The Silent Twins: the true story behind new film

A film about real-life twins who spoke to no one but each other is fascinating UK cinema-goers after debuting at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year.

The Silent Twins tells the story of black sisters June and Jennifer Gibbons, who stopped communicating with the outside world after facing racism and bullying. The film, released in the UK on Friday, “shines a light on their mysterious lives”, said The Sunday Times – although questions remain about the death of one of the twins at the age of just 29.

Bullied and isolated

The Gibbons sisters were born in 1963 in Yemen to Barbadian parents. Their father worked for the RAF and the family later lived on bases in Coventry, Yorkshire, Devon and then the Welsh town of Haverfordwest.

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As the only black family in the Pembrokeshire town, they endured “relentless bullying at school” and “isolation from the community”, said Glamour. In response, the twins “gradually rejected communication from everyone around them except each other”, and “even then, they would only speak to each other in private”, the magazine added.

The duo, who had three siblings, developed “their own secret language, a mixture of English and Barbadian slang speeded up so as to be unintelligible to anyone else”, said The Sunday Times.

They also “both moved in sort of synchronicity”, Marjorie Wallace, author of the 1986 book The Silent Twins, told NPR in 2015.

According to the Times, “teacher upon teacher, institution after institution gave up on them”, and they left school at 16 “with barely a qualification between them”. They had a “a rich inner life”, however, and wrote plays and novels.

But they were “also deeply troubled”, the paper added. The sisters began experimenting with alcohol, drugs and boys, and in 1981, were arrested and held on remand for petty theft, vandalism and arson. The following year they were sent to Broadmoor high-security psychiatric hospital in Berkshire, where they remained until 1993.

Integration back into society

The authorities hoped to separate the twins in custody and “help them integrate back into society”, said Glamour, but the plan “backfired, and the two were closer than ever before”.

They became desperate when a doctor told them that they would be in Broadmoor for decades. “I wrote a letter to the Home Office,” June told The New Yorker in 2000. “I wrote a letter to the Queen, asking her to pardon us, to get us out. But we were trapped.”

In 1993, the twins were transferred to a lower-security clinic in Wales, but upon arrival, Jennifer was found unresponsive. She was later pronounced dead. The cause was recorded as acute myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle most commonly caused by an infection in the body.

“Staff said that in the weeks beforehand, Jennifer was withdrawn, had barely eaten and was sick several times the day before she died,” The Sunday Times reported.

According to Wallace, the journalist who first shared the twins’ story with the world, Jennifer had predicted her death.

Wallace had been visiting the twins since they were first jailed in the early 1980s. Writing for The Sunday Times, she recalled how just before they were due to be transferred from Broadmoor, Jennifer had stated: “I’m going to die.” After Wallace objected that she was only 29, Jennifer reportedly replied: “ “No. I know, we’ve decided.”

Wallace wrote that “I noticed June’s consenting nod and I knew this decision was the tragic denouement of their lifelong pact”.

Following her sister’s death, June suddenly began speaking to everyone “as if she had been doing so her whole life”, said Glamour. She was released from the hospital a year later. She now lives a relatively normal, private life, but visits her sister’s grave every week.

“I was born a twin, and I’ll die a twin,” she told The New Yorker. “That’s the way it goes.”