JUNE AND JENNIFER GIBBONS APRIL 11-1963

Murphy Browne © April 9-2020


JUNE AND JENNIFER GIBBONS APRIL 11-1963

On April 11, 1963, June Alison Gibbons and Jennifer Lorraine Gibbons were born at a Royal Air Force (R.A.F.) hospital in Aden, the capital of Yemen, in the Middle East. Yemen was under British rule until November 30-1967. The Gibbons twins were born in Yemen to African Barbadian parents Aubrey and Gloria Gibbons, who were living on the R.A.F base where Aubrey Gibbons worked. In late 1963, the family moved when Aubrey was stationed at Linton-on-Ouse, Yorkshire. Aubrey Gibbons, an R.A.F technician, was moved from base to base with his family. As the family was constantly moving to places where they were often the only racialized family in the neighbourhood, the twins were considered outsiders wherever they lived. The twins created their own language because of the ostracism and racist bullying they experienced as children. June would later explain that the language they created began as a game.

In 1971, when the twins were eight, Aubrey was posted to Chivenor, in Devon. In November 1998, as an adult, June spoke about the horrific racism to which she and Jennifer were subjected at their new school. “Eight or nine, we started suffering, and we stopped talking. People called us names—we were the only black girls in school. Terrible names. They pulled our hair.”  The girls were viciously and mercilessly taunted about their skin colour. No one seemed to understand what it was like for these two African Caribbean children to live in Wales, where they were constantly tormented and bullied because of the colour of their skin. It is not difficult to understand why these two little girls, isolated, shunned and tormented at school, clung to each other. Not difficult to understand why they created their own language and shut everyone else out of their world. June explained that their silence and secret language started as a game and by the time they realised they were trapped, they were unable to 'break out.'

In 1974, when the twins were eleven, Aubrey Gibbons was transferred to Haverfordwest, and the family moved to live on the local R.A.F. housing estate. The twins attended the Haverfordwest County Secondary School, where they were again subjected to rabid racism. It was at this time that they developed their special language. The school dealt with the racist bullying of the twins by giving the twins a “head-start” at the end of the school day so that they could run home and escape their persecutors. The racist White students suffered no consequences. The headmistress of the school blamed the twins for not being more sociable with their tormentors. June and Jennifer were failed by an uncaring White supremacist culture, society and system. Not surprising that in that uncaring White supremacist culture, society and system, the “Brixton Riots” happened in April 1981.

June and Jennifer Gibbons survived those torturous years of school while several White therapists attempted to communicate with them. An analysis of a recording of the twins’ language, found that their special language was a mixture of Barbadian Creole English and British slang. Nothing malevolent! Just two small girls with great creativity and imagination. Meanwhile they had to deal with being taunted by White students who would tell them to: “Go back to the jungle” and “learn to speak English.” When the girls were 14 years-old they were sent to separate boarding schools in an attempt to break their special bond. The girls were traumatized by the separation and became “catatonic.” After two years at boarding school they were reunited. At 16 years old, they were together again sharing a room and communicating with each other.

The girls spent their time expressing their creativity in writing. They wrote novels and plays, at least one of which they self-published. The two naïve young ladies became involved with bad company and altered their lives. It is reported that they were involved in a five-week spree of vandalism and arson. In May 1982, on the advice of their lawyers, they pleaded guilty at Swansea Crown Court and were sentenced to indefinite incarceration. As first-time offenders, June and Jennifer Gibbons were sent to Broadmoor, a British high-security psychiatric hospital. They became the youngest inmates at Broadmoor, locked up with criminals like serial killer “Yorkshire Ripper” Peter Sutcliffe and the infamous gangster/murderers Ronnie and Reggie Kray.

In a November 2000 interview, June said “Juvenile delinquents get two years in prison. We got 12 years of hell because we didn't speak. We lost hope, really. We were trapped. I wrote a letter to the Queen, asking her to get us out. But we were trapped.” In a 2016 interview their older sister Greta said: “They should never have been locked up in Broadmoor. I know they did wrong, but they didn’t kill anyone. It totally ruined their lives.” In 1993, doctors agreed to transfer them to Caswell Clinic, in Bridgend. Jennifer did not survive the transfer. The authorities said her heart was inflamed; at 29 years old, the twins were parted forever. Greta Gibbons said: “Jenny should never have died – she was only 29 years old and should not have been discharged if she was not fit enough. She should have been in hospital. If it had been me, I would have sued Broadmoor. I would not have let them get away with what they did. But it was my parents’ choice and they always said that it would not bring Jenny back.” It seems that not much has changed between the 1980s and the 21^st century. A 2003 review/study, found that “Black people are more likely than white people to be detained in psychiatric wards in the United Kingdom.”

When compared with two White girls who conspired to brutally murder the mother of one of them, the outcome was very different. In June 1954, in Christchurch, New Zealand, English teenager, Juliet Marion Hulme conspired with her friend Pauline Yvonne Parker, to murder Pauline’s mother. Juliet was being sent to live with a relative in South Africa and Pauline's mother refused to let her accompany Juliet. The two friends decided to murder Pauline's mother. They gleefully planned the murder, documenting their plans in a diary. Pauline and Juliet brutally bludgeoned Pauline’s mother with a brick inside a stocking. The prosecutor called it a "coldly, callously planned murder committed by two high intelligent and sane but precocious and dirty-minded little girls." Pauline and Juliet were sent to prison for 5 years. They were released with new identities on the condition that they never see each other again. Following her release from prison, Juliet returned to England and eventually moved to the United States.



Changing her name to Anne Perry, Juliet Marion Hulme became a successful author, ironically, writing murder mysteries, since 1978. Meanwhile, June Gibbons lives in obscurity, although there are plans to make a movie about the Gibbons twins. Hopefully the movie makers will at least pay June Gibbons for using her life story and try to do justice to the story they tell of her and her twin sister’s lives.

Murphy Browne © April 9-2020