The Miracle & Tragedy of the Dionne Quintuplets
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Munro, Keith. “Full House: My Life with the Dionnes.” In The Aspirin Age: 1919–1941, edited by Isabel Leighton. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1949.
Newman, Horatio Hackett. Multiple Human Births: Twins, Triplets, Quadruplets and Quintuplets. New York: Doubleday, Doran & Company, Inc., 1940.
Raymond, Jocelyn Moyer. The Nursery World of Dr. Blatz. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991.
Slesinger, Stephen. The Story of the Dionne Quintuplets. Racine, WI: Whitman, 1935.
Soucy, Jean-Yves, with Annette, Cécile, and Yvonne Dionne. Family Secrets: The Controversial and Shocking Story of the Dionne Quintuplets. Toronto: Stoddart, 1996.
Strong-Boag, Veronica. “Intruders in the Nursery.” In Childhood and Family in Canadian History, edited by Joy Parr. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1982.
Tesher, Ellie. The Dionnes. Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 1999.
Tremblay, Claire. Marcheuses Á l’Étoile: Les Soeurs de l’Assomption de la Sainte Vierge en Ontario 1910–1997. Nicolet, Quebec: Éditions S.A.S.V., 1999.
Valverde, Maria. “Representing Childhood: The Multiple Fathers of the Dionne Quintuplets.” In Regulating Womanhood: Historical Essays on Marriage, Motherhood, and Sexuality, edited by Carol Smart. London: Routledge, 1992.
FILMS
The Dionne Quintuplets. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 1978.
Full Circle: The Untold Story of the Dionne Quintuplets. BBC1, 1998.
Miracle Babies: The Story of the Dionne Quintuplets. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 1996.
Newspaper and periodical articles, too numerous to list individually here, may be found in the notes.
Thanks to:
Naomi Balmer-Simpson, Therese Bulszewicz, Laura Colley, John Dufresne, Laura Mabee, Julietta McGovern, Charlotte and Gary Miller, Emily Wood Mitchell, Janice Murphy, Emily Paul, Cornelia Pokrzywa, Barry Torch, Amy Tureen, Anne-Marie Varga, and Heather Vlieg, for help in obtaining books, articles, photographs, and films.
Kathryn Brough and Carole Hébert, for kind permission to quote from works by their late husbands; also Christopher Aguirre, Christa Angelios, Daniel Novack, and Wendy Schmalz, my navigators through the permissions process.
Patricia Carr, North Bay Chamber of Commerce, for granting me access to the Dionne farmhouse, as well as glimpses of the artifacts in the Dionne Quints Museum collection, while both buildings were in transition.
Rachael Cole, for the perfect cover.
Pat Jones, for the first trip to North Bay—and for holding my sandwiches.
Annie Kelley, who knows that “Joan Crawford” has nothing to do with wire hangers.
Lani Pettit, for help with photo identification.
Joshua Pride, for his assistance on August 5, 2018.
Thelma Scaglione, for her recollections of the Leroux family and visits to Quintland.
Natasha Wiatr of Callander Bay Heritage Museum, for making the knowledge and resources in the museum’s collection available—both in person and via email.
EPIGRAPH
“We don’t feel anyone can be fair to both sides”: Ellie Tesher, The Dionnes (Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 1999), 223.
PROLOGUE
“The little girls are here”: Jean-Yves Soucy with Annette, Cécile, and Yvonne Dionne, Family Secrets: The Controversial and Shocking Story of the Dionne Quintuplets (Toronto: Stoddart, 1996), 7.
“Bonsoir, Mom”: Soucy, Family Secrets, 19 (French edition).
“Supper will be ready soon”: Soucy, Family Secrets, 7.
“This side is for our family”: Soucy, Family Secrets, 8.
CHAPTER 1
“Auntie, please hurry”: Frazier Hunt, The Little Doc: The Story of Allan Roy Dafoe, Physician to the Quintuplets (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1939), 11. (Note: “Elzira” in original; altered for continuity.)
“Auntie,…I don’t think,” “Don’t you worry, my dear,” and O God, inspire me in my work: Douilda Legros and Mary-Jeanne Lebel, Administering Angels of the Dionne Quintuplets: A True Story of the Birth of the Dionne Quintuplets (North Bay, Ont.: Northern Pub. Co., 1936), 9. (Note: “Aunty” in original; altered for continuity.)
“weather-beaten”: Lillian Barker, The Dionne Legend: Quintuplets in Captivity (New York, Doubleday, 1951), 46.
“a heart as big as a washtub”: Hunt, The Little Doc, 14.
“Elzire’s pulse is bad”: Barker, The Dionne Legend, 34.
“melted away”: Lillian Barker, “Tells of Offer to Exhibit Quints,” Des Moines Register, September 22, 1935.
“the Little Doc”: Hunt, The Little Doc, 237.
“My wife is very sick”: Hunt, The Little Doc, 3.
“You go on back”: Hunt, The Little Doc, 4.
“A few minutes”: Barker, The Dionne Legend, 35.
“Good God, woman”: Pierre Berton, The Dionne Years: A Thirties Melodrama (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1977), 37.
“My God, there are still more there”: “Midwife ‘Never Too Tired’ to Tell of Dionnes Birth,” Pittsburgh Press, May 27, 1935.
“Gosh!”: Berton, The Dionne Years, 37.
“a little pressure”: Allan Roy Dafoe, “The Dionne Quintuplets,” Journal of the American Medical Association (September 1934), 674.
“Gosh!”: Berton, The Dionne Years, 37.
“unreal and dreamlike”: Dafoe, “The Dionne Quintuplets,” 675.
“We just looked at each other with amazement”: Legros and Lebel, 10.
“angel veils”: Hunt, The Little Doc, 17.
“Auntie, have I twins, this time?”: Legros and Lebel, 11.
“Yes, my dear”: Legros and Lebel, 20.
“Cinq fillettes”: Barker, The Dionne Legend, 38.
“What will I do with all them babies?”: Legros and Lebel, 11.
“My God, what am I going to do”: Legros and Lebel, 20.
“punched”: Ira Wolfert, “Eternally Drawn Shades Shield Dionne Family,” Boston Globe, September 13, 1936.
“As we did not anticipate his return”: Legros and Lebel, 21.
“little mites”: “Provide Hot-Water Incubator to Assist Dionne Quintuplets,” North Bay Nugget, May 30, 1934.
“All we can do”: Hunt, The Little Doc, 21.
“He told her to please herself”: Legros and Lebel, 13.
“However, you can please yourself”: Legros and Lebel, 21.
“Realizing this, near death as I was,” “What do you think of,” and “I don’t know what to think”: Lillian Barker, “ ‘Give Us Your Babies or We’ll Take Their Milk, Government Warned Me,’ ” Des Moines Register, September 15, 1935.
“What will people say”: “Mother Dionne Sees Quintuplets as Divine Miracle,” Scranton Republican, September 3, 1934.
CHAPTER 2
“either a mighty joke” and “Saw something this morning”: Hunt, The Little Doc, 22.
“five little French frogs”: Barker, The Dionne Legend, 41–42.
“Did you know you are the grandfather of five”: Hunt, The Little Doc, 23.
“Oliva Dionne—5F”: “Simple Notation Sufficed to Record Quintuplet Birth,” North Bay Nugget, February 18, 1935.
“How much would it cost”: Hunt, The Little Doc, 24; see also “Even Mother Incredulous When Five Infants Born,” North Bay Nugget, May 27, 1935.
North Bay, May 28th:—Mrs. Oliva Dionne: Hunt, The Little Doc, 25. (Note: Elzire Dionne was twenty-five years old.)
“We couldn’t believe it”: Yvette Boyce, interviewed in Miracle Babies: The Story of the Dionne Quintuplets, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 1996.
“leave ’em alone”: Hunt, The Little Doc, 21.
“Well, do you feel proud of yourself?”: “Quintuplets Born to Farm Wife,” North Bay Nugget, May 28, 1934.
&nbs
p; “The way you talk”: James Brough with Annette, Cécile, Marie, and Yvonne Dionne, We Were Five: The Dionne Quintuplets’ Story (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1963), 15.
“I’m the kind of fellow”: “Quintuplets Born to Farm Wife.”
“He had not slept all night”: Brough, We Were Five, 29.
“I’m so tired I could drop”: Yvonne Leroux diary A, May 28, 1934, Leroux-Davis fonds, Archives of Ontario, York University, microfilm reel 3649. (Note: Nurse Leroux kept two diaries in 1934—one with brief daily notations and another containing more fleshed-out entries. For clarity, I have dubbed these “A” and “B” respectively, though no such designation exists at the Archives of Ontario.)
“Dr says Quintuplets”: Yvonne Leroux diary B, May 28, 1934, Leroux-Davis fonds, Archives of Ontario, York University, microfilm reel 3649.
“Do whatever you can”: Yvonne Leroux, “My Diary of Three Years with the Dionne Quintuplets,” Pittsburgh Press, May 24, 1937.
“To this day I don’t recall a thing”: Leroux, “My Diary of Three Years.”
“no decent dishes, no screens, doors, or cleanliness”: Leroux diary B, May 28, 1934.
“What have I here”: Leroux diary A, May 29, 1934.
“The largest seems to have difficulty”: Leroux diary B, May 28, 1934.
CHAPTER 3
“one or two”: Frazier Hunt, “The Little Doc: For the First Time in History,” Saturday Evening Post, May 14, 1938.
“these marvelous Quintuplets?”: Hunt, The Little Doc, 37.
“There was nothing in the house”: Hunt, The Little Doc, 37.
“And good luck, and God bless ’em all”: Hunt, The Little Doc, 38.
“How they doin’?”: Hunt, The Little Doc, 206.
“hollow-eyed and worn”: Hunt, The Little Doc, 38.
“They’re still alive”: Hunt, The Little Doc, 206–207.
“Bien, très bien”: Hunt, The Little Doc, 207.
“Give them this from the eyedropper”: Hunt, The Little Doc, 209.
“cocktail”: Hunt, The Little Doc, 210.
“Well, these tiny little bits of humanity” and “Babes fought against the exposure”: Leroux diary B, May 29, 1934.
“scrawny, spider-legged, horrible”: Paul and Rhea De Kruif, Why Keep Them Alive? (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1936), 287.
“Like rats”: Walter Winchell, “Quintuplets? Shucks!” Liberty, April 27, 1935, 41.
“Green’s come out here,” “frantic with worry,” and “The thought of exhibiting the babies”: Barker, “Tells of Offer to Exhibit Quints.”
“We knocked on the door,” “He says, ‘Get out,’ ” “We thought we had him,” “Will you fellas please go away,” “He couldn’t get the car started,” and When Mr. Dionne heard the news: Berton, The Dionne Years, 52.
“Dig up an old-fashioned baby incubator”: Hunt, The Little Doc, 213–214.
“gave him all the leads” and “Sure you haven’t got one tucked away”: Hunt, The Little Doc, 214.
“an old-timer” and “Get it downstairs”: Hunt, The Little Doc, 215.
CHAPTER 4
“the telltale white lines”: Hunt, The Little Doc, 217.
“Red Riding Hood dresses”: Dafoe, “The Dionne Quintuplets,” 676.
“coaxed along” and “Very thin”: Leroux diary B, May 30, 1934.
“efficiently, punctually, and quietly”: Louise de Kiriline, “Living Five Years in Twelve Months,” Manitowoc Herald Times, July 15, 1935.
“Well, we will just have to keep up”: Leroux diary B, May 30, 1934.
“turn any question over and over in his mind”: Brough, We Were Five, 38.
“As long as he lived”: Barker, The Dionne Legend, 55.
Make what you can, while you can: see Brough, We Were Five, 38; Hunt, The Little Doc, 218, 260; Berton, The Dionne Years, 60; Barker, The Dionne Legend, 57; Lillian Barker, “The Parents of the Quints Are Victims of a Smear Press,” America, October 18, 1941.
Country Doctor Battling to Keep Quintuplets Alive: Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, May 30, 1934.
Progress of Quintuplets Amazes Medical World: Toronto Globe, May 30, 1934.
“no one could have been more poorly designed”: Pierre Berton, “The Quints: Fabulous Flimflam Years,” Detroit Free Press, September 17, 1978.
“a funny-looking box” and “My name’s Charlie Blake”: Hunt, The Little Doc, 220.
“Those babies don’t know”: William Engle, “The Race to Save the Quints,” American Weekly, May 9, 1948.
CHAPTER 5
“with particular thought to what might be tempting,” “the other little Dionnes,” and “a pretty little nurse”: “Star Sends Assistance to Mother and Five Babes,” Toronto Star, May 31, 1934.
“pathetically grateful” and “He was dressed,” : Keith Munro, “Full House: My Life with the Dionnes,” in The Aspirin Age: 1919–1941, edited by Isabel Leighton (New York: Simon & Schuster 1949), 299.
“The Little Doc was a newspaperman’s dream,” “I don’t see how they can live,” and “Our first impression of the place”: Munro, 300.
“Do you want to see the babies?” and “We piled into the house”: Munro, 301.
“She rolled back the white coverlet”: “Five Baby Girl Sisters Smash 500-Year Record,” Toronto Star, May 31, 1934.
“There was something terribly exciting”: Munro, 301.
“the Quintuplet Disease”: Charles E. Blake, “How They Got the Quints in Pictures,” Photoplay, March 1936.
“It was like taking nature pictures”: Fred Davis, letter of July 3, 1935, Leroux-Davis fonds, Archives of Ontario, microfilm reel 3649.
“Shattered glass flew all around”: Munro, 301.
“The doctor even made some little joke about it”: Munro, 302.
“Didn’t you get the shock of your life”: “Five Baby Girl Sisters.”
CHAPTER 6
“very colorful, very adept”: Berton, The Dionne Years, 58.
“luxurious private ward”: Brough, We Were Five, 37.
“Ivan had a cheque made out”: Berton, The Dionne Years, 59.
“the physicians in charge of the quintuplets”: Charles Robert Morgan, “What Is the Menace Hanging over the Dionne Quintuplets?” True Detective, January 1936.
“They were talking back and forth in rapid French”: Luis Kutner, interviewed in The Dionne Quintuplets, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 1978.
“Babes holding their own and that’s all”: Leroux diary B, May 31, 1934.
“Praying every minute”: Leroux diary A, May 31, 1934.
CHAPTER 7
“I don’t know what this town did”: Hellen Allyn, “Father of Five Babies, Doctor Split over World’s Fair Offer,” Pittsburgh Press, June 2, 1934.
“a constant fight”: Allan Roy Dafoe, “Care to Prevent Infection Highlight of Babies’ Care,” Toronto Star, January 23, 1935.
“Newshawks”: “Fear One of Quintuplets Is Near Death,” Toronto Star, June 2, 1934.
“We wanted some more shots of Papa Dionne”: Ross Beesley, interviewed in The Dionne Quintuplets.
“Our little world was topsy-turvy”: Brough, We Were Five, 14–15.
“Father of Five Babies, Doctor Split over World’s Fair Offer”: Allyn, “Father of Five Babies, Doctor Split.”
“Told of the contract Dionne has signed”: “Oliva Dionne Signs Handsome Contract to Exhibit Family at Chicago,” North Bay Nugget, June 1, 1934; see also “Weakest of Babies Improves as First Trying Week Passes,” North Bay Nugget, June 4, 1934.
“preposterous”: “Quintuplets’ Father to Get $100 a Week While All Live,” Toronto Star, June 1, 1934.
“As long as I am boss”: Helen Allyn, “Press Reporter Flies to Ontari
o and Tells How Five Babies Gain in Fight for Life,” Pittsburgh Press, June 1, 1934.
“Public opinion wouldn’t stand for it”: “Doctor Vetoes Plan to Show ‘Quints’ at Fair,” Chicago Tribune, June 1, 1934.
Father Silent About Plans to Show Babes: “Father Silent About Plans to Show Babes,” Muscatine Journal and News Tribune, June 1, 1934.
“still in a daze” and “Who wouldn’t be worried”: Allyn, “Father of Five Babies, Doctor Split.”
“Nothing doing”: “Fear One of Quintuplets Is Near Death”; “Quintuplets’ Mother Can’t Get Excited; ‘Babies Nothing New to Me,’ She Insists,” Pittsburgh Press, June 3, 1934.
“I will never go to the Chicago fair”: “Incubator Sent by Star Shelters 4 of Quintuplets,” Toronto Star, June 4, 1934.
“he might have been filling a fountain pen”: De Kruif, 274.
“Doctor, if you do that it will kill them”: Hunt, The Little Doc, 225.
“I think they deserve a little rum for that”: Munro, 306.
“What a job”: Leroux diary A, June 1, 1934.
“the faint dawn of something”: Fred Davis, letter of July 3, 1935.
“Living had become a habit”: Munro, 309.
“At that moment the world’s greatest ‘no’ man was born” and “The next morning when we arrived”: Munro, 302.
“He looked us right in the eye”: Munro, 303.
“They are alive—that’s about all I can say”: “Fear One of Quintuplets Is Near Death”; see also Hunt, The Little Doc, 237.
“What had merely been a mildly sensational story”: Fred Davis, letter of July 3, 1935.
CHAPTER 8