Late but Inexorable

The law of averages hung like an invisible executioner over the rude Dionne farmhouse near the village of Callander, Ont. on the morning of May 28, 1934. The odds againsf the birth of quintuplets were 41.6 million to one. The odds that all would live for long were even greater. Three of the baby girls were delivered by midwives before Dr. Allan Roy Dafoe arrived to deliver Marie and Emilie; he never could recall which was born last. In all they weighed about 12 Ibs. The doctor held little hope for their survival and left them with the midwives.

But the quintuplets did live. From tiny infants, fed with eyedroppers and enriched almost from birth with the dollars of the curious and the exploiters (total: about $1,250,000), they grew into carefully chaperoned girlhood, then into shy, sequestered, plain-looking young women. This year on their 20th birthday, Emilie, Annette and Cecile were taking domestic science studies; Yvonne was studying fine arts in Montreal; Marie was about to leave a Quebec convent where she had decided against becoming a nun.

Unknown to all but a very few, Emilie Dionne had been sick almost from the beginning with epilepsy, a disease rarely cured. Periodically, she was stricken with seizures. Last month a policeman found her wandering, apparently lost, on a street in Montreal. One day last week, when she was visiting at a convent near Ste. Agathe, Que. to decide whether she also might choose the life of a nun, Emilie was stricken again. She suffered three successive fits. No doctor was called, but next morning she stayed in her room to rest. A short while later, a nurse found Emilie Dionne dead of asphyxiation, due to acute congestion of the lungs.* The law of averages, late but inexorable, had been working all the time.

* Still thriving are the world's only other known quintuplets, the eleven-year-old Diligenti children (two boys, .three girls) of Buenos Aires. At news of Emilie's death, the Diligenti quintuplets sent a cable of condolences to the Dionne family at Callander.

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