The Man With Two Faces
By James Donahue
Edward Mordake has been an urban legend ever since English fiction writer Charles Lotin Hildreth included the name among a list of “human freaks” in a story published in the Boston Post in 1895. The story claimed Mordake was a man cursed with the distorted face of the portion of a conjoined twin on the back of his head.
Hildreth never claimed that his story was anything more than raw fiction. In fact Edward Mordake’s story was included with a list of alleged freaks that included a woman with the tail of a fish, a man with the body of a spider, and a man who was half-crab. The newspapers of that day, however, liked to copy each other’s human interest stories and post them as true accounts in an attempt to gain reader interest. Thus historians have had a difficult time tracking true historical events from news clippings of that period.
As the story was told, however, Mordake was born of an English peerage in the 19th Century. Because he was a freak the man lived a short and secluded life, in constant conflict with his “parasitic twin” which they said was female. How they determined the sex of that part of his twin is difficult to fathom. The face had eyes and a mouth that drooled. And according to Mordake, it spent their nights mocking the man. Thus it apparently offered some form of speech known only to Mordake.
Hildreth wrote that the face in back of Mordake’s head had eyes but was unable to see. It was unable to eat or speak aloud, thus it was only a part of what began as a conjoined twin. It was said the face sneered when Mordake was expressing happiness, and it smiled when Mordake was sad. Mordake begged doctors to try to remove the face because he said it whispered disturbing things to him in the night. The doctors of that time were unwilling to attempt such a surgery.
Mordake thus committed suicide when he was 23.
The Hildreth article and his story about Mordake might have disappeared in the dust of time had it not been for a second report published the following year in Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine, a medical encyclopedia co-authored by Doctors George M. Gould and David L. Pyle. The encyclopedia appeared to have copied Hildreth’s article without giving Hildreth credit. The doctors described the basic morphology of Mordake's condition, suggesting it was a true story. But they provided no medical diagnosis for the rare deformity.
Gould and Pyle wrote: “The female face was a mere mask, ‘occupying only a small portion of the posterior part of the skull, yet exhibiting every sign of intelligence, of a malignant sort, however.’ It would be seen to smile and sneer while Mordake was weeping. The eyes would follow the movements of the spectator, and the lips ‘would gibber without ceasing.’”
Mordake’s existence seems to have lived on in urban legend. Photographs of a man with two heads have appeared as has the image of a strange dual skull. And there has been music groups, songs, films and even novels that have made a legend of the man with two faces. All of this has grown from Hildreth’s original story.
By James Donahue
Edward Mordake has been an urban legend ever since English fiction writer Charles Lotin Hildreth included the name among a list of “human freaks” in a story published in the Boston Post in 1895. The story claimed Mordake was a man cursed with the distorted face of the portion of a conjoined twin on the back of his head.
Hildreth never claimed that his story was anything more than raw fiction. In fact Edward Mordake’s story was included with a list of alleged freaks that included a woman with the tail of a fish, a man with the body of a spider, and a man who was half-crab. The newspapers of that day, however, liked to copy each other’s human interest stories and post them as true accounts in an attempt to gain reader interest. Thus historians have had a difficult time tracking true historical events from news clippings of that period.
As the story was told, however, Mordake was born of an English peerage in the 19th Century. Because he was a freak the man lived a short and secluded life, in constant conflict with his “parasitic twin” which they said was female. How they determined the sex of that part of his twin is difficult to fathom. The face had eyes and a mouth that drooled. And according to Mordake, it spent their nights mocking the man. Thus it apparently offered some form of speech known only to Mordake.
Hildreth wrote that the face in back of Mordake’s head had eyes but was unable to see. It was unable to eat or speak aloud, thus it was only a part of what began as a conjoined twin. It was said the face sneered when Mordake was expressing happiness, and it smiled when Mordake was sad. Mordake begged doctors to try to remove the face because he said it whispered disturbing things to him in the night. The doctors of that time were unwilling to attempt such a surgery.
Mordake thus committed suicide when he was 23.
The Hildreth article and his story about Mordake might have disappeared in the dust of time had it not been for a second report published the following year in Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine, a medical encyclopedia co-authored by Doctors George M. Gould and David L. Pyle. The encyclopedia appeared to have copied Hildreth’s article without giving Hildreth credit. The doctors described the basic morphology of Mordake's condition, suggesting it was a true story. But they provided no medical diagnosis for the rare deformity.
Gould and Pyle wrote: “The female face was a mere mask, ‘occupying only a small portion of the posterior part of the skull, yet exhibiting every sign of intelligence, of a malignant sort, however.’ It would be seen to smile and sneer while Mordake was weeping. The eyes would follow the movements of the spectator, and the lips ‘would gibber without ceasing.’”
Mordake’s existence seems to have lived on in urban legend. Photographs of a man with two heads have appeared as has the image of a strange dual skull. And there has been music groups, songs, films and even novels that have made a legend of the man with two faces. All of this has grown from Hildreth’s original story.