June and Jennifer Gibbons

Early life

June and Jennifer were born to Caribbean immigrants Gloria and Aubrey Gibbons, who had moved from Barbados to the United Kingdom as part of the Windrush generation. Their father worked as a technician for the Royal Air Force and was deployed in Aden, Yemen, where the twins were born. The family later relocated to England and then to Haverfordwest, Wales, in 1974.

The twins developed a sped-up Bajan Creole that made them difficult to understand; June later stated they had a speech impediment and that nobody understood them, so they stopped talking. Ostracised at school, they were dismissed early each day to avoid bullying. Their language became unintelligible to others, often described as cryptophasia, though June disputed this, saying they were speaking English with a severe speech impediment.

Creative expression

After reuniting, the twins isolated themselves in their bedroom, creating elaborate plays with dolls and recording stories on tape for their sister Rose. Inspired by gift diaries in 1979, they began writing, taking a mail-order creative writing course and producing diaries, stories, poems, and novels set mainly in Malibu, California. June wrote The Pepsi-Cola Addict, about a high-school hero seduced by a teacher and sent to a reformatory; it was published by a vanity press using their unemployment benefits and later republished in 2022 and 2023. Jennifer wrote The Pugilist, in which a physician kills the family dog for a heart transplant, and Discomania, about a disco inciting insane violence.

Discomania was published posthumously in 2026. June also wrote The Taxi-Driver's Son and a radio play, Postman and Postwoman. June Gibbons is considered an outsider writer.

Jennifer's death

The twins had an agreement that if one died, the other would speak and live normally. During their hospital stay, they believed one must die, and Jennifer agreed to sacrifice herself. In March 1993, they were transferred from Broadmoor to Caswell Clinic in Bridgend, Wales. Jennifer could not be roused on arrival and died soon after of acute myocarditis; no drugs or poison were found.

At the inquest, June said Jennifer had acted strangely the day before, with slurred speech and saying she was dying. June later stated she was free and that Jennifer had given up her life for her. Jennifer was interred in St Martin's Cemetery, Haverfordwest. After Jennifer's death, June gave interviews and by 2008 lived quietly near her parents in West Wales, no longer monitored by psychiatric services.

In the media

The twins were the subject of the 1986 BBC2 television drama The Silent Twins and the 1994 BBC1 documentary Silent Twin – Without My Shadow. A play based on Marjorie Wallace's book, Speechless, debuted in London in 2011. The American poet Lucie Brock-Broido wrote a poem about them, 'Elective Mutes', in her 1988 book The Hunger. Their story inspired the Manic Street Preachers song 'Tsunami' (1998).

Agnieszka Smoczyńska directed the 2022 film The Silent Twins, starring Letitia Wright and Tamara Lawrance. Luke Haines' 2001 album includes a song called 'Discomania'. Angeline Morrison's 2022 album features a song about the twins. A 2023 BBC podcast, June: Voice of a Silent Twin, included an extensive interview with June.

Did You Know?

• The twins had three other siblings: Greta (born 1957), David (born 1959), and Rosie (born 1967).
• June wrote a letter to the Home Office and to the Queen asking for a pardon, but said they were trapped.