In the autumn of 1726, word spread from the town of Godalming in Surrey, southwest of London, that a woman there was giving birth to rabbits.
Her name was Mary Toft. She was in her mid-twenties, poor, and married to a cloth worker. Over a period of several weeks she appeared to deliver parts of rabbits, along with other animal parts, in front of medical men. Some of the doctors who examined her believed what they saw. One of them was a surgeon to the king.
The hoax fell apart in December 1726. For a few weeks before that, though, it was a national sensation, and the people who had believed it never fully recovered their reputations.
How it started
According to the accounts, Toft had suffered a miscarriage earlier that year. After that, she began producing what looked like animal parts. A local surgeon and male midwife, John Howard, was called in, and he reported delivering parts of rabbits from her over a period of time.
Howard wrote to other medical men about the case, and word spread. It was not long before the story reached the court of King George I.
The experts arrive
The king sent Nathaniel St. André, a surgeon and anatomist attached to the royal household, to look into it. St. André traveled to Guildford, where Toft had been moved, and reported watching her deliver rabbit parts. He came away convinced the case was genuine and published a pamphlet describing it.
Another royal visitor, Cyriacus Ahlers, also a surgeon to the king, went to see her as well. Ahlers grew suspicious. He noticed details that did not fit a real birth, and he held on to some of the material he was shown. He later concluded that the whole thing was a fraud.
Part of the reason the case was taken seriously was a belief common at the time, known as maternal impression. Many people, some physicians included, thought that what a pregnant woman saw, wanted or feared could shape the body of her unborn child. Toft said she had been chasing rabbits in a field and had craved them while she was pregnant. That gave her story a framework that some educated people found plausible.
Moving to London
In late November 1726, Toft was brought to London and lodged at a bagnio, or bathhouse, in Leicester Fields, now Leicester Square, where she could be watched more closely. Crowds gathered outside.
Once she was under close observation, the rabbit births stopped.
The confession
Suspicion kept building. A porter at the bagnio was caught trying to sneak a rabbit into her room, and he said Toft's sister-in-law had asked him to get one.
Sir Richard Manningham, a well-known male midwife, had been examining her. Together with others, he pressed her to confess, reportedly with the threat of a painful surgical examination to get at the truth. In early December 1726, she confessed that she had been inserting rabbit parts and other animal remains into her body and then pretending to give birth to them.
She was arrested and held for a short time on charges of being a "vile cheat and impostor." She was later released without a trial.
Who was in on it?
Toft's own story shifted over time. She implicated other people, including members of her family and an unnamed woman who she said had given her the idea. Historians remain unsure how much of the scheme was hers and how much came from others who encouraged her.
Whether Howard was fooled or took part is also unclear. He was never charged. The motive is generally assumed to have been money, possibly in the hope of a royal pension. Some historians have noted that Toft was poor and that her situation was desperate.
The fallout for doctors
For the medical men who had believed it, the hoax was a disaster. St. André in particular became a target of widespread ridicule. Satirical prints mocked the doctors involved. The most famous of them is by William Hogarth, Cunicularii, or The Wise Men of Godliman in Consultation (1726), which shows Toft in bed with doctors gathered around her.
Hogarth came back to the subject decades later in Credulity, Superstition, and Fanaticism (1762), which once again shows Toft giving birth to rabbits, this time as a symbol of foolish belief.
Histories of medicine often cite the episode as a turning point in the decline of the theory of maternal impression. After so public an embarrassment, it became harder for educated people to take such ideas seriously.
What happened to Mary Toft
Toft went back to Godalming. She lived for decades afterward and died in 1763. Her name turned up in the news once more in 1740, when she was imprisoned for receiving stolen goods. For the rest of her life she was known as the woman who gave birth to rabbits.
How to read this kind of story
The Toft affair offers a clear lesson in how experts can be fooled.
- Prior beliefs matter. People who already accepted maternal impression were more willing to believe her story.
- Reputations create momentum. Once a royal surgeon had declared it real, others gave the claim more weight.
- Controlled observation changes everything. The births stopped as soon as she was watched closely in London.
- Physical evidence should be examined as well as witnessed. Ahlers kept samples and studied them properly, and that is what raised his doubts.
What the record supports
- The main events are documented in pamphlets published in 1726 by the doctors involved, in newspaper reports and in Toft's confession.
- The motive is an assumption and has never been proven.
- The degree of involvement of others is uncertain, because her accounts kept changing.
Sources
- Nathaniel St. André, A Short Narrative of an Extraordinary Delivery of Rabbets (London, 1726).
- Sir Richard Manningham, An Exact Diary of What Was Observ'd During a Close Attendance upon Mary Toft (London, 1726).
- Lisa Forman Cody, "The Doctor's in Labour; or a New Whim Wham from Guildford," Gender and History, 1992.
- S. A. Seligman, "Mary Toft: The Rabbit Breeder," Medical History, vol. 5 (1961).
- British Museum collection, William Hogarth, Cunicularii (1726) and Credulity, Superstition, and Fanaticism (1762).