8. The Twins Toured for the First Two Decades of Their Lives
The Tocci brothers’ parents had them exhibited first in Turin, Italy when they were infants. Doctors in Turin concluded that they would have very short lives, so what did their parents do? Kept exhibiting them. They went on to places like France and Switzerland, where doctors concluded that they would have average life expectancies. Both doctors and the mass public examined them, and pictures of their unique anatomy were often drawn. They regularly toured, throughout Europe until they went to America at approximately the age of 14.
When they traveled to the United States, they made $1000 a week, a living wage by today’s standards but an absolute fortune for someone in the nineteenth century. They were put on exhibition almost every single day for seven hours, usually standing against a chair because they were unable to stand on their own. Headlines labeled them as “the two-headed boy” and “the greatest wonder of nature.” They proved extraordinarily popular with the American media, and they even attracted the attention of strong cultural influencers, including Mark Twain. It is unclear how much attention they garnered from the medical establishment in the United States, but their celebrity probably did attract the attention of doctors and professors throughout the country.
