page_title: Chang and Eng Bunker
section_title: Independent travel
hierarchical_section_title: Chang and Eng Bunker / Travel and touring (1829–1839) / Independent travel
caption_attribution_description: Chang and Eng, Siamese twins, 1836. Oil painting by Edouard-Henri-Th&#233;ophile Pingret. Iconographic Collections Keywords: Edouard-Henri-Th&#233;ophile Pingret; Chang and Eng Bunker
context_page_description: Chang and Eng Bunker were Siamese-American conjoined twin brothers whose fame propelled the expression "Siamese twins" to become synonymous for conjoined twins in general. They were widely exhibited as curiosities and were "two of the nineteenth century's most studied human beings".
  The brothers were born with Chinese ancestry in today's Thailand and were brought to the United States in 1829. Physicians inspected them as they became known to American and European audiences in "freak shows". Newspapers and the public were initially sympathetic to them, and within three years they left the control of their managers, who they thought were cheating them, and toured on their own. In early exhibitions, they appeared exotic and displayed their athleticism; they later held conversations in English in a more dignified parlor setting.
  In 1839, after a decade of financial success, the twins quit touring and settled near Mount Airy, North Carolina. They became American citizens, bought slaves, married local sisters, and fathered 21 children, several of whom accompanied them when they resumed touring.
context_section_description: Abel Coffin, upon returning to Massachusetts in July 1832, discovered that Chang and Eng were missing. Coffin accused Hale of "exciting his subjects to rebellion" (Hale had done no such thing), and after a chase he finally tracked down the brothers in Bath, New York. Hale later said Coffin told him he had met the twins "whoring, gaming, and drinking" and "gave Chang Eng 'the damndest thrashing they ever had in their lives'". On the twins' desertion, Coffin simply wrote to his wife as follows: "We have had much talk; they seem to feel themselves quite free from me."
  The twins themselves did not immediately announce that they were in business on their own, nor did they much alter their public persona. However, they were now exclusively referred to by their stage name—the "Siamese twins"—and they did change some parts of their performance, such as by wearing more American clothes, speaking English with the audience, and presenting themselves no longer as "boys" but men. They also answered audience questions sitting in a formal, parlor setting and hunted game in their free time. What had once essentially been their indentured servitude had changed to freedom; they were in command of their act and hired their own staff.
  Chang and Eng did not perform on their sightseeing trip across Western Europe in 1835–36 visiting Paris, Antwerp, The Hague, Amsterdam, and other cities. In 1836, Hale published a pamphlet about them titled A Few Particulars concerning Chang-Eng, the United Siamese Brothers, Published under Their Own Direction. Positioning the twins as upper-class, saying that in Siam, Chinese were elites, it reported, among other particulars, that a representative of President Jackson had visited the twins' mother.
caption: Oil painting by Édouard Pingret, 1836
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