The Girl Who Gave Birth to Rabbits, Mary Toft

All right, all right, so I may have been trying to pull you in with this title, but this is a story I couldn't pass up sharing! Medical mysteries always seem to hold listeners in deep fascination, and no doubt, what causes us to turn up the TV today is what caused Mary Toft to grow infamous in the 18^th century. Mary Toft was a servant girl, and a scant 25 years old when she managed to convince England that she had had babies, rabbit babies to be exact.

Toft had wanted to become famous (infamous is not the same as famous, some people fail to realize this), and through shady ingeniousness, had developed a first class hoax that would gain her that desired fame.

In 1726, Toft placed several rabbit parts inside of her in a manner that she would be able to convince a surgeon (John Howard) that she was giving birth when she summoned him.

When he arrived, she acted out the role of her life, and 'delivered' the oddity. Of course such a scene did not go unnoticed, and the word spread of this shocking birth. Word even reached King George I, who sent his own surgeon (not to mention an astronomer) to check the story.

Mary Toft again repeated her performance, once again wowing the crowd. Now comes in the story of her pregnancy, which is what really sold the dismayed believers.

In the time when Mary Toft lived, people believed that what a pregnant woman did directly affected her baby. Not what kinds of food she did or didn't eat, but what she actually saw and heard.

For example, if a woman expecting had been startled by a loud sound, her child might be born deaf.

This belief leant Toft's story some credibility at the time, she claimed that during her pregnancy she craved rabbit meat, she dreamed of rabbits - and even tried to catch them. This had the effect (paired with the visual aids) of tying a neat bow on the package, she was having rabbit babies!

Mary Toft gave 'birth' to her rabbits reportedly 16 to 17 times, and she did indeed gain her own version of 'fame.'

However, Mary was later forced to admit her hoax when someone admitted to smuggling to Mary a rabbit. For all the public mockery the medical world would undergo, Toft was rewarded with jail time. Mary escaped harsh punishment though because she was released a short time later with out punishment or prosecution. Though that reason remains unknown why she was released.

What caused her to do this in the first place is perhaps a little more readily known, Mary genuinely suffered a miscarriage shortly before this hoax happened. Perhaps that is what lead her to such a trick, and maybe gained her some leniency in her punishment.

It just goes to show you, you can't believe everything you see!

Sources:

http://www.earlymodernweb.org.uk/emn/index.php/archives/2005/02/of-cats-rabbits-and-monstrous-births/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Toftshttp://skepdic.com/toft.html