THE DIONNE BABIES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 299, 18 December 1935, Page 13

THE DIONNE BABIES.

DIRECTING THE TRAFFIC. Telling of the eagerness or crowds to see the Dionne quintuplets, a writer in the "Spectator," who has been visiting Canada, says: —- Some thirty miles from Calleiuler, in pleasant, undulating country, we came upon the first sign of the famille Dionne —an advertisement of a Dionne garage. A few miles later there was a direction sign to "the Dionne babies." At Callender an information bureau was crowned with five identically-dressed babies cut out in wood. The road ran for a mile through new forest-like country, and suddenly opened out into a huge parking place. Two or three men with red flags were directing the traffic. North of the road stood the house of the Dionnes. Tile hospital lay In a hollow to the south. There was no suggestion of a shrine about this prettily-painted Lshaped building. . Indeed, one began to think of a prison camp, since the hospital enclosure was surrounded by a high wire fence, with three strands of barbed wire running along the top. The hospital and its courtyard were shut off inside the enclosure by another wire fence. There were five perambulators in the shade of the balcony. Outside the gates into the lower half of the enclosure a crowd was already gathering, although the children would not be on view for a full half-hour. At 1 p.m.—zero hour—there were about 500 people and 100 cars. As the moments went by, more spectators poured out of a largo wooden shanty.

This place carried two Union Jacks and a sign: "Madame Legros and Madame Lebcl, midwives at the birth of the Dionne quintuplets, invite you to a full-course French-Canadian dinner, including pork and beans, French shanty style, and okl-fasliioned French meat pie, and a green apple pie."