Sarah Morlok Cotton obituary: Last of ‘miracle' Morlok quadruplets

Times

2 days ago

On May 19, 1930, Sadie Morlok went into labour a month early. She suspected she was pregnant with twins, but proceeded to deliver four identical girls whom the nurses identified with different-coloured wristbands. For four babies to be born from a single egg was considered a medical miracle at that time, and their births caused a sensation.
The press and newsreel companies, both domestic and international, had a field day. The quadruplets' local newspaper in Lansing, Michigan, held a naming competition that attracted 12,000 entries and was won by the ten-year-old daughter of the doctor who delivered the babies. She suggested Edna, Wilma, Sarah and Helen to match the initials of the EW Sparrow Hospital where they were born, and the girls were given the middle initials A, B,C and D.
The city council gave the family free housing, medical support and milk. Wellwishers donated money and knitted clothes. A Massachusetts pram company made a special four-seater. People turned up at the family's modest home in the hope of glimpsing the girls, and soon Sadie, a nurse, and her husband, Carl, a factory worker, were charging them 25c for admission. Carl — dubbed 'Jolly Carl' by the newspapers — ran for the post of city constable using pictures of his daughters in his campaign leaflets, won comfortably and held the post for 26 years.
When the girls were old enough, Sadie signed them up for singing and dancing lessons. Before long they were performing on stage across the northeastern United States, wearing identical outfits and delighting audiences during the Depression.
But their outward appeal concealed the darkness of their family life. Carl, their father, was a Nazi sympathiser of German descent, and an extreme authoritarian whose mother had been mentally disturbed. He was dismayed when his wife gave birth to quads. 'What will they think my wife is — a bitch dog,' he allegedly exclaimed.
He refused to let his daughters mix with other children or take part in extracurricular school activities. He did not take them on vacations, allow them to wear trousers or let them enjoy themselves at weekends. As they grew up he banned them from having boyfriends and began sexually abusing them. He had two of them — Helen and Wilma — surgically circumcised in their teens to prevent them from masturbating.
He was 'one of the worst fathers on earth' and their home was a 'house of horrors', said Audrey Clare Farley, an academic who revealed their true story in a 2023 book entitled Girls and Their Monsters. They were 'presented as smiling and happy children when they were being controlled, manipulated and abused by their dad. Since their mom did nothing to stop him, she was complicit.'
Sarah, the last surviving sibling, had written in a 2015 memoir, The Morlok Quadruplets: The Alphabet Sisters: 'We often felt like little tin soldiers marching to my father's rules. It was kind of sad growing up. We felt so restricted.' The memoir glossed over the horrors of her youth.
One by one the girls developed mental problems. Helen was removed from school the year Sadie was named Lansing's mother of the year, and kept at home. Edna quit her job at 20 and was put in an institution. A year later Wilma was diagnosed with schizophrenia, followed by Sarah. All but Sarah were given electroconvulsive therapy.
When the girls turned 24, they were invited to participate in a study of schizophrenia at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). They lived on its campus in Bethesda, Maryland, for the next three years while a large team of psychologists, psychoanalysts, sociologists and other experts sought to determine whether their illness was caused by nature or nurture.
The result was a rather inconclusive 636-page tome entitled 'The Genain Quadruplets: A Case Study and Theoretical Analysis of Heredity and Environment in Schizophrenia', which was published in 1963. The quads were given the pseudonym 'Genain' — Greek for 'dire birth' — to protect their privacy. Of the four girls, only Sarah recovered sufficiently to lead an independent life, perhaps because she received better treatment than her siblings at the NIMH or because she had been less badly abused by her father.
While the other three returned to Lansing and were eventually institutionalised at the now-defunct Northville Psychiatric Hospital, she remained in the Washington-Baltimore area and found work as a legal secretary. In 1961 she married George Cotton, an air force officer whom she had met through her church youth group. They had three children: a girl who died at birth and two sons, William, who died in 1994, and David.
It was not a happy marriage, but Sarah loyally stayed with her husband until he left her. Later in life she followed David back to her native Michigan. Wilma died in 2002, Helen in 2003 and Edna in 2015, leaving her as the last of the once-famous 'Morlok Quads'.
Sarah Morlok Cotton was born on May 19, 1930. She died on July 7, 2025, aged 95