In 1934, the government snatched the world’s first surviving quintuplets from their mother’s arms.
Officials claimed they were saving them from being exploited. But they caged them like animals and made millions off of them instead.
It was not [a] human thing that happened to us, and we don’t want it to happen again with more other children.
In a one-and-a-half-story clapboard farmhouse in Corbeil, Canada, Elzire Dionne, a mother of six, pressed her rosary beads to her heart as she prayed.
She was stricken with pain, as her seventh unborn child, signalled they wanted to be free — nearly two months before they were expected.
Still, Elzire instructed her aunt Legros and a midwife to not call a doctor under any circumstances.
But they could not ignore her weak pulse. So they asked Elzire’s husband, Oliva, to fetch Dr. Dafoe — who lived less than three miles away.
Not long after, aunt Legros and the midwife had no choice but to help Elzire give birth without the doctor’s help
As they held up her new baby girl, their eyes grew wide with terror rather than excitement.
Her torso perfectly fit within a single palm. Her skin was thin, tender, and bruise-coloured. And her arms were the size of a chalk stick.
Even worse, she wasn’t breathing.
To keep her alive, Aunt Legros and the midwife quickly rubbed her back and chest and blew into her tiny mouth before giving her sips of water.
Within minutes, they had to act fast again. Elizire’s pain returned.
To their surprise, out came another baby girl who was smaller than the first.
Before they could congratulate Elzire on the birth of her twins, out came a third who was even smaller than the second.
By then, Dr. Dafoe had finally arrived.
The timing couldn’t have been better. Minutes later, Elzire gave birth to not one, but two more baby girls.
She named them Yvonne, Annette, Cecile, Emilie, and Marie.
The biggest weighed 3 pounds, 4 ounces, and the smallest weighed a pound less.
Together, they totalled 13 pounds, 6 ounces.
It was the second time that Dr. Dafoe witnessed such a miracle.
Several years before, he delivered a set of quadruplets. But sadly, all four were dead within a week.
“All we can do is keep them warm and quiet,” Dr. Dafoe told the midwife. He didn’t think what he described as little mites would survive.
News of the miraculous quintuplets spread quickly.
Six hours after their birth, a reporter and a photographer from the North Bay Nugget arrived at the farmhouse to see for themselves.
They arranged each newborn on the bed beside Elzire for a photo. They could hardly tell she was on the verge of death only a few hours before.
Meanwhile, Dr. Dafoe couldn’t stop thinking about the quintuplets.
He thought they should at least have a fighting chance to survive and enlisted help from the Red Cross.
By the end of the day, they sent Yvonne Leroux, a nurse who lived two doors down from the Dionnes, to care for the newborns.
“Do whatever you can,” Dr. Dafoe advised. “Try to keep them alive.”
Yvonne sat up all night long, caring for them.
The newborns were acutely sensitive to temperature. Too cold, and they would turn blue around the nostrils. Too hot, and they would flush and struggle to breathe.
Still, Yvonne was one of two people who believed they would make it. The other was their father, who feared for their survival as much as their death.
“How will I support ten children?” he repeatedly asked himself.
He wasn’t receiving any help from the government, and there was still a $3,000 mortgage on the farm.
All he could do was pray for an answer.
Fortunately, he got one — just over 24-hours later.
A promoter by the name of Ivan Spear tracked Oliva down to make a proposal:
Display the quintuplets at the Chicago’s World Fair for a hefty amount of money and expert medical care.
As Oliva weighed his moral and financial obligations, other proposals started rolling in.
Ripley’s Believe It or Not wanted to add the quintuplets to its famous collection of human anomalies.
And a nightclub owner wanted to display them with their mother for no less than $500 a week.
After Oliva discussed the opportunities with his priest and now business manager, he signed a deal with Ivan and his partners.
But he soon regretted his decision.
Ivan wasted no time in promoting the quintuplets' upcoming appearance at the Chicago World’s Fair.
The media flocked to the story and painted Oliva as a father who saw his children as cash crops and willingly handed them to greedy showmen.
Oliva told Ivan he wanted out, but it was too late.
“You are signed to a legal document,” he reminded him.
The following week, the Ministry of the Attorney General came up with a plan.
If the Dionnes signed over custody of the quintuplets to the Red Cross, Ivan could no longer take them.
The Red Cross would build a private and fully-staffed hospital across from the Dionne farmhouse, and look after the quintuplets for two years.
They would also form a board of guardians: William Alderson from the Red Cross, Ken Morrison, a local merchant, Dr. Dafoe, and Olivier Dionne, the quintuplets' grandfather.
The Dionnes reluctantly signed and vowed to tell their daughters they placed their welfare above every other consideration.
As the hospital was being built, the rest of the world fell in love with the quintuplets.
They celebrated each time they heard even the tiniest new detail about them — from being bathed with olive oil to biting their nurse’s fingernails.
To them, their survival meant hope for the future in the face of the Great Depression.
As for businesses, it meant even more: a lucrative opportunity to get back on their feet. But first, they needed to open their own chequebooks.
For thousands of dollars, some were given the right to photograph and film or feature the quintuplets in advertisements — including Lysol, Carnation Milk, Palmolive, and other big names.
The quintuplets' board of guardians handled all of the money and placed it in a trust fund. They predicted that each one would become a millionaire by their 21st birthday.
Four months after their birth, the quintuplets moved into the hospital.
It was a bungalow-style building with a row of six tall southern windows that illuminated the apple-green walls and Ivory trim.
On the outside were two woven wire fences topped with barbed wire to ensure the quintuplets’ privacy.
But it wasn’t enough to keep the tourists away.
They came in hundreds and parked along the fence to peer through the wire.
Eventually, Dr. Dafoe stopped turning them away and allowed them to visit.
They could now watch the babies through a window in the hall — as long as they promised to not make a sound. Still, they screamed with joy from watching them make even the slightest movement.
When the babies noticed, they became agitated — so much that they started to lose weight.
Concerned, Dr. Dafoe displayed the babies on the verandah instead.
The nurses were instructed to take out one at a time and hold them up for the crowd to see. Each time, they went wild — making it more difficult for the babies to ignore.
On weekdays, there were thousands of tourists. On Sundays, there were close to ten thousand.
The sight of the hospital was a wake up call to the Dionnes.
They had no idea how they could afford to care for their daughters in the same way when they returned home.
But once again, a promoter from Chicago came to their rescue.
A man by the name of Max Halperin offered them $1,700 a week to simply thank an audience for watching a film on their daughters.
At first, they hesitated but eventually agreed.
Many were mortified — especially the government.
“It’s disgusting, revolting, and cheap,” Mitchell Hepburn, the Premiere of Ontario, told the press.
The Dionnes insisted they only did it for their daughters’ welfare. But Premiere Hepburn was not convinced and vowed to protect them himself.
A month later, a bill was passed that made the quintuplets special wards of His Majesty the King until their 18th birthday.
In other words, the government was seizing custody of them without their parents’ consent.
“These children are our own royal family,” David Croll, the Minister of Public Welfare, argued. “We want to make it possible for them to lead normal lives.”
The controversy fueled the tourist’s interest in the quintuplets even more.
Thousands now came by the hour, and the quintuplets’ guardians welcomed them with open arms. Many applauded their decision, but others disagreed.
“These children are the treasures of the world,” Judge Valin, the quintuplets' newest guardian, proclaimed. “Why should they not be seen?”
“It can be of no advantage to the babies’ mental development to be shown off like baby bears in a zoo,” one of the quintuplets' former nurses argued.
Dr. Blatz, a child psychologist, came up with a solution: a playground surrounded by a U-shaped observatory.
It would have a five feet wide hallway, lined with windows facing the playground. Floor coverings of cork and felt would muffle the sound of footsteps.
Screens of white mesh covering the glass would hide anyone’s presence.
A year later, the observatory, dubbed Quintland, opened its doors to the public. Tourists could now watch the quintuplets in secret three times a day.
They could also purchase hot dogs or souvenirs from the many shops outside. Two of them belonged to Oliva.
The only difference between what they were doing and what the Chicago World’s Fair proposed was that there was no admission fee.
Still, the government was raking in millions from their new tourist attraction that became more popular than Niagra Falls.
Close to three million tourists brought in $326 million US dollars in revenue annually. Some of the money came from the government charging tourists inflated gas prices.
“The quintuplets were the province’s national resource and the community’s gold mine,” one newspaper reported.
Eventually, Oliva became suspicious.
He suspected that his daughters' trust fund — which he and Elzire could not touch — was being mishandled by the board of guardians.
So he urged the attorney general of Ontario to look into their finances.
Fearful that he would discover the truth, the guardians gave in to his demands to have more control over how his daughters were raised.
They also offered to build him and Elzire their dream home: a Georgian yellow-brick mansion with 19 rooms and two garages.
Olivia agreed, but he did not stop fighting to bring them back home.
After threatening Dr. Dafoe with a lawsuit, he cornered him into resigning from his position and admitting the quintuplets should return home.
Like the others, he did not want Oliva to know how much money he made off his daughters.
When the quintuplets were nine-years-old, they were finally brought home. But it wasn’t a happy reunion. Everything they did was never good enough in their mother’s eyes.
“Brat. Stupid. Dirty pig,” Elzire would say as she swiftly backhanded her daughters. “If I raised you, you would be normal, like the others.”
It was just the beginning of being ab___d — mentally and physically — by their own blood. In the years that followed, Oliva became more of a promoter than a father.
He allowed tourists to watch the quintuplets from inside their mansion, even when they were sleeping. He also made them perform private concerts in their basement and attend several public appearances.
Even worse, he allegedly se_____y ab___d them.
When the quintuplets confided in their school chaplain, he merely told them to continue to love their father and to wear a thick coat when alone.
When the quintuplets' left home, tragedy followed.
At 20-years-old, Emilie unexpectedly passed away from epilepsy. Oliva and Elzire kept it a secret for years — for fear that it would ruin their reputation.
At her funeral, the quintuplets’ were forced to pose beside her open casket as they grieved. If they refused, photographers reminded them they were still under contract.
A year later, the quintuplets were finally given access to their trust fund. They weren’t even told it existed until that very day. Each of them received $1.3 million US dollars.
With their newfound fortune, they moved on with their lives and some even married and had children.
But 15 years later, tragedy struck again.
Marie was found unconscious in her bed. An empty bowl of cereal and several bottles of medication stood on her nightstand. Some speculate that she committed su_____e by ODing.
Eventually, the married sisters got divorced. They now only had each other to rely on — emotionally and financially — and moved in together.
They barely got by after pooling their three pensions that totalled $850 US dollars a month.
Cecile’s son, Bertrand, could not sit back and watch. He had a hunch that they were kept in the dark about how much money belonged to them.
“I had a feeling they were robbed,” he explained after launching an investigation. What he discovered sickened him and the rest of the world.
Nearly everyone who was supposed to care for his mother and aunts used their trust fund as their piggy bank.
Each time a government official travelled to review their accounting, they charged every single expense to the trust fund instead of their own department.
Dr. Dafoe and Dr. Blatz also charged many of their expenses to the trust fund — from travel fare to camera equipment and phone bills.
Even worse, Oliva was just as guilty. He took out almost half a million dollars a year without ever providing receipts to justify his expenses.
To cover their crimes, the minister of public welfare secretly burned three years worth of essential documents. Still, the government claimed they were under no legal obligation to compensate the Dionnes for their actions.
It wasn’t until the Dionnes spoke with the New York Times that they changed their mind.
“They stole our souls,” Yvonne told them. “And they’re still doing it.”
Within days, the government offered the Dionnes $2 million. They turned it down and asked for $4 million instead. The government accepted but never apologized.
Over the next six years, tragedy struck yet again. Yvonne left Annette and Cecile after passing away from cancer.
Bertrand left too. He emptied Cecile’s bank account and ran off with all of her money, leaving her to rot in a government-assisted living facility.
At 86-years-old, Annette and Cecile are still alive and have told the media that they still try to keep their head up high.
This is the story of how the world’s first surviving quintuplets were exploited for millions and left penniless by the government and their families.