Edward Mordake was the name given to
an apocryphal 19th century heir to an unspecified English peerage who was said
to have suffered from a form of Diprosopus. According to sources, he had an
extra face on the back of his head, which could neither eat nor speak out
loudly, although it was described as being able to laugh and cry. Edward
reportedly begged doctors to have his “demon face” removed, claiming that it
whispered to him at night, but no doctor would attempt it. He committed suicide
“in his 23rd year.”
He lived in complete seclusion,
refusing the visits even of the members of his own family. He was a young man
of fine attainments, a profound scholar, and a musician of rare ability. His
figure was remarkable for its grace, and his face — that is to say, his natural
face — was that of an Antinous. But upon the back of his head was another face,
that of a beautiful girl, ‘lovely as a dream, hideous as a devil’.
The female
face was a mere mask, ‘occupying only a small portion of the posterior part of
the skull, yet exhibiting every sign of intelligence, of a malignant sort,
however’. It would be been seen to smile and sneer while Mordake was weeping.
The eyes would follow the movements of the spectator, and the lips ‘would
gibber without ceasing’. No voice was audible, but Mordake avers that he was
kept from his rest at night by the hateful whispers of his ‘devil twin’, as he
called it, ‘which never sleeps, but talks to me forever of such things as they
only speak of in Hell. No imagination can conceive the dreadful temptations it
sets before me. For some unforgiven wickedness of my forefathers I am knit to
this fiend — for a fiend it surely is. I beg and beseech you to crush it out of
human semblance, even if I die for it.’ Such were the words of the hapless
Mordake to Manvers and Treadwell, his physicians. In spite of careful watching,
he managed to procure poison, whereof he died, leaving a letter requesting that
the ‘demon face’ might be destroyed before his burial, ‘lest it continues its dreadful
whisperings in my grave.’ At his own request he was interred in a waste place,
without stone or legend to mark his grave.”
The 1896 text Anomalies and
Curiosities of Medicine mentions a version of the story, and Edward has now
been featured in many texts, plays, and songs.
A US thriller film named Edward
Mordrake that is based on the story is scheduled for a 24 October 2014 release.
