June and Jennifer Gibbons

Childhood

June and Jennifer were the daughters of Caribbean immigrants Gloria and Aubrey Gibbons. Gloria was a housewife and Aubrey worked as a technician for the Air Force. Shortly after their birth in Barbados, their family moved to Haverfordwest, Wales. The twin sisters were inseparable and their particular high-speed Bajan Creole made it difficult for people to understand them.

As the only black children in the community, they were ostracised at school. This proved traumatic for the twins, eventually causing their school administrators to dismiss them early each day so that they might avoid bullying. Their language became even more idiosyncratic at this time. Soon it was unintelligible to others. Their language, or idioglossia, qualified as an example of cryptophasia, exemplified by the twins' simultaneous actions, which often mirrored each other. Eventually the twins spoke to no one except each other and their younger sister Rose.

When the twins turned 14, a succession of therapists tried unsuccessfully to get them to communicate with others. They were sent to separate boarding schools in an attempt to break their isolation, but the pair became catatonic and entirely withdrawn when parted.

Creative expression

When they were reunited, the two spent several years isolating themselves in their bedroom, engaged in elaborate plays with dolls. They created many plays and stories in a sort of soap opera style, reading some of them aloud on tape as gifts for their sister. Inspired by a pair of gift diaries at Christmas 1979, they began their writing careers. They sent away for a mail order course in creative writing, and each wrote several novels. Set primarily in the United States and particularly in Malibu, California, the stories involve young men and women who exhibit strange and often criminal behaviour.

In June's Pepsi-Cola Addict, the high-school hero was seduced by a teacher, then sent away to a reformatory where a homosexual guard makes a play for him. In Jennifer's The Pugilist, a physician is so eager to save his child's life that he kills the family dog to obtain its heart for a transplant. The dog's spirit lives on in the child and ultimately has its revenge against the father. Jennifer also wrote Discomania, the story of a young woman who discovers that the atmosphere of a local disco incites patrons to insane violence. She followed up with The Taxi-Driver's Son, a radio play called Postman and Postwoman, and several short stories.

Hospitalization

Their novels were published by a self-publishing press called New Horizons, and they made many attempts to sell short stories to magazines, but were unsuccessful. A brief fling with some American boys, the sons of a US Navy serviceman, led nowhere. The girls committed a number of crimes including arson, which led to their being admitted to Broadmoor Hospital, a high-security mental health hospital. There they remained for 14 years. June later blamed this lengthy sentence to their selective muteness: "'Juvenile delinquents get two years in prison... We got 12 years of hell because we didn't speak... We lost hope, really. I wrote a letter to the Queen, asking her to get us out. But we were trapped." Placed on high doses of antipsychotic medications, they found themselves unable to concentrate; Jennifer apparently developed tardive dyskinesia (a neurological disorder resulting in involuntary, repetitive movements). Their medications were apparently adjusted sufficiently to allow them to continue the copious diaries they had begun in 1980, and they were able to join the hospital choir, but they lost most of their interest in creative writing.

The case achieved some notice due to newspaper coverage by The Sunday Times journalist Marjorie Wallace. The British tabloid The Sun gave a brief but accurate account of their story, headlined "Genius Twins Won't Speak" (an apparent reference to their having tested above average intelligence when being considered for Broadmoor Hospital).

The pair were also the subject of the 1986 television drama The Silent Twins, broadcast on BBC Two as part of its Screen Two series, and an Inside Story documentary Silent Twin – Without My Shadow, which aired on BBC One in September 1994.

Jennifer's death

According to Wallace, the girls had a longstanding agreement that if one died, the other must begin to speak and live a normal life. During their stay in the hospital, they began to believe that it was necessary for one of them to die, and after much discussion, Jennifer agreed to be the sacrifice. In March 1993, the twins were transferred from Broadmoor to the more open Caswell Clinic in Bridgend, Wales; on arrival Jennifer could not be roused. She was taken to the hospital where she died soon after of acute myocarditis, a sudden inflammation of the heart. There was no evidence of drugs or poison in her system, and her death remains a mystery. At the inquest, June revealed that Jennifer had been acting strangely for about a day before their release, her speech was slurring, and she said that she was dying. On the trip to Caswell, she had slept in June's lap with her eyes open. On a visit a few days later, Wallace recounted that June "was in a strange mood". She said, "I'm free at last, liberated, and at last Jennifer has given up her life for me".

After Jennifer's death, June gave interviews with Harper's Bazaar and The Guardian. By 2008 she was living quietly and independently, near her parents in West Wales. She was no longer monitored by psychiatric services, was accepted by her community, and sought to put the past behind her. A 2016 interview with her sister Greta revealed that the family was deeply troubled by the girls' incarceration. She blamed Broadmoor for ruining their lives and for neglecting Jennifer's health. She had wanted to file a lawsuit against Broadmoor, but Aubrey and Gloria refused, saying it would not bring Jennifer back.