Lucio and Simplicio Godino: The Samar United Twins

This week on July 13 in 1929, the Philippines’ earliest known and perhaps our most famous conjoined twins --or “Siamese” twins-- the Godino brothers, had a double wedding to Victorina and Natividad Matos in Manila. The wedding created a stir not just in Manila but elsewhere in the world, not just because the Godino brothers were considered at that time the “only pair of its kind”, which most likely meant that they were the only living male conjoined twins, or at least the only known living then, but most especially because they also married twins! Vancouver Sun bandied the twins’ marriage as “the first” marriage for conjoined twins, which was erroneous because the famous conjoined twins Chang and Eng Bunker, the Thai conjoined twins (and from where the term Siamese twins is derived), also had a double wedding a generation before. Their wedding sponsors were Teodoro Yangco, the "Rockefeller of the Philippines" who briefly served as a resident commissioner in the US; and Amalia Corpus de Magsaysay, Yangco’s niece who was married to Ambrosio Magsaysay whose nephew, Ramon, would later become Philippine president.

Lucio and Simplicio were born in Sulat, Eastern Samar, on March 2, 1908, to Leoncio Godino and Josefa Baldilimar. An article in the ‘30’s says that they had two older siblings and that their mother died in 1914 after giving birth to a fifth child. They arrived in Honolulu, Hawaii, aboard the ship Manchuria on April 8, 1910; their parents and an older brother, Jose, accompanied them. A week later, they arrived in San Francisco, California. According to most write-ups, the twins were brought to the US for exhibition as the “Samar United Twins”.

It was common then to have “freak shows” where people with deformities were displayed to the public. Because the audience had never seen these types of people, these shows became extremely popular. As they became more known, various groups started to take notice of the twins. Louis Sullivan of the American Museum of Natural History examined them on July 31, 1918 after the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children questioned their display without a guardian, which further tells us that they were left by their parents. Because of the controversy, they were adopted by Yangco, whose compassion and wealth allowed them to continue their education. They applied for a passport in 1919 to return to the Philippines, which was approved on April 26, 1919. They returned to the US in November of the same year. They went back to Manila in 1924 and then in 1929, when they married their wives. The license clerk who received their application rejected it, arguing that the twins were “one individual with a dual personality” and that their marriage would result in bigamy. Yangco intervened and the Philippine department of justice reversed the rejection and ordered that a license be granted.

The twins headed a band of 14 native instrumentalists called the All Filipino Band that toured around the world. When they returned to America with their wives, the four became a headline act on vaudeville. Lucio was admitted to a New York hospital with pneumonia on November 17, 1936, he failed to recover and died seven days later. After Lucio's death, surgeons separated Simplicio within the hour and declared the operation a success. Simplicio, however, died 11 days later of spinal meningitis.

Reports often described them as happy and seemed to enjoy what they did, and that they didn’t mind being objects of curiosity although they “absolutely hated” all forms of pity. They were careful about expressing their opinions on issues, and when asked about Philippine independence they avoided answering it by saying they were vaudeville entertainers, not politicians. A more personal biography needs to be written about them and it would be interesting to know how they felt about being “oddities”, to show a more complete picture of these Siamese twins.