upon by those who put their own selves ahead of those beautiful girls' happiness.
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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)HI Joel, such a tragedy. This is no information for me. I heard about "The million dollar babies" but only by phrase, not realizing it was refereing to a real family of young girls. Thank you for sharing. Sadly, I learned something new today.Hi Teresa, thanks for commenting. Yes it is really sad that their lives were as unhappy as they were. I didn't know all this until I started the research on them. I heard of them when I was a small boy, used to have a crush on them in my teens, just wishing I could meet them. I read some blogs which said the mother actually had six to begin with but one died and self aborted at about 3 months, I think. But I did not add this in the article because I could find no confirmation form any official article.
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