Credit: ©The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.14975

    Conjoined twins

    Date
    28 October 1670
    Creator
    Unknown, Artist
    Object type
    Archive reference number
    LBC
    Manuscript page number
    vol4 p130a
    Material
    Dimensions
    height (page): 191mm
    width (page): 175mm
    Subject
    Content object
    Description
    Drawing of a pair of conjoined twins lying on a blue bed with large pillow. From a letter by the physician William Durston dated 28 October 1670 at Plymouth to Timothy Clarke, reporting the dissection of the conjoined twin born to Grace Bastard, a wife of a shoemaker 'of honest repute' and mother of five. This is a copy after the drawing done 'by a youth' at Plymouth which accompanied the original letter (EL/D1/15/003). Durston's letter was read at the meeting of the Royal Society on 10 November 1670, and printed in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, vol. 5, no. 65 (1670), with this image.

    This is copied from LBO/4/095a, with additional colouring.
    Transcription
    p. 130: 'the effigies of which is here sent you enclosed, taken by a youth of this town with an account of what we thought further worth our observation.'
    Transcribed by the Making Visible project
    Object history
    At the meeting of the Royal Society on 10 November 1670, ‘Mr. Oldenburg read a letter written by Dr. Durston of Plymouth to Dr. Timothy Clarke, dated 28 Octob. 1670, containing an account of a monstrous birth at Plymouth, with some anatomical observations thereupon’ (Birch 2:451).

    William Durston to Timothy Clarke, 'A narrative of a monstrous birth in Plymouth, October 22, 1670', Phil. Trans. vol. 5, no. 65 (November 1670), pp. 2096-98 (ref. to 'table 2, figure 1' at p. 2096).
    Associated place
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