Hometown Stresses Its Link to Siamese Twins

This town’s two most famous citizens--Eng and Chang, the original “Siamese twins”--came home, in a manner of speaking, five years ago. But Samut Songkhram is still waiting for the financial windfall from an influx of curious tourists.

Sadly, no one--least of all tourists--seems to give much of a hoot about the twins who toured the world in 19th century freak shows and ended up as naturalized U.S. citizens, never to return to Siam, as Thailand was then known. So Samut Songkhram waits.

“The fact is, most people have never heard of them,” said Thammanoon Kumsubanand, director of planning in the town of salt ponds and shrimp farms about 50 miles southwest of Bangkok, the Thai capital. “And the Thais who come are confused. They’re used to seeing statues for kings and royalty, not freaks, so they don’t know if they’re meant to pray or what.”

The larger-than-life statue of the twins--joined at the chest--was unveiled in 1994, 120 years after their death, in a ceremony presided over by Prime Minister Chuan Leekpai. It was cast in bronze from broken boat propellers donated by fishermen, and built with funds businesspeople raised through contributions, bake sales and charity dinners.

When hardly anyone showed up for several years, Samut Songkhram secured a $150,000 government grant and surrounded the statue with a lovely park that is scheduled to open soon. Somyos Yeamprai, a local official who heads the project, said hopefully: “Eng-Chang is part of our history. I’m sure people . . . want to know more.”

Eng and Chang were born on a houseboat near here in 1811 to ethnic Chinese parents. Much of their early lives is lost to history and wrapped in myth, but the twins are known to have left Siam at the age of 17 on the Sachem, a vessel bound for Boston. The ship’s captain, Abel Coffin, paid the twins’ mother and promised to show them the world.

The first Siamese twins known to have lived into adulthood, Eng and Chang caused a sensation in Boston, where lines of people paid 50 cents each at freak shows for a glimpse of “The United Brothers.” The twins toured New York, Cuba, Canada and Europe, but their show was banned in France on the grounds that the “evil impression” they engendered might harm pregnant women.

By all accounts, Eng and Chang lived remarkably normal lives under the circumstances. They were intelligent and quickly mastered English. They learned to walk, swim and row together. They visited doctors who agreed that separating them would be life-threatening, although such an operation could be performed successfully today.

“I thought Eng and Chang would be the Thai version of the Elephant Man,” said Ekachai Uekrongtham, a Thai who in 1997 produced a stage musical about the twins in Singapore. “But instead I found that the story was a positive, colorful one more about privacy and individuality than anything else.”

The show played to packed audiences, and a reviewer for the South China Morning Post enthused: “ ‘Eng and Chang’ easily beats some so-called professional shows like the rather muffled ‘Sound of Music’ which arrived at [Singapore’s] Lyric Theater last month.”

Eng and Chang eventually accused Coffin, the ship’s captain, of exploiting them, and ended the relationship in 1832. They bought adjoining farms in Traphill, N.C., working the two plots on alternating weeks, and took the surname Bunker from a family who befriended them. In 1843, they married two of Traphill’s most attractive women, sisters Sarah and Adelaide Yates. They fathered at least 21 children between them.

“It wasn’t completely clear how they worked it,” Ken Low, the composer of the Singaporean musical, told the Morning Post, “but one thing we know they did was a sort of game of surrendering their power so one would be in charge and the other would be in a sort of dream, not really participating.”

The twins toured on and off until 1870. By then, Chang had turned to alcohol and fallen ill with chest pains and coughing spells. He died in North Carolina one January morning in 1874, at the age of 62. Eng, a teetotaler seemingly in good health, died three hours later.

Yeamprai, the town official, said Eng and Chang’s great-great-granddaughter visited the statue last year and was moved to tears. She said that when she returned to the United States, she intended to raise funds from other relatives to help build the park.

“So far,” he said, “we haven’t heard anything more from her.”