The Story Of Edward Mordrake, “The Man With Two Faces”

Good evening my friend Maj Marty Hogan and thanks for sharing the Urban Legend :-)
This seem to the literary creation of poet Charles Lotin Hildreth that ran in American papers in 1895. The photograph is of a wax figure.

In the USA in 1896 "two American doctors, George M. Gould and Walter L. Pyle, who collected together all kinds of bizarre medical cases, including the story of Mordake, which they presented as follows: [From hoaxes.org/weblog/comments/edward_mordake]
One of the weirdest as well as most melancholy stories of human deformity is that of Edward Mordake, said to have been heir to one of the noblest peerages in England. He never claimed the title, however, and committed suicide in his twenty-third year. He lived in complete seclusion, refusing the visits even of the members of his own family. He was a young man of fine attainments, a profound scholar, and a musician of rare ability. His figure was remarkable for its grace, and his face – that is to say, his natural face – was that of an Antinous. But upon the back of his head was another face, that of a beautiful girl, "lovely as a dream, hideous as a devil". The female face was a mere mask, "occupying only a small portion of the posterior part of the skull, yet exhibiting every sign of intelligence, of a malignant sort, however". It would be seen to smile and sneer while Mordake was weeping. The eyes would follow the movements of the spectator, and the lips "would gibber without ceasing". No voice was audible, but Mordake avers that he was kept from his rest at night by the hateful whispers of his "devil twin", as he called it, "which never sleeps, but talks to me forever of such things as they only speak of in Hell. No imagination can conceive the dreadful temptations it sets before me. For some unforgiven wickedness of my forefathers I am knit to this fiend – for a fiend it surely is. I beg and beseech you to crush it out of human semblance, even if I die for it." Such were the words of the hapless Mordake to Manvers and Treadwell, his physicians. In spite of careful watching, he managed to procure poison, whereof he died, leaving a letter requesting that the "demon face" might be destroyed before his burial, "lest it continues its dreadful whisperings in my grave." At his own request, he was interred in a waste place, without stone or legend to mark his grave.

Unfortunately, here the trail for clues about Mordake ran cold, because Gould and Pyle didn't reveal where they found the story. They said only that it was "taken from lay sources." And no earlier references to Mordake were known.

Nevertheless, the fact that this earliest known version of Mordake's story was in a medical text (rather than, say, a collection of short stories) added an air of authenticity to the narrative. Because although Gould and Pyle seemed willing to include in their book almost any story, no matter how questionable, their work was still non-fiction. Presumably, they didn't invent the story of Mordake. They heard about it somewhere."
Questions and Doubts
Attempts to judge the authenticity of the Mordake story by evidence internal to the tale itself proved inconclusive.

From a medical perspective, the case of Mordake could possibly be true. Or rather, not impossible. It would demonstrate the phenomenon of craniopagus parasiticus, which, as wikipedia puts it, happens when "a parasitic twin head with an undeveloped body is attached to the head of a developed twin." Or it could be a case of Diprosopus (also known as craniofacial duplication), which is the result of abnormal protein activity, not twinning. Either way, it's an extremely rare phenomenon, and those affected by such conditions typically don't live long past childbirth. In 2008, for instance, a young girl with two faces was born in India and survived for only six weeks.

However, while Mordake's case may not be impossible, it does include scientifically questionable details. Cases of craniopagus parasiticus, for instance, always involve monozygotic (or identical) twins, which means that the two twins are always of the same sex. Therefore, Mordake could not have had the face of a woman on the back of his head, as the story repeated by Gould and Pyle specifies. But defenders of the story could argue that this detail might be an embellishment added to the tale over the years. After all, how could anyone really determine the gender of the extra face anyway?

More serious reservations are raised by the story's general lack of sources and corroboratory details. As early as 1905, we find a report in The Theosophical Review (December 1905) which notes that the two doctors who attended Mordake, "Manvers and Treadwell," could not be found in the Dictionary of National Biography. Nor do their names pop up anywhere else, outside of discussions of the Mordake case.

In 1958, the folklorist Paul Brewster queried the readers of the Journal of the History of Medicine for information about Mordake, noting that, "If this is a genuine case in teratology, there should be authoritative sources for it." His plea went unanswered.

But these doubts and questions weren't enough to conclusively disprove the story, and popular belief in his existence was bolstered by writers in the "strange but true" genre who presented his tale to readers as fact. For instance, it was described as fact in Frank Edwards's Strange People (1961) as well as in the 1977 edition of The Book of Lists.

The Lay Source
However, I have new information that may solve the riddle of Mordake's identity, because I believe I've found the "lay source" that Gould and Pyle relied upon.
I did a keyword search of the archive of 19th-century American papers at newspapers.com (which requires a subscription) and discovered that Mordake's story appeared in an article written by the poet Charles Lotin Hildreth that ran in American papers in 1895, approximately a year before the publication of Gould and Pyle's book. It ran first in the Boston Sunday Post on Dec. 8, 1895, and a few days later was published in a variety of other papers, including the Parsons Daily Sun (Dec. 11) and The Decatur Herald (Dec. 14) .

The article, titled "The Wonders of Modern Science: some half human monsters once thought to be of the Devil's brood," describes a variety of remarkable "human freaks" whose cases Hildreth claims to have found in old reports of the "Royal Scientific Society" (the "musty old pages" of which, he tells us, are characterized by their "long S's and their turgid phraseology").

Among the cases Hildreth details are the "Fish Woman of Lincoln" — a young girl whose legs, from the hips downward were "covered with shining scales and terminated in the most exact tails of fish." There's a "half human, half crab" whose hands and feet end in enormous, hard-shelled claws. The "melon child of Radnor," we learn, had a head the size and color of a melon, with no perceptible organs of sense except a vertical slit for a mouth. Mr. Pewness of Stratton had feet where his hands should be, "and vice versa." The "four-eyed man of Cricklade" had two sets of eyes, one above the other. "Jackass Johnny" was cursed with "a pair of enormously long, furry ears, exactly like those of an ass." The "Norfolk spider" was a monstrous thing that crawled upon its belly with six hairy jointed legs with claws and a human head.
Finally the list ends with the "weirdest as well as most melancholy" story of Edward Mordake. This passage has to be Gould and Pyle's "lay source" since it is word-for-word the same as what later appears in Anomalies.

Non-Fiction or Fiction?
Hildreth's article reads like non-fiction, and it's certainly presented to readers as such. Gould and Pyle evidently thought it was a true account of old medical cases. Not only did they lift Mordake's story from it, they also took the account of the four-eyed man of Cricklade and repeated that verbatim in their book (again, without giving Hildreth any credit).

But the more closely we examine Hildreth's article, the fishier it becomes. First of all, what is this "Royal Scientific Society" that he claims was his source? Did he mean the Royal Society of London? Perhaps he did, or perhaps he came up with a suitably impressive sounding but actually non-existent society.

And if he did mean the Royal Society of London, then it should be possible to track down earlier references to the cases he describes. After all, the early transactions of the Royal Society have all been scanned and are searchable online.

But no. These characters such as the Fish Woman of Lincoln and the Norfolk Spider are mentioned nowhere before surfacing in Hildreth's article. And when we realize this, that's when it becomes apparent that Hildreth's article was fiction. All of it sprang from his imagination, including Edward Mordake.

This makes sense because Hildreth was not only a poet, but also a writer of speculative fiction. He authored a children's novel The Mysterious City of Oo, about a young boy's journey into the Australian outback where he discovers that "a white civilization of ancient Greek origins flourishes among the savages" (description from The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction). His short stories frequently ran in papers, and many of them are what we would describe today as science fiction. Even his poetry (which is very much in the tradition of Edgar Allan Poe) displays a preoccupation with gothic, other-worldly themes. So a fictional piece about "half human monsters" is something that Hildreth not only could have written, but also would have written.

It also makes sense that newspapers would have presented his story as non-fiction, because 19th-century newspapers did this frequently. It was only in the 20th Century that magazines catering specifically to speculative fiction were created and provided an outlet for writers in this genre. Before then, authors relied upon newspapers to publish their stories, and it was common to add excitement to the tales by presenting them as fact.

This tradition goes back to Poe, who published six of his tales initially in the guise of non-fiction, and the practice continued throughout the century. One of the more famous examples is the case of the Man-Eating Tree of Madagascar. In 1874, the New York World ran an article about this bizarre tree that ate human flesh. The piece was entirely fiction, but readers didn't know that, and for decades afterwards copies of the article continued to circulate as fact. Several explorers even went in search of the tree.

So we should add Edward Mordake to the list of 19th Century newspaper hoaxes that continued to fool people for decades (or in this case, over a century) after their publication.

In other words, Mordake never existed. He was the literary creation of Charles Lotin Hildreth.

Unfortunately, Hildreth didn't live to see the success of his creation. He died in August 1896, at the age of 39, before the publication of Gould and Pyle's Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine. But he doubtless would have been proud that his character has captured the imagination of so many people."

Figures on an actual twin conjoined at the head
1. Skull of the double-headed Bengal (museum exhibit)
2. an artist's impression of the case).


2. from biology.stackexchange.com/questions/31216/case-study-and-speculations-on-the-brain-of-edward-mordake
"Case study and speculations on the brain of Edward Mordake
I am very interested in the case of the man named who lived in the 19th century. In particular, he had two faces. If you have not heard of
this man, please, search this up as there are a very few amount of photos, but it is something very, very strange.
Edward Mordake
However, all the information on him seems to be speculation, so I am looking for a scientific look at this. I am unsure if it will even be possible seeing as
how the years have passed and records may not have been accurate.
To be specific, has this condition been noted before? There seems to possibly be differing opinions onto wether the face was indeed its own individual
inside, or a low functioning other half of the same man.
Indeed I am looking for any info on the biology of his brain, possibly the neuroscience and or physiology, and of course any comments and discussion.

1 Answer
Mordake was a conjoined twin fused at the head. Twins conjoined at the heads are rare,
occurring only once in every 2.5 million live births. Moreover, in Mordake's case it was a parasitic twin
head with an undeveloped body that was fused with his own head. This condition is referred to as
, or / . Craniopagus parasiticus is an extremely rare
teratology, of which only six cases have been recorded in the medical literature.
The story of Edward Mordake is, however, obscure and met with skepticism. Moreover, no medical
details are known as far as I know. However, he was reported to be intelligent and healthy, just
depressed by the second parasitic head . To me it appears a story of a person with
a normal brain and a parasitic face attached to his head. However, there are rumors that the parasitic
head could talk independently, leaving open the possibility that the parasitic head may have contained
a separate brain, or shared Mordake's own brain.
More is known about the double-headed Bengal of Everard Home (Fig. 2).
The natural head and body were perfectly normally developed, but a number of anomalies were noted
on an examination of the parasitic head, such as excessive tearing and the absence of pupil reflexes.
Upon dissection the parasitic head was shown to show various anomalies, such as missing anatomical
elements (e.g. auditory canal) or underdeveloped structures (e.g., small lower jaw bones). Importantly,
the brains were separate from each other and covered in individual and proper coverings. The dura
mater of each brain adhered firmly and contained many large vessels. describe
the remainder of the six cases as well, which were still-borns or lived just very shortly. They had
completely separated brains too.
Bondeson et al. (1989)
References
- Bondeson et al, Surg Neurol (1989); 31:426-34
- Bosmia et al, Childs Nerv Syst (2014)"

Urban Legends: The Curious Case of Edward Mordake
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6T_gJD28DM

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Maj Marty Hogan Beyond scary!!

Interesting share sir, thank you.