by Sarah Miller
“There was a terrible tendency”: Brough, We Were Five, 64.
“a tidal wave” and “It is not possible to imagine its force”: Brough, “Dear Quints…”
“the Province’s national resource”: Toronto Evening Telegram, September 2, 1936, quoted in Raymond, 115.
CHAPTER 22
“Government bulletins and other authorities”: Barnard, “Science Designs a Life for the Dionnes.”
“My mother fed me”: Connie Vachon, interviewed in Miracle Babies.
“made super-babies”: De Kruif, 262.
“Rubbish”: William Corbin, “Babes in the Woods,” The American Magazine, September 1934; see also Slesinger, 15.
“Anyone who ever spent”: Blake, “How They Got the Quints in Pictures.”
“I wasn’t especially bright at school”: Newsreel footage of Allan Roy Dafoe in The Dionne Quintuplets.
“Thank God he is not so small”: Leroux diary, April 22, 1935.
“does not really care for the children”: Noël diary, June 27, 1937.
“He was in fact the loneliest man”: George Sinclair, interviewed in The Dionne Quintuplets.
“He may unconsciously have come”: Brough, We Were Five, 54.
“They know his car”: Leroux diary, April 16, 1936.
“I remember Dr. Dafoe”: Annette Dionne, interviewed in Miracle Babies; see also Annette Dionne with Frank Rasky, “Annette Dionne Today,” The Canadian, May 27, 1967.
CHAPTER 23
“One of the supreme satisfactions”: Allan Roy Dafoe,“Latest Methods of Care Available to All Mothers,” Toronto Star, January 29, 1935.
“If ever the question”: Matthews, “Will They Be Radio Stars Tomorrow?”
“If, at the end of eighteen years”: Barnard, “Home or Science?”
“They should never become ‘guinea pigs’ ”: Dafoe in foreword to Blatz, Collected Studies.
“We were weighed, measured, tested, studied”: Brough, We Were Five, 50.
“nearly indistinguishable”: Blatz, “Biological Study,” in Collected Studies, 46.
“any physical or other contact”: Blatz, “Social Development,” in Collected Studies, 4.
“by gesture, touch, or word”: Blatz, “Social Development,” in Collected Studies, 7.
“whose unpredictable behavior delights her sisters”: “The Five Sisters,” Life, January 16, 1939.
“Annette seeks an audience”: Blatz, Social Development,” in Collected Studies, 16.
“happy-go-lucky,” “to give and take on a fifty-fifty basis,” and “the unknown quantity”: Blatz, “Social Development,” in Collected Studies, 16.
“One thing is certain”: Blatz, “Social Development,” in Collected Studies, 16–17.
“artificial”: “Why Do the Quints Differ? A Puzzle for Science,” The Science News-Letter, November 13, 1937.
“Anyone watching them play together”: Horatio Hackett Newman, Multiple Human Births: Twins, Triplets, Quadruplets and Quintuplets (New York: Doubleday, Doran & Co., 1940), 116.
“I was sure I would be able”: Gladys Shultz, “Scientists of a Continent Discuss the Quints’ Future,” Better Homes and Gardens, January 1938.
“is about as poor as it could possibly be made”: Newman, 199.
“Indeed, a wider variety”: Newman, 120.
“Ah”: “Parents Oppose Adler in Separating Quints,” Detroit Times, February 27, 1936, Lucile F. Nobach scrapbook, North Bay Public Library.
“Quintalk”: “The Quintuplets Round Out Their First Three Years,” Life, May 17, 1937.
“apparent retardation”: Blatz, “Mental Growth,” in Collected Studies, 9.
“It’s the most natural thing in the world”: Shultz, “Scientists of a Continent Discuss.”
“backward”: Newman, 114; see also “The Five Sisters,” Life.
“The quintuplets already provide”: Barnard, “Science Designs a Life for the Dionnes.”
“in actual fact…the equivalent”: Raymond, 120.
“the machinery of their pleasantly ordered lives”: Dempsey, “What Will Become of Them?”
“Dionne jail”: “The Five Sisters,” Life.
“It was in no sense uncomfortable”: Brough, We Were Five, 66–67.
“emotional episodes”: Blatz, “Self-Discipline,” in Collected Studies, Table IX, Graph VIa, VIb, VIc.
“non-compliance behavior”: Blatz, “Self-Discipline,” in Collected Studies, Graph III.
CHAPTER 24
“When [Mrs. Dionne] came over”: Raymond, 136.
“The mother and father felt”: Mollie O’Shaughnessy, interviewed in The Dionne Quintuplets.
“If they look like anybody”: Phyllis Griffiths, “Still Bitter,” Des Moines Register, May 29, 1937.
“there was always some dispute”: Ian Parker, “The Dark Side of the Famous Five,” The Independent, November 5, 1995.
“You will listen to me”: Gerald Clark, “Just One Great Big Unhappy Family,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, April 12, 1942.
“greenish mush”: “Dr. Dafoe Answers Parents’ Criticism of Care of Babes,” North Bay Nugget, April 27, 1936.
“The Dionne family…are accustomed to lumberjack meals”: Charles E. Blake, “Dr. Dafoe Makes Answer to Charges of Parents of Dionne Quintuplets,” New Castle News, April 29, 1936.
“Their hair was so long and so heavy”: Doreen Chaput, interviewed in The Dionne Quintuplets.
“I am the Most Unhappy Mother in the World”: Lillian Barker, “I Am the Most Unhappy Mother in the World,” Liberty, October 3, 1936.
“Don’t My Babies Need Me?”: Barker, “Don’t My Babies Need Me?” Modern Romances, September 1936.
“This being cut off from my baby girls”: Oliva Dionne, “Why My Wife and I Are Unhappy,” Liberty, September 26, 1936.
“Even pigs are allowed”: Claire Wallace, “What’s Ahead for the Quints?” Maclean’s, November 15, 1935.
“This baby is fine”: Phyllis Griffiths, “Happiness of Yule for Other Homes Adds to Bitterness in Dionne Hearts,” Indianapolis Star, December 23, 1936.
“Why should I cooperate with them”: Wolfert, “Eternally Drawn Shades.”
“Not for the government”: “No More Babies for Government, Mrs. Dionne Says, Longing for Quintuplets,” Sedalia Democrat, April 30, 1935.
“Does or does not the best interest of these children”: Barnard, “Home or Science?”
“Just visit any orphanage”: Barker, “I Am the Most Unhappy Mother.”
“a kind of emotional vitamin”: Barnard, “Home or Science?”
“They have wealth, they have money”: “And How They Grow,” La Crosse Tribune and Leader-Press, March 1, 1937.
“It is obvious that the quintuplets”: Barnard, “Home or Science?”
“They are so sweet”: Noël diary, June 7, 1937.
“It was too much”: Clark, “Just One Great Big Unhappy Family.”
“We could not help weeping”: Brough, We Were Five, 55.
“I left a piece of myself there”: “Rendons les Dionelles à leur mère.”
“just resigned and walked out”: Letter of Nora Rousselle, July 19, 1938, Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, W. E. Blatz Collection, Box 35.
“I feel certain”: Berton, The Dionne Years, 188.
“Mom could not understand”: Brough, We Were Five, 55.
“The babies will grow away from us”: Williams, “Dollars Flow In but Papa Dionne Still Angry About Famed Quintuplets”; see also Brough, We Were Five, 48.
“Will the five ordinary Dionne children”: Mary Dougherty, “What About the Other Five Dionnes?” Pictorial Review, May 1935.
“To have glory somewhere in the family”: Kathl
een Norris, “Will the Bigger Dionnes Resent the Littler Dionnes?” Arizona Republic, June 30, 1935.
CHAPTER 25
“We had a normal family life”: Ellie Tesher, “The Tragic Saga of the Dionne Quintuplets,” Toronto Star, May 17, 1984.
“My youth ended”: Tom Fennell, “The Forgotten Dionnes,” Maclean’s, November 21, 1994.
“litter”: Berton, The Dionne Years, 70.
“Don’t you think it would be a good idea”: Berton, The Dionne Years, 70.
“They took my father’s pride”: Tesher, “The Tragic Saga of the Dionne Quintuplets.”
“All well and good”: “Rendons les Dionelles à leur mère.”
“buying back Marie”: Barker, “Don’t My Babies Need Me?” Modern Romances, October 1936.
“Nobody would believe what we suffered”: Tesher, “The Tragic Saga of the Dionne Quintuplets.”
“intelligent culture” and “scientific training”: Maria Valverde, “Representing Childhood: The Multiple Fathers of the Dionne Quintuplets,” in Regulating Womanhood: Historical Essays on Marriage, Motherhood, and Sexuality, edited by Carole Smart (London: Routledge, 1991), 134.
“the forgotten five” and “the forgotten six”: Griffiths, “Happiness of Yule for Other Homes.”
“Callander madonna”: Undated clipping in Callander Bay Heritage Museum collection. (https://www.cityofnorthbay.ca/quints/digitize/LOCATION/NHMUS/13120172.jpg [inactive]).
“This one will never go away”: Tesher, The Dionnes, 237.
CHAPTER 26
“dissipated”: “Dr. Dafoe Suspects Outside Interests Seek Gain Control of Dionne Quintet,” North Bay Nugget, April 22, 1938.
“extravagance”: “Probe into Supervision of Quints by DaFoe Asked,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, April 22, 1938.
“schemes to divorce the affections”: “Probe into Supervision of Quints.”
“as Catholic and French children”: Berton, The Dionne Years, 169.
“dream home”: Gregory Clark, “ ‘Dream Home’ for Dionnes May Be Built at Corbeil,” Toronto Star, May 20, 1938.
“Well,…that’s the first time I was given”: “Guardians of Quintet Consent to Reunion of All Dionne Family,” North Bay Nugget, May 20, 1938.
“a new spirit of cooperation”: “Guardians of Quintet Consent to Reunion.”
“outside interests”: “Dr. Dafoe Suspects Outside Interests.”
“That $600,000 bank account”: “Dafoe Planning New Home for Quintuplets,” Detroit Times, April 24, 1938, Lucile F. Nobach scrapbook, North Bay Public Library.
“When the children were poor”: “Dr. Dafoe Suspects Outside Interests.”
“We, the people, are with you!”: Berton, The Dionne Years, 172.
“As with most primitive people”: Edith Johnson, “Have the Dionnes Won or Lost?” unidentified magazine article of May 1938, quoted in Berton, The Dionne Years, 150–151.
“surprisingly little”: Gladys Schultz, “Mrs. Schultz Visits the Quints,” Better Homes and Gardens, February 1938.
“the five little sisters stand”: Clara Savage Littledale, “My Visit to the Quintuplets,” The Parents’ Magazine, January 1937.
“that deadliest scourge of childhood”: “Dionne Quintuplets Get Toxoid Injections to Protect Them from Diphtheria,” Pittsburgh Press, January 8, 1936.
“Today they are five splendid physical specimens”: Dempsey, “What Will Become of Them?”
“the greatest tourist attraction Canada has ever known”: E. C. Phelan, “Dionne Suit May Bring Showdown,” Toronto Globe, July 14, 1939.
“the quintuplets haven’t the stamina”: Dempsey, “What Will Become of Them?”
“The excessive care to protect them from infection”: Sidonie Matsner Gruenberg, “Will ‘Hothouse’ Life Weaken Dionne Quins?” Physical Culture, January 1938.
“Those poor quintuplets”: Barnard, “Home or Science?”
CHAPTER 27
“Cow!”; “Sheep! Horse!” and “Faster!”: “Quints Cry ‘Faster’ New World Unfolds,” Toronto Star, May 22, 1939.
“Pass them, pass them!”: “Chat with King Boast of Yvonne,” North Bay Nugget, May 22, 1939.
“dirty rotten trick”: “Police to Blame for Sly Getaway of Dionne Girls,” North Bay Nugget, May 22, 1939.
“Hello, Monsieur le Judge”: “Chat with King Boast of Yvonne.”
“playing ‘King and Queen’ ”: “Quints Shun Sleep as Train Brings Them to Toronto,” Toronto Globe and Mail, May 22, 1939.
“As though the judge were the King himself” and “neither nervous nor worried”: “Quints Cry ‘Faster.’ ”
“bounced up and down,” “Such great big sighs they gave,” “The quints regard sharing a room,” “But to sleep?” “saucer-eyed and excited,” and “Little Émilie lies there”: “Quints Shun Sleep.”
“the Dionne daughters spent their first night away from home”: “Quints Cry ‘Faster.’ ”
“I don’t know whether the newspaper people will go to bed” and “Now we are in Toronto”: “Quints Shun Sleep.”
“sweet little dresses” and “delightful”: “Marie and Émilie Topple While Rehearsing Their Bow,” Toronto Globe and Mail, May 20, 1939.
“the other Dionne children”: “Quints Cry ‘Faster.’ ”
“Les journalistes!”: Barker, The Dionne Legend, 177.
“The Quints blew kisses”: M. Louise Corriveau, Quints to Queens (New York: Vantage Press, 1976), 40.
“It’s crazy, the doctor’s hat”: Barker, The Dionne Legend, 178.
“began dancing and yelling ‘Voiture, voiture!’ ”: “Quints Cry ‘Faster.’ ”
“the children shrieked”: “Quints Cry ‘Faster.’ ”
“The girls were especially entranced”: Corriveau, 40.
“Now we had a much better idea”: Brough, We Were Five, 85–86.
“On their way to the legislative building” and “the happiest in the entire group”: “Quints Cry ‘Faster.’ ”
Your Majesty: Barker, The Dionne Legend, 173.
“a word of astonishment”: Barker, The Dionne Legend, 174.
“Don’t go away”: Barker, The Dionne Legend, 178.
“the last word in little-girl loveliness”: “ ‘Berries’ Says Dan Dionne of Quint Sisters’ Special,” Toronto Star, May 20, 1939.
“As the children walk”: “Quints Shun Sleep.”
“We’re going to meet the King”: “ ‘Berries’ Says Dan Dionne.”
“they had been told”: “Flirtatious Quint Caused Sovereign to Display Blush,” North Bay Nugget, May 24, 1939.
“Keep your fingers crossed”: Barker, The Dionne Legend, 179.
“La belle Reine”: “Dr. Dafoe Tells About It,” New York Times, May 23, 1939.
“This is Canada’s most famous doctor”: “Quintuplets Kiss Queen at Meeting,” New York Times, May 23, 1939.
“But I was only halfway down”: “Quints Hug and Kiss the ‘Beautiful Lady’; Fascinated by the King,” Toronto Globe and Mail, May 23, 1939.
“came to the royal audience”: “Her Majesty Is Hugged, Kissed by Famous Five,” Toronto Star, May 22, 1939.
“and then took a headlong rush”: “Quints Hug and Kiss the ‘Beautiful Lady.’ ”
“kicked up their heels”: “Five Loveliest Sub-Debs Have ‘Coming-Out’ Party,” Australian Women’s Weekly, June 3, 1939.
“Wherever will I put them all”: “Quints Hug and Kiss the ‘Beautiful Lady.’ ”
“His Majesty stooped over”: “Her Majesty Is Hugged, Kissed.”
“mechanics or gadgets” and “Just like Mr. Ouellette’s buckle!”: Corriveau, 43.
“Kisses are for the Queen”: “Flirtati
ous Quint Caused Sovereign to Display Blush.”
“There was no majesty stuff in that room”: “Quints Home After Big Day,” Des Moines Register, May 23, 1939.
“What a scene it was”: Corriveau, 43.
“You must be proud”: Barker, The Dionne Legend, 181.
CHAPTER 28
Dionne Accuses Dafoe of Libel: “Dionne Accuses Dafoe of Libel,” Toronto Globe, May 27, 1939.
Rural Free Delivery: “N.Y. Club Confers Doctor of Litters Degree on Dafoe,” Chicago Tribune, April 13, 1939.
Dr. A. R. Dafoe—Mass Deliveries: “Dionnes Suing Dr. Dafoe for Libel for Posing as ‘Doctor of Litters,’ ” Winnipeg Tribune, May 26, 1939.
Dr. Dafoe unfair to organized storks: “N.Y. Club Confers Doctor of Litters.”
Matrimonial Slot Machine Co., “Yvonne! Marie! Émilie! Annette! Cécile!” and There are men who just love babies: Newsreel footage in The Dionne Quintuplets.
“Doctor of Litters”: “Club Initiates Dafoe as ‘Doctor of Litters,’ ” Toronto Globe, April 13, 1939.
“Well, do you feel proud of yourself?”: “Quintuplets Born to Farm Wife.”
“And any man can get pretty sick”: Llewellyn Miller, “On the ‘Five of a Kind’ Location,” Hollywood, August 1938.
“nasty remarks” and “to break one’s spirit”: “Being Quintuplets’ Parents No Fun, Says Dr. A. R. Dafoe,” North Bay Nugget, March 6, 1936.
“We are insulted by the affiliation”: “Dionne Files Suit Against Dr. Dafoe,” unidentified newspaper clipping circa May 1939 in “Scrap Book No. 2. Quintuplets,” author’s collection.
“Is it fair that Mr. Dionne should be compelled”: “Dionne Files Suit.”
“the sixth quintuplet”: Merrill Denison, “Infant Industry: The Quintuplets,” Harper’s Magazine, November 1938.
Dionne Suit May Bring Showdown: “Dionne Suit May Bring Showdown,” Toronto Globe, July 14, 1939.
