June and Jennifer Gibbons: The Silent Twins Who Only Spoke to Each Other

June and Jennifer Gibbons were identical twins born on April 11, 1963, in a military hospital in Aden, Yemen. The sisters, later known as “The Silent Twins,” grew up in Wales and became famous because they only spoke to each other.

Growing Up Different

The twins were daughters of Caribbean immigrants, Gloria and Aubrey Gibbons. Gloria was a housewife and Aubrey worked as a technician for the Royal Air Force.

The family had three other children: Greta, David and Rosie. After moving from Barbados to the UK as part of the Windrush generation, the family settled in England, eventually moving to Haverfordwest, Wales, in 1974.

From early on, June and Jennifer were inseparable. They spoke a sped-up version of Bajan Creole, their parents’ language, which nobody else could understand.

In 2023, June explained, “We had a speech impediment. Our parents couldn’t understand a word that we were saying, nobody understood – so we stopped talking.” Because of this, they only communicated with each other, except for their younger sister Rose.

Being the only Black children in their school made life even harder. They were often bullied and ostracized. Teachers even let them leave early to avoid the harassment.

This isolation made their already strange way of speaking even harder for others to understand. People thought they had invented their own language but June later said it was just English spoken so quickly and with a speech impediment that nobody could understand.

The twins tried attending school and even reading and writing, but they refused. Speech therapy didn’t work and attempts to separate them at boarding schools failed. Whenever they were apart, they became catatonic and withdrawn.

A World of Their Own

Most of their childhood and teenage years were spent in isolation, locked away in their bedroom. They created elaborate plays with dolls, acting out stories and dramas for hours.

In 1979, they were inspired by gift diaries to start writing seriously. Each sister kept extensive diaries and wrote stories, poems and novels. Their stories were often set in the United States, especially Malibu, California, and featured young people getting into strange or criminal situations.

June wrote a novel called The Pepsi-Cola Addict, about a high school student seduced by a teacher and sent to a reformatory where a homosexual guard takes an interest in him.

Jennifer wrote The Pugilist, a story where a desperate physician kills a family dog to save his child. The dog’s spirit returns for revenge. Jennifer also wrote Discomania, a story about a disco that makes people go violently insane.

While most of their work wasn’t widely published, a few of their stories have been republished recently. The Pepsi-Cola Addict was reissued in 2022 and 2023 by Cashen’s Gap and Strange Attractor Press, and Discomania is planned for 2025.

Trouble and Hospitalization

In their teenage years, the twins began experimenting with drugs and alcohol. By 1981, their behavior escalated to crimes including vandalism, petty theft and arson.

While awaiting trial, psychiatrists assessed them and recommended they be sent to Broadmoor Hospital, a high-security mental health facility.

In 1982, they were sentenced to indefinite detention under the Mental Health Act and spent eleven years in Broadmoor.

June later blamed their silence for the harsh sentence: “Juvenile delinquents get two years in prison. […] We got twelve years of hell, because we didn’t speak. […] We lost hope, really. I wrote a letter to the Home Office. I wrote a letter to the Queen, asking her to pardon us, to get us out. But we were trapped.”

While in Broadmoor, the twins were put on high doses of antipsychotic medications. These drugs affected their concentration and Jennifer developed tardive dyskinesia, a disorder causing involuntary movements.

Still, they continued writing diaries and joined the hospital choir, though their interest in creative writing lessened.

Their case became well-known after journalist Marjorie Wallace wrote about them in The Sunday Times. Wallace later published a book, The Silent Twins, in 1986.

Jennifer’s Death

The twins reportedly had an agreement: if one died, the other would start to speak and live a normal life. Over time, they believed that one of them had to die. Jennifer ultimately agreed to sacrifice herself.

In March 1993, the twins were transferred from Broadmoor to the Caswell Clinic, a less restrictive hospital in Bridgend, Wales. When they arrived, Jennifer was unresponsive and soon died of acute myocarditis, a sudden inflammation of the heart. There was no evidence of drugs or poison in her system.

At the inquest, June shared that Jennifer had been acting strangely before the transfer, slurring her speech and saying she was dying. On the trip, Jennifer slept in June’s lap with her eyes open.

June later told Wallace, “I’m free at last, liberated, and at last Jennifer has given up her life for me.” Jennifer was buried in St Martin’s Cemetery in Haverfordwest, Wales.

Life After Jennifer

After her sister’s death, June gave interviews to Harper’s Bazaar and The Guardian. By 2008, she was living independently near her parents in West Wales.

She was no longer monitored by psychiatric services and had started putting her past behind her. June’s older sister Greta expressed in 2016 that the family blamed Broadmoor for ruining the twins’ lives and for neglecting Jennifer’s health.

Greta had wanted to sue the hospital but their parents refused, saying it wouldn’t bring Jennifer back.

In the Media

The story of the twins has inspired many works. The 1986 television drama The Silent Twins aired on BBC2 and a 1994 BBC1 documentary titled Silent Twin – Without My Shadow explored their lives. A play based on Wallace’s book, called Speechless, debuted in London in 2011.

Poet Lucie Brock-Broido wrote a poem about the twins titled “Elective Mutes,” published in 1988. The Manic Street Preachers even wrote a song called “Tsunami” in 1998 inspired by them.

More recently, Polish filmmaker Agnieszka Smoczyńska directed the 2022 feature film The Silent Twins, starring Letitia Wright and Tamara Lawrance. The film is based on Wallace’s 1986 book and was produced as an international collaboration between the UK and Poland.

In 2022, Angeline Morrison released an album, The Sorrow Songs (Folk Songs of Black British Experience), which features a track about the twins called “The Flames They Do Grow High.”

In 2023, the BBC released a podcast, June: Voice of a Silent Twin, featuring an in-depth interview with June Gibbons. She recounted the twins’ childhood, their trial and imprisonment and her life after Jennifer’s death.