This lady, a Surrey native and English
woman, caused a stir by convincing doctors that she had given birth to rabbits.
By being reportedly pregnant in 1726,
the affair ended in what was described as a miscarriage.
She claimed to have given birth to the animal parts
and then handed them over to John Howard, a local physician.
It would also be George I’s surgeon Nathanial St.
Andre who would take a keen interest in the developments.
It was decided her condition was actually correct, but who was kidding?
By now, she had made a name for herself, and it wasn’t until
she faced a closure inspection that the truth came out.
So join me now as we enter the weird and warren-like world of Mary Toft.
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In late October of 1726, stories began to arrive in London,
and the public learned of the incident for the first time.
Mary Denyer was born to John and Jane Denyer
on February 21 1703, would in time go onto marry
Joshua Toft, a journeyman clothier, in 1720.
When Toft became pregnant for the second time in 1726,
at the time, it was customary for English peasants
of the 18th century to keep working she had no choice.
This caused a difficult pregnancy, during which she egested multiple
chunks of flesh, including one “as big as an arm.” In early August
it was suggested a placental anomaly could have been to blame for this,
as it would have halted embryonic development
and led to the expulsion of blood clots and pieces of flesh.
But on September 27, Toft gave birth to a baby boy.
However, a neighbour was summoned to their horror seeing what appeared to be “animal parts”.
The parts were then taken to her mother-in-law
Anne Toft, who just happened to be a midwife at the time.
Yet it would fall on John Howard, a thirty-year-old midwife,
to begin a complete scientific account of how this came to be.
Despite initial scepticism, Howard visited Toft,
but his examination proved pointless as nothing untoward showed up.
Mary again fell into labour and, once gain, produced other animal parts.
As the story began to spread, another member of George
I’s court Henry Davenant went to see for himself
to get to the bottom of all the ongoing fuss.
The British royal family
picked up on the story and, by all accounts, were completely intrigued.
They sent one of their own, Samuel Molyneux,
who at the time was secretary to the prince of wales.
By November 15, Molyneux and St.
Andre were taken by Howard to the home of Toft.
Within hours of their visit she had delivered a rabbit’s torso.
To check if the rabbit had breathed air, its lung was placed in water
to see if it would float, and it did.
The monarch now completely bemused, dispatched
Cyriacus Ahlers, a surgeon, to Guildford.
On November 20, when Ahlers arrived, Toft showed no pregnancy symptoms.
When he saw Toft pressing her legs and thighs together
as if to keep something from “falling down”
he may have already suspected the whole affair was a scam.
Even though Ahlers was not a man-midwife and had supposedly
put Toft through a lot of suffering in an earlier effort, Howard’s behaviour
seemed just as dubious to him as Howard would not allow Ahlers near toft
when she apparently was about to give birth.
When Ahlers realised the whole thing was a hoax,
he lied to everyone involved and pretended to believe Toft’s narrative.
Then, he made an excuse to return to London
and took several specimens with him as souvenirs.
There were bits of straw and grain in their faeces,
suggesting they had been sliced with a human-made instrument,
which he had discovered upon closer inspection.
The king and “many Persons of Note and Distinction”
heard Ahlers’ conclusions on November 21.
The following day, Howard contacted Ahlers by letter
to request the return of his samples. Both Howard and St.
André became suspicious of Ahlers, and the monarch may have become concerned
as well, for two days later, the king ordered St.
André and another employee back to Guildford.
St. André was greeted by Howard, who informed him that Toft
had given birth to two additional rabbits since their last visit.
She had already become pretty ill by the time she gave birth
and the continuous agony on the right side of her belly
made delivery difficult.
On November 26, St.André conducted
an anatomical demonstration in front of the king to back Toft’s story.
He also gathered affidavits from other witnesses to doubt Ahlers’ honesty as
a preemptive strike against him.
A leaflet claimed that neither St.
André nor Molyneux had any reason to suspect dishonesty.
The king gave St. André orders to return
to Guildford and bring Toft to London for further inquiries.
Richard Manningham, a famous obstetrician and the second son
of Thomas Manningham, Bishop of Chichester, joined him.
According to his examination, Toft had a slight enlargement
of her abdomen over on the right side.
But even though St. André
and Howard disputed Manningham’s identification,
he delivered what he assumed
was a hog’s bladder but became suspicious when he realised it smelled like pee.
However, everyone involved decided not to discuss the incident publicly.
Toft was sent to a brothel where she would remain
for the foreseeable future.
On December 4, less than a week
after the scam was first reported, it was finally exposed.
Through his research, Thomas Onslow, 2nd Baron Onslow, learned that Toft’s spouse,
Joshua, had been purchasing baby rabbits for the past month.
Assuring physician Sir Hans Sloane in a letter that he would soon
publish his results, he declared that the matter had “quite frightened England.”
On the same day, Toft’s sister-in-law, Margaret, hired a brothel porter,
Thomas Howard, to smuggle a rabbit into Toft’s room,
Howard eventually confessed his crime to Justice of the Peace Sir Thomas Clarges.
Mary disputed the charge when she was taken into custody, while
Margaret stated that she had just gotten the rabbit for food when questioned.
Examining Toft, Manningham concluded that something was still inside her,
he convinced Clarges to let her stay at the brothel.
By this time, James Douglas yet another man midwife
had made it out to Toft, and he on at least three
separate occasions spent hours interrogating her.
Manningham threatened to subject Toft to a painful operation.
This seemed to work although for several days
the questioning continued before she finally confessed on December 7
in front of Manningham, Douglas, John Montagu, and Frederick Calvert.
A cat’s claws and body, along with a rabbit’s
head, were placed inside her womb by an accomplice after her miscarriage
while her cervix was still large enough to allow entry.
The Toft’s had concocted a scenario in which Mary
became pregnant after she was startled by a rabbit
while working in a field it was at this point the idea came to her.
Public ridicule of the medical community’s
seeming naiveté ensued once the fraud was exposed.
Toft’s confession came at an inconvenient time for St.
André, who had just released his forty-page report, A Short
Narrative of an Extraordinary Delivery of Rabbets, on December 3.
The surgeon had bet his reputation on this paper.
Still, despite offering a more factual account of the Toft case than earlier,
more imaginative articles about reproduction in general,
it was ultimately mocked.
Ahlers’s scepticism was well-founded.
St.Andre’s career was over, his reputation permanently damaged.
Some unrelated doctors felt forced to publicly announce
that they had not believed
Toft’s narrative because of the damage it had done to the credibility
of the medical community. John Howard and Toft appeared in court
on January 7 1727,
where Howard was fined £800.
He returned to his profession in Surrey, where he worked until he died
in 1755. Months passed by and with crowds
camping out at Tothill Fields Bridewell to glimpse the now-infamous Toft.
She was very unwell by this point, yet while in jail,
she did commission a portrait
Since it was unclear what if any accusation should have been
brought against her, she was finally released on April 8 1727.
Mary Toft returned to Surrey after the affair ended
with no gain for herself or her family.
In the Godalming parish register,
her daughter Elizabeth was listed as the “first child following her alleged
Rabett-breeding” she was born in February
1728. Mary Toft’s afterlife is essentially a mystery.
In 1740, she reappeared when she was incarcerated for handling stolen property.
Her obituary appeared in London newspapers
in 1763, and on January 13, she was laid to rest in Godalming,
where she had lived for some time. Although Toft had tried
and failed to corrupt those with influence in a story that was
completely crazy from the start, yet one that back in the day,
surgeons and senior doctors fell for hook, line and sinker.
She may have escaped
the people’s wrath by being discharged back to her home county, but the day’s
satirists were far from lenient over how she should be portrayed.
Poking fun alongside accusations
and even obscene suggestions were classed as fair play.
It said Toft was a woman of weakness; she brought upon the ridicule by herself
and attempted to defraud the establishment’s surgeons
along with other higher-ranking officials.
Who knows what her ideal scenario was, maybe to gain some money
or highlight her plight in a world where she was utterly invisible.
From time to time, history throws up characters
that are difficult to understand, and the pains in which they go
to attempt leverage on society are beyond recall.
Yet Mary Toft partially,
at least for a while, managed to pull the rabbit from the hat,
and succeeded in having her 15 minutes of fame.
Doctors of the time didnt understand the womens anatomy
and health was largely a hit and miss subject.
What we do know is that quite probably on her visit
by a surgeon she uttered those immortal words.
What’s up, doc?