In the year 1715, a great calamity befell the residents of Barking village, Essex. A young woman named Sarah Smith went into labour and, to the shock of the midwife, gave birth to: “A monster that had a body like to a dolphin with scales thereon, it had no legs but a pair of great claws, tallon’d like two hands. It had six heads and but one neck; one was like the face of a man with eyes, nose and mouth to it, the second like the face of a cammell, and its ears crop’d, two other faces like dragons with spiked tongues hanging out of their mouths, another like an eagle’s head with a beak and the last seeming to be like a calves head.” 1 The ‘monster’ didn’t survive and nor did its mother. Afterwards, the villagers decided that the creature was a divine curse on Mrs Smith who was locally known for her profane living, cursing and swearing. “As she lived a monster, so she died of a monster,” declared a local priest.

	Villagers decided the creature was a divine curse on Mrs Smith, who was known for her profane living

According to modern medicine, the monster child of Barking, with its several heads, clawed feet and dolphin-like body, could not possibly have existed and yet there is evidence that Sarah Smith (née Symons) was a real person. What then can explain this strange birth? The answer may lie in a number of similar reports that are to be found in contemporary medical documents and magazines. These describe a phenomenon that is usually referred to as being a ‘monstrous birth’. For example, on 22 October 1670 Dr William Durston witnessed a stillbirth that had “two heads, and two necks, as also the eyes, mouths and ears; four arms with hands, and as many leggs and feet. There was but one trunk but two backbones and from the shoulders down to the bottom of the loins they were not distinct but cemented and concorporated”. 2

The above description, with its mention of many heads, limbs and facial features, shows a basic similarity to the ‘monster’ produced by Sarah Smith. However, Dr Durston’s medical training was able to inform him that he was witnessing, not a monster, but an example of conjoined (or Siamese) twins. It seems very likely that Sarah Smith’s birth was also conjoined twins, the description of which became somewhat more elaborate in the hands of the local clergy who added the extra heads, claws, etc.

The rarity of conjoined twins (only around 1 in 200,000 births) means that the Barking clergy would never have seen such a thing before. Certainly, they were new to the midwife in charge of the birth; she had to be forced back into the delivery room on pain of death. Naturally, they concluded they were dealing with a supernatural event and so turned to the Heavens for an answer.

The rarity of conjoined twins means that they have always been something of a fascination to laymen and doctors alike. In the mid-18th century, the doctor William Smellie recounts the case of some Welsh conjoined twins that “lived so long till they could talk to each other; which they did twinning where one conjoined twin fails to develop fully. 5

Society only became familiar with conjoined twins in the 19th century when several examples were exhibited as ‘freaks’ in travelling circuses. The most famous of these were Chang and Eng Bunker, the original ‘Siamese twins’, who were born in Siam in 1811 and toured extensively with Barnum’s Circus in the 1840s. 6 By the time of their death, in 1874, the world was perfectly aware of the phenomenon of conjoined twins, although even today it continues to fascinate the medical establishment and media alike.