miracle and tragedy of the dionne quintuplets

“Costly attention for which we had no money to pay.” Giving up custody of the quints was an impossible decision that would divide the family forever. “To me, they were five little human flowers - delicate hothouse flowers that required the most constant and careful and expert attention,” Elzire Dionne said at the time. Miller’s retelling, with primary sources and many direct quotes, sympathetically portrays the complicated and precarious situation faced by both the Dionnes and the medical community rallying to save the quintuplets.

Oliva and Elzire, struggling with financial burdens and legal troubles from a desperate agreement Oliva had made to show the quintuplets at the Chicago World’s Fair, had signed over custody of their daughters to the Red Cross.

When they were just 4 months old, Dafoe arranged for the Dionne quintuplets to be moved from their family home to a hospital across the road that had been built specially for them by the Red Cross. But live they did, and as news spread of the five babies’ astounding survival, the public’s longing for updates and photos grew. Dafoe, the quints ranged in size from a tiny 1.7 pounds to a still tiny 3.4 pounds. Delivered with help from two midwives and a nearby country doctor named A. The book begins on May 28, 1934, when Elzire Dionne of Corbiel, Ontario, was in labor with what she expected would be her and her husband, Oliva’s, fifth child, but which turned out to be their fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth babies. As Sarah Miller painstakingly describes in THE MIRACLE AND TRAGEDY OF THE DIONNE QUINTUPLETS (Schwartz & Wade, 320 pp., $17.99 ages 12 and up), they were individuals with distinct personalities, emotions and dreams who - through a series of mostly good intentions gone wrong - ended up exploited for popular culture.

They were a miracle, an escape, a yearned-for fairy tale in a time when people faced the harsh realities of the Great Depression.īut Yvonne, Annette, Cécile, Émilie and Marie Dionne - known to the world as “the quints” - were also real children. Once upon a time, five identical little girls in pretty matching dresses with bobbing brown ringlets played for an audience who watched them through windows.

Miracle and tragedy of the dionne quintuplets