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The twins fathered 21 children
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It's never really documented how they
conducted themselves in a sexually intimate way
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Chang and Eng Bunker are the original Siamese twins. They were born in
1811 conjoined, and they remained that way throughout their entire lives
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eventually getting married and having children. And this is the
curious case of the most children born to unseparated conjoined twins
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Chang and Eng Banko are known as the first Siamese twins but
of course they're not the first conjoined twins in history
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it's just they were given the name Siamese
twins because they were born in Siam
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which is now called Thailand of course in 1811 and
they became very famous almost an overnight sensation
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A Scottish businessman called Robert
Hunter chance to bond them in 1824
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and thought he would be able to make
much from their unusual condition
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He convinced them to go on tour in the USA,
basically as part of a touring freak show
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and they became household names, and
the name Siamese Twins has endured
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Of course, the technical medical term is conjoined twin. But these guys were famously known as the first Siamese twins They appeared in circuses and
were paraded as an oddity to be stared at and prodded After touring for a number of years they earned enough money to get out of their original contract
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and they settled in Mount Airy in America. They
became US citizens taking the surname bunker
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The twins continued to make public appearances to earn money,
and at one point travelled with the greatest showman, P.T. Barnum
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So there was some criticism of them, especially
when it came to them marrying an American woman
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They always wanted to get married, they'd said. And a lot of people
were quite critical of this, like we didn't want to be marrying
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not just because of their condition, but they didn't want to be
marrying someone who looked like they were of Chinese descent
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The twins married sisters Adelaide and
Sarah Gates, setting up two separate houses
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They would spend three days at a time in each of their
homes. Between them, the twins fathered 21 children
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Chang and Adelaide had 10, Eng and Sarah had 11. When
it comes to intimate matters for conjoined twins
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I've heard there are sometimes a
mechanism where you can almost shut down
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one of the twins, or at least go into a bit of
a torpor to leave the other twin more active
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With Chang and Eng it was never really documented how they conducted themselves in a
sexually intimate way But it is interesting to note that when the wives had their children
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they delivered within maybe only four or five days
apart, which suggests some kind of coordination
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There is a shadow on the brother's history. They became slave
owners and supporters of the Confederates in the Civil War
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Unsurprisingly, this changed the way audiences
viewed them when they went back on tour again
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Towards the end of his fifth days,
Chang sadly suffered a stroke
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which didn't kill him, but did leave him quite
debilitated and requiring the help of Eng
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most of the time to achieve anything on a
daily basis. And then about four years later
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Chang sadly died in his sleep. Eng woke
up and found his brother lying there
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and realised that his time was then limited as
well. And sadly, within just a couple of hours
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Eng too had died at the age of 62. But
they now have thousands of descendants
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Every May, their extended family gathers together to find
out more about their famous great-great-grandfathers
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In 2018, 14 of the descendants went
on a very special trip to Thailand
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as part of the Thai-American relationship,
which is known as the elephant and the eagle
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The twins were xiphopagus which means they were joined by the zyphoid process which is a bit
of cartilage in tissue at the stardom So they did share a liver or the livers were connected
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So today you would probably quite
easily be able to separate the twins
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But back then, in the 1850s or whatever,
it would have been a death sentence
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So they did the right thing in not separating themselves.
And in fact, they didn't want to be separated anyway
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They were born that way. They were used to it. and they were able to
function, have a normal life, an average life, without being separated
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A plaster cast of their bodies
can be viewed in Philadelphia, USA
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Conjoined twins occur once in every 50 to 60,000 births, and in
the main they can be separated, or sadly, they may not survive
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And today, there are around 12 sets of
conjoined twins who haven't been separated
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Chang and Neng were probably the most
studied conjoined twins in history
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They were prodded and probed and tested probably
more than any other, at least for that time
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And the fact that we still use the
term Siamese twin is testament to them
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So I think they definitely deserve their place
in the Guinness World Records Curious Casebook
