This month we feature conjoined twins, Chang & Eng Bunker.
One thing we know for sure about the sexuality of conjoined twins: People who aren't conjoined are fascinated by it. When it was announced that conjoined twins Chang & Eng Bunker, best known as The Siamese Twins, were planning to come to France in 1831, French authorities were so afraid of the effect the men, then twenty, would have on France’s women that they banned their entrance into the country.
One story held that Chang interfered in one of Eng’s pursuits, and that, according to one newspaper, “the brothers would have engaged in a duel, but ‘the parties could not agree on a distance’.” This and other tales were more than likely unfounded, but provided opportunities for public mockery.
In one extreme example, when a woman in Kentucky gave birth to stillborn conjoined twins, she “claimed she had seen numerous representations of the twins in newspaper advertisements around the time she conceived her children, which affected her imagination.”
Their Traphill home is where they shared a bed built for four. Chang and his wife had eleven children; Eng and his wife had ten. In time, the wives began to squabble and eventually two separate households were set up just west of Mount Airy, North Carolina in the community of White Plains – the twins would alternate spending three days at each home. During the American Civil War, Chang's son Christopher and Eng's son Stephen both fought for the Confederacy. Chang and Eng lost part of their property as a result of the war, and were very bitter in their denunciation of the government in consequence. After the war, they again resorted to public exhibitions, but were not very successful. They always maintained a high character for integrity and fair dealing, and were much esteemed by their neighbors. Today their descendants number more than 1500.