TRIPLETS EXACTLY ALIKE

Greymouth Evening Star, 2 July 1936, Page 5

TRIPLETS EXACTLY ALIKE

THREE LONDON MEN. When the Dionne quintuplets grow up, what sort of life are they going to have? There are three men, Londoners by birth, who could tell them. These three amazing men, who for some reason have always escaped publicity, are triplets —probably the only adult all-male set of Hying triplets in the world. They are incredibly, baffiugly, indistinguishably alike. Their names is Jones —Daniel,.Griffith, and Bid, £ney were born in London -on-October 22, 1895, and to-day at forty they are all prosperous business men. •

All the three Joneses can masquerade as each other without the least possibility of detection. They dress very-.much alike and have the same body measurements.- - ‘ They were born in KyverdaJ,e Road, Stoke Newington, N., and they are third cousins of'Mr. Lloyd George.

“They were the last of fourteen children, amf their -'mother had already had twins. They arrived at intervals of half an hour. The local doctor brought them into the world-. They were ribboned in different dolours at once, but they had no temperature-controlled rooms or oil baths. They "did however, have a special cow devoted to their exclusive use at the local dairy, and each day they were given ox-blood. They were’hlways bathed separately lest they should get mixed up, although at times no precaution seemed to suffice in preventing accidents. “Our mother,’’ they said, “once came to see us in bed, and noticed that one of us was undeniably dirty. “Our nurse was certain that she had bathed three babies, but it came out that she had bathed one of us twice over.”

On a staple diet of porridge, the triplets jtrejv up. .healthy boys, completely normal, but 'almost utterly indistinguishable in appearance. Their mother in those days was the only person able to pick one out from the

other ' /'Their first school mistress gave them differently coloured ties-to wear, but they used to change them in the lunch hour to confuse her. Jt became Utterly impossible to fix the blame for anything on one triplet. When one was given” a’ fiymn to learn as an imposition, _ another triplet woukL 1 perhaps find it- easier to learn and would recite it_ip_pla.ee. .of ..the real culprit .without detection. . Later they went to a boarding school.-- There they-were each given a number to wear on their lapels; but they’ often changed it for some- purpose -or* other, and of course, there was no one who could detect the difference. Then one day they all left school and 'Went into three different firms in the drapery’ trade. When they wera eighteen the war broke out.

Bill and Griff enlisted in the same rpgimfint—the London Regiment. Dan tried to join the regiment as-well, but wlieii.he went to the depot the ser-geant-major said, “Come-on, we’ve had you-already, you can’t enlist twice.” Bq -lie-had-to go away • and -join the Middlesex Regiment.; Bill and Griff wentr-ta France- Together. ’ ’ Often and often when one had a leave-; pass apd- did -> not want it he would change uniforms with his broth-er-and let him’go. to England of the lopal-.ieitve-cfintre instead; ’ r.

Meanwhile Dan had become a sergeant and was in Bombay on leave from Mesopotamia. There he met

another sergeant from the regiment of his brother, the lieutenant. The sergeant believed that Dan was simply Griffith and had been cashiered. When Dan said he was a triplet brother the sergeant only thought he was hiding his shame under an excuse and would never believe him. After the war the triplets went each his own way into business. Here are just a few of the things that happened to them, that still happend to them every day: — BARBER PERPLEED. . A barber they each went to in a provincial hotel who shaved two in succession thought he was shaving the same man twice. When the third appeared he thought he had gone mad. , Once Daniel Jones went into a restaurant and waited about half an hour without the waiter attempting to serve him. .. Then he found out that his brother Bill had just ■ finished dinner at the same table, and the waiter thought he had just come back to wait for a friend.

Another time Griffith took Bill’s girl friend to the pictures, and it was not until the wrong brother had kissed the right girl good-night that she discovered the mistake. . . ... Once one of the Joneses met a director of his brother’s firm in Switzerland. The director could not understand how his supposed assistant had taken a holiday, and the brother had difficulty in convincing him. that it was all mistaken identity.

They have always refused music hall contracts, but sometimes they win bets by two of them saying that they are brothers and exactly the same age and yet not twins.

They all began to go grey at about the same time. The gestures they have developed in maturity are strangely similar —such as a habit each has of .stroking his nose. By chance I once Griff went into Dan’s tailors. The tailor insisted to his bewilderment in trying a suit, on him, Dan’s suit. The suit fitted‘him perfectly. Their mother could once distinguish them, but as she grew older (she died recently, aged 81) she, too, was unable'to tell one from the other. They had a maid who was with them for two years, but at the end of that time she could never say for certain which was Bill, Dan or Griff. They have four sisters, who can never say for certain.which brother is which. in fact, the only person in the world np\v who always and for certain can tell the difference between them is the wife. of. Dan, .the only .married brother. She learned to distinguish them after a little practice, although at the first introduction to' thdin sh'3 took the aim of the wrong man. She was also nearly married-to the wrong man. At Dan’s wedding Griff was almost made the .bridegroom.. He arrived first and the priest called him into the vestry and introduced him to the registrar as the bridegroom. After the service the bride and bridegroom were left out in the cold because all the guests flocked round Griff to offer their congratulations ■to him by mistake.- . And yet, though in voice, face, body, hair and eyes-they are indistinguishable, they admit thaUn character they are totally unlike. We do not Jmlieve in-the one-niind-in-three bodies theory,”' sa-jd' Griffith. - “Although we are so much alike we have scarcely ail interest in common except sport. Bill and I like different types -of girls and before Dan was married, ho 'preefrred a type that appealed to neither of us. When we were younger and one had to have a tooth out the others felt no pain,”

. The • triplets-have never ’used'their wondeiiul resemblance for any kind of gain—and- yet- - sometiiiTes they think of the wonderful, unfathomable, undetectable mysteries they might have created with its aid.