The untold story of the Johnson Quads
Catherine Johnson was very nervous. The 33-year-old was seven months pregnant, and had begun to feel a dragging pain in her abdomen. She had breathing difficulties, and ongoing problems with fluid retention in her legs and abdomen. Unsure of the cause, Catherine’s doctor sent her for an X-ray.
What the film revealed was extraordinarily rare: Growing inside her abdomen were four spines. ‘‘When they told my father the news, he didn’t know what quads were,’’ says Bruce Johnson, the first born of the four babies who came to be known as the Johnson Quads.
When Catherine gave birth to three girls and a boy nine days after the X-ray, at the Dunedin Public Hospital, it became worldwide news. It was 1935, and only one set of quadruplets had ever been born in New Zealand, in 1919, to Mrs William Hall of Ngaruawahia, but her four boys had died within a year.
Bruce, Mary, Kathleen and Vera Johnson were, to quote one newspaper, ‘‘New Zealand’s best-known children’’. They featured in the Los Angeles Times. A photograph of the babies was used by Christian missionaries in Nigeria to debunk local myths that twins were evil. Under prime minister Michael Joseph Savage’s government, a house was built for the family to rent in Wakari, Dunedin - one of the the country’s very first state houses.
Leaving hospital; turning 1,2, 3, 4 and 5; starting school; eating ice cream on the porch; the children were photographed together at every milestone. The images and accompanying reports conveyed a close-knit, hard-working family, adjusting to the attention and grateful for the support.
But these gave only the most fleeting insight into the life of the family. In reality, the Johnsons struggled with the intense public scrutiny. Missing from the headlines was the family’s constant battle to stay financially afloat; their decision to send their intellectually disabled daughter to Christchurch’s Templeton home; a ‘‘fierce’’ mother whose cruelty scarred her children.
Just two of the quads are still alive: Bruce, who lives in Auckland and Kathleen, in Temuka. Vera died in 1997, and Mary in 2004. Now 82, Bruce says he and his siblings sometimes wished they were born separately.
‘‘It was terrible. We wished it didn’t happen, but we couldn’t avoid it. You can’t escape. You can’t just say, I’m not a quad.’’
Despite the government support for the family, and donations from local charity groups, money was always tight. The couple already had two daughters, and another daughter was born six years later. The father, George, worked hard to support his wife and seven children. (An eighth child, a son, died at three days old.) ‘‘He was a shift worker at the gas works, he would deliver coal on his days off, and he worked night time at the local grocer shop, stacking shelves.’’
The government stipends came with regular checkups from social workers. ‘‘They used to come and see that we were being taken care of and that we were alright. There was a lady that used to come in and she always left my mother in tears. She’d go through the house, the cupboards, lift up the girls’ dresses to check they had clean underwear on, look at the bedding and the beds. My mother was the cleanest lady you could come across. We all got the clean gene,’’ says Bruce.
The Wakari property, while built specifically for the family, was too expensive, so when the quads were 6 the Johnsons moved to Timaru. Growing up in the small town, Bruce felt as if he was living under a microscope. ‘‘Everybody knew everybody. Because we always went everywhere together, everybody knew who you were. You couldn’t do anything wrong.’’
When the quads were 2, one of them, Vera, contracted polio. She was stunted mentally and physically, says Bruce. Afraid that Vera would be made fun of, Catherine never let her children bring friends home.
‘‘Vera never talked. She also was paralysed down one side, she was crippled. She had a twisted right leg. They operated on her and straightened her leg and foot.
‘‘When we were coming up to our teenage years, my mother and father must have decided they couldn’t cope, so Mum talked to the child welfare people who she knew, they kept coming to our place - and Vera went to Templeton School farm, where she lived until she died. She knew us, but that was it. She knew Mum - she didn’t like Mum. So that was sad.’’ Vera lived at Templeton from age 12 until her death.
To the world they were the Johnson Quads, but Bruce says they felt more like triplets. ‘‘I know we were quads but there was only the three of us, and we did everything as three,’’ he says. ‘‘The photographers knew, the reporters knew, and they were always very kind, made no comments. If they took a photo it was always so that Vera didn’t show up in a bad light. We all loved her and we looked after her.’’
Kathleen and Mary went to Timaru Girls’ High School, and Bruce studied at Timaru Boys’ High School, until he was forced to leave by his mother at 15. ‘‘Mum came home and said, ‘You have to leave school. I’ve got you a job, you start work in the post office on Monday’. I was pissed off. I never got school certificate. But, so, I had to go to work. I started work as a telegram boy.’’
It was one of several occasions where Bruce fell victim to his mother’s harsh judgment. ‘‘I don’t think my mother liked me. She always said it would’ve been easier if I was a girl, which isn’t something I liked to hear.
‘‘There were a couple of incidents. When I started working, I was doing a correspondence course. She felt I shouldn’t be doing this study at home, so she burnt the papers. I had to get some more, and one of the guys at work helped me.
‘‘I told her I was going to Burnham [Military Camp] to do a course to be an officer and she said, ‘You’ll never amount to anything.’ There were other things that happened. But we don’t talk about them.’’
Only after the quads left Timaru did the public fascination begin to wane. Kathleen lived in Temuka, Mary moved to Gore, and Bruce left for Wellington, where he later married his wife, Wendy. His parents didn’t attend the ceremony. ‘‘There was no financial restriction. If they hadn’t had any money, I or my brothers-in-law would have paid for my father and mother to come up. But she found a thousand reasons why she couldn’t come up. I have no idea why. I didn’t ask.’’
Now, when he considers his childhood, Bruce recalls the birthdays at his Wakari home, and his father’s vegetable patch, and the chores collecting coal for the fire, mowing the lawns, polishing the floors - and the music.
Growing up, he and his siblings would perform popular songs to packed audiences. They loved to sing and play piano, but they were always left with a question that remains unanswered: ‘‘You wonder, having gone and performed, our performances were always OK and we got a good round of applause, but was it because we sung well or because we were quads? You don’t know, do you?’’
"It was terrible. We wished it didn't happen, but we couldn't avoid it. You can't escape. You can't just say, I'm not a quad." Bruce Johnson