The Lawson quins with older sister Leeann (in white) at her wedding in 2003. From left: Deborah, Lisa, Leeann, Samuel, Shirlene and Selina.
The Lawson quins with older sister Leeann (in white) at her wedding in 2003. From left: Deborah, Lisa, Leeann, Samuel, Shirlene and Selina.
New Zealand’s most famous babies turn 50 tomorrow. Biographer Paul Little gained unique access to the Lawson siblings for a new book about their lives.
When people found out I was writing a book about the Lawson quins there were three things they asked me, in this order: Do they all get on? Are they identical? Didn't something bad happen to them?
To which the answers are: Yes — mainly. No, but they definitely look like they're related. You can say that again.
These questions were often followed by a look of horror when it's pointed out to my questioners that the five Lawson babies they remember as adorable moppets turn 50 tomorrow. There will be a fuss, of course: coverage of the event on TV One's Sunday. A glamorous photoshoot for the New Zealand Woman's Weekly. And the biography.
As a ghost writer and biographer I have been lucky enough to spend time with some of New Zealand's most remarkable people and record their life stories: Willie Apiata, Sir Ray Avery, Sir Michael Hill and Paul Henry are all disparate and impressive individuals. But I have never met anyone as formidable as the Lawsons — and yes, that includes Willie Apiata.
I have been as fascinated by their story as anyone else who remembers the births of Samuel, Deborah, Lisa, Shirlene and Selina and the national sensation it caused. That, by the way, is how they always list themselves — in the order they were born.
But I knew little about them beyond what most of the public did — their birth was a medical milestone, they grew up under constant media scrutiny, their mother Ann was murdered by their stepfather when they were 16 and then they disappeared from view, popping up for the occasional anniversary magazine cover or TV special.
How did you persuade them to do a book, people also wanted to know. In fact, they approached me and I needed no persuading. We were put in touch with each other by Mark Everton, who had written, produced and directed the superb and sad 1998 documentary The Five of Us: The Life of the Lawson Quins.
The Lawson quintuplets in a picture dated July 1966. Photo / File
I met Selina first at her suggestion in a Grey Lynn cafe. Tall, beautiful (they're a fine-looking bunch) and impeccably groomed, Selina looked like someone who would greet you in the Koru Lounge which, by the time the book was finished, was exactly what she was doing for a living.
She talked like a tornado, frankly and thoroughly. I realised I would have no trouble getting information from at least one Lawson.
Then I sat down and watched The Five of Us again. It left me miserable for all the wrong reasons: everything was there.
The early years, the great childhood stories, the terrible years with their stepfather Gary Eyton, the murder-suicide and the years off the rails everywhere from here to Australia and the US.
Yet, in the time I spent with them, the Lawsons never ceased to come up with information I hadn't heard before — from their own fertility struggles to sharing houses with ghosts to the moving story of how they took their mother's ashes from Waikumete Cemetery and reinterred them in a family plot on Norfolk Island. (They are direct Fletcher Christian descendants on their mother's side.)
There were also many myths and rumours to dispense with. Didn't their mother commit suicide? Hardly. Didn't she get pregnant so she could get five family benefits? Because that would be such easy money. Didn't the Government buy them a house? The Government gave them financial help, much of which had to be repaid.
Some were more enthusiastic about the book project than the others. Selina and Deborah were the prime movers.
For a while I thought I might end up with a book about the Lawson twins. Shirlene was wary and slow to drop her reserve. Samuel kept his distance throughout. Lisa is simply the least interested in being any sort of public person.
She later told me how much she hadn't wanted to participate in the programme done for their 21st, when they gathered in Sydney and spoke with broadcaster Kevin Milne.
"I just sat there with my arms folded and my nose in the air, not contributing," says Lisa. Selina cringes to think that "there's me pregnant, smoking and having a bourbon and Coke".
But that is one of the Lawsons' strengths — they don't deny or gloss over their past. They know it has got them where they are today.
And where, people also want to know, is that? Are they "okay"?
Indeed they are. And given their experiences, there was no guarantee they would reach their half century alive let alone in as positive shape as they are.
Many people would have used the experiences they have had as an excuse to indulge in every kind of self-destructive behaviour.
There was also a lot of interest in how the mere fact of their multiple birth would affect them. In some ways the answer to that is: not very much.
Other multiples conceived using the same technology at the time had not survived but, as far as their physical wellbeing goes, there seem to have been no ill effects connected with the circumstances of the quins' conception.
As a parent I was obsessed with the mechanics of how any parent or parents could manage five children who were going through the same things at the same time. One magazine cover shows Ann holding all her babies at once, but it's clear she would only have been able to manage that for seconds.
The routines were strict, and there were Karitane nurses to help feed, bathe and change in the early days. Nappies were sent to a hospital laundry, but weaning, toilet training and learning to sleep through the night were all difficulties multiplied five-fold.
There was a similar problem for their chronicler. Normally, a biography involves telling one person's life story, but I had five to deal with.
Until their mother was murdered, the Lawsons' lives ran mostly in parallel, but then they diverged and I had to keep track of various strands, which sometimes intersected as they crossed paths — Shirl and Lisa living together in Australia, or Samuel and Deborah in the US with older sister Leeann — before diverging again.
Their lives have been so full of incident they neglect to mention incidents that would loom large in other people's minds.
When, having completed my draft, I caught up with Everton, I found he hadn't heard many of the stories that are in the book — such as Deborah's road trip with a gay warlock or, before his children were born, father Sam Lawson's move to Hollywood where he made an unsuccessful attempt to become a movie star.
But the most important thing about the book, as far as the sisters were concerned, was that on this landmark birthday they would have been able to tell their story themselves, as completely as they could tell it.
In some ways they are like any group of siblings — they just happen to have been born on the same day.
They even fall into traditional sibling roles in the order of their birth — Deborah acts like the eldest girl, which she is, and Selina acts like the youngest, which she is.
It's regrettable that Samuel — "the boy" as he's known — decided after some to-ing and fro-ing not to be directly involved in the book. His story is there through the memories and descriptions of his sisters, but if they have chosen to deal with their experience by talking it out he has ultimately adopted the opposite strategy.
Only once did I meet all four sisters together and it was as chaotic as you would expect, hilarity and bickering abounded, but in even the scratchiest moments there was love in the room and an ability to work and make decisions together that came perfectly naturally.
They are alike yet different. They are mothers and grandmothers. All are achievers, all work incredibly hard, all have made independent lives.
Selina is still restless, the one who thinks there might be something better just around the corner; Deborah is the spiritually focused, assertive — her sisters use the word "bossy" — one; Lisa, who recently suffered a sudden bereavement when her much-loved partner died, is the most reserved and Shirlene is the down-to-earth, get-on-with-it one.
1965 photo of Ann Lawson in hospital after giving birth to quintuplets. Photo / File
But there are two other remarkable women in this story. Ann, the indefatigable toiler, devoted mother and ultimately tragic victim. And her first-born, Leeann, five years older than her sisters and brother.
Their surrogate mother and the one to whom they still turn in times of crisis, Leeann has been there to support them time and again. When Deborah lost a child to cot death at the age of 19, it was Leeann who flew from the new life she had made for herself in the US and took Deborah back with her.
Perhaps the most poignant part of the tragedy is hearing of the efforts Ann Lawson had made to protect her children from the man who would ultimately kill her and himself.
"Why," people asked, "didn't she try to get away from him?"
Of course, she did. But when the man you're trying to get away from threatens to kill your children if you don't come home, and the system appears to be on his side, you're likely to do his bidding.
Those were the days when abused women were often escorted back to their assailants in a police car.
