The Dionne quintuplets: The exploitation of five girls raised in a 'baby zoo'

Dr. Allan Roy Dafoe started spreading the news right after he helped to deliver five identical girls in a farmhouse in Corbeil, Canada, on the morning of May 28, 1934.

First, he ran into the girls’ uncle, informing him that his brother and sister-in-law had just gone from parents of five to parents of 10. Then, the doctor went to the post office the next town over and told everyone inside. After that, he told a store clerk, who said he should tell the local newspaper. But the girls’ uncle had already done that.

The editor of the North Bay Nugget immediately put the amazing news out on the wire service, then sent a reporter and a photographer to the farmhouse.

Within six hours of their birth, the Dionne quintuplets — Yvonne, Annette, Cécile, Émilie and Marie — were photographed for all the world to see. The dangerously underweight babies were removed from the butcher’s basket keeping them warm and positioned next to their dazed mother, who had barely survived the birth herself, to get the shot.

The exploitation of the Dionne sisters is the subject of a new book by Sarah Miller, who has previously written about other young women who made headlines, like Lizzie Borden and Anastasia Romanov.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/the-dionne-quintuplets-the-exploitation-of-five-girls-raised-in-a-baby-zoo/ar-AAJLBgv?li=BBnb7Kz&ocid=mailsignout