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<title>Mary Toft</title>
<authors>Wikipedia</authors>
<publisher>wikipedia.org</publisher>
<publishedplace>network</publishedplace>
<publishedyear>2010</publishedyear>
<edition></edition>
<category>1700s births</category>
<section id="21714" fatherid="0" title="" lv="" priority="-1" level="1">
Mary Toft (née Denyer; c. 1701–1763), also spelled Tofts, was an English woman from Godalming, Surrey, who in 1726 became the subject of considerable controversy when she tricked doctors into believing that she had given birth to rabbits.
Toft became pregnant in 1726, but later miscarried. Apparently fascinated by a rabbit she had seen while working, she claimed to have given birth to parts of animals.  Local surgeon John Howard was called to investigate, and upon delivering several animal parts he notified other prominent physicians.  The matter came to the attention of Nathaniel St. André, surgeon to the Royal Household of King George I of Great Britain.  St. André investigated and concluded that Toft was telling the truth.  The king also sent surgeon Cyriacus Ahlers to see Toft, but Ahlers remained sceptical.  By now quite famous, Toft was brought to London and was studied at length.  Under intense scrutiny, and producing no more rabbits, she eventually confessed to the hoax and was subsequently imprisoned as a fraud.
The public mockery which followed created panic within the medical profession.  Several prominent surgeons' careers were ruined, and many satirical works were produced, each scathingly critical of the affair.  The pictorial satirist and social critic William Hogarth was notably critical of the gullibility of the medical profession.  Toft was eventually released without charge and returned to her home.

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<section id="21715" fatherid="0" title="Account" lv="" priority="2" level="1">
The story first came to the attention of the public in late October 1726, when reports began to reach London.  It was mentioned in the Weekly Journal, on 19 November 1726:
The woman mentioned, Mary Toft, twenty-four or twenty-five years old, was married to Joshua Toft, a journeyman clothier.  She was baptised Mary Denyer on 21 February 1703, the daughter of John and Jane Denyer.  She married Joshua about 1720, and they had three children, Mary, Anne, and James.  In 1726 she had become pregnant again, but as a peasant in 18th-century England she had no choice but to continue working in the fields.  Toft complained of painful complications early in the pregnancy. Early in August, she egested several pieces of flesh, one "as big as my arm". This may have been the result of an abnormality of the developing placenta, which caused the embryo to stop developing and blood clots and flesh to be ejected.  Several weeks later, on 27 September, she went into labour.  Her neighbour was called, and watched as Toft produced several animal parts.  She showed the pieces to her mother, and to her mother-in-law Ann Toft, who, by chance, was a midwife.  Ann Toft sent the pieces to John Howard, a man-midwife of thirty years experience, who lived in Guildford.
Initially Howard dismissed the notion out-of-hand, but despite his reservations, the next day he went to see Toft.  Ann Toft showed him further pieces of the previous night's exertions, but when he examined Mary, he found nothing.  She then began to go into labour, and appeared to give birth to several more animal parts.  Howard returned the next day, and continued his investigations.  According to a contemporary account of 9 November, over the next few days he delivered "three legs of a Cat of a Tabby Colour, and one leg of a Rabbet: the guts were as a Cat's and in them were three pieces of the Back-Bone of an Eel ... The cat's feet supposed were formed in her imagination from a cat she was fond of that slept on the bed at night."  Later Toft seemingly became ill again, and during the next few days delivered more pieces of rabbit.
As the story became more widely known, on 4 November Henry Davenant, a member of the court of King George I, went to Guildford to see what was happening for himself.  He examined the samples that Howard had collected, and returned to London, ostensibly a believer.  Howard had Toft moved to Guildford, where he offered to deliver rabbits in front of anyone who doubted the veracity of the story.  He wrote several letters notifying Davenant of any progress in the case.  Some of these came to the attention of Nathaniel St. André, since 1723 a Swiss surgeon to the Royal Household.  St. André detailed the contents of one of these letters in his pamphlet, A short narrative of an extraordinary delivery of rabbets (1727) (published several weeks after the event):

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<section id="21716" fatherid="0" title="Investigation" lv="" priority="3" level="1">
By the middle of November, the British Royal Family were so interested in the story that they sent St. André and Samuel Molyneux (secretary to the Prince of Wales) to investigate.  The two were, apparently, not disappointed; arriving on 15 November they met Howard, who took them to see Toft, who within hours delivered the torso of a rabbit.  St. André's account details his examination.  To check if the rabbit had breathed air, he placed a piece of its lung in water to see if it would float—which it did.  St. André then performed a medical examination on Toft, and concluded that the rabbits were bred in her Fallopian tubes.  In the doctors' absence, Toft reportedly delivered the torso of another rabbit later that day, which the two also examined.  They again returned that evening to find Toft again displaying violent contractions.  A further medical examination followed, and St. André delivered the skin of one of the rabbits, followed a few minutes later by the head.  Both men inspected the rabbit parts, and noted that some resembled the body parts of a cat.
Fascinated, in the same month the king sent another surgeon, Cyriacus Ahlers, to see Toft.  Ahlers arrived in Guildford on 20 November to find Toft exhibiting no signs of pregnancy.  Ahlers may have already suspected the affair was a hoax, and observed that Toft seemed to press her knees and thighs together, as if to prevent something from "dropping down".  Howard's behaviour was similarly suspicious, as he refused to allow Ahlers to aid in the delivery of the rabbits (although Ahlers was not a man-midwife, and in an earlier attempt he apparently put Toft through considerable pain).  Convinced the affair was a hoax he lied, telling those involved that he believed Toft's story.  He made his excuses and returned to London, taking with him specimens of the rabbits.  Upon closer study, he reportedly found evidence of them having been cut with a man-made instrument, and he also found bits of straw and grain in their droppings.
On 21 November Ahlers reported his findings to the King and later to "several Persons of Note and Distinction".  The next day, Howard wrote to Ahlers, asking for the return of the specimens he had taken with him.  Ahlers' suspicions began to worry both Howard and St. André, and apparently the King, because two days later St. André and a colleague were ordered back to Guildford.  Upon their arrival they met Howard, who told St. André that Toft had given birth to two additional rabbits.  She delivered several of what the men presumed to be portions of a placenta; the two men found her to be quite ill, with a constant pain in the  side of her abdomen.  In a pre-emptive move against Ahlers, St. André collected several affidavits from people who had witnessed Ahlers' behaviour.  These affidavits in effect cast doubt on Ahlers' honesty, and on 26 November St. André gave an anatomical demonstration before the king, supporting Toft's story.  According to his pamphlet, neither St. André nor Molyneux suspected any fraudulent activity.
Several days later Howard again wrote to St. André, who then travelled to Guildford (ordered by the king to return to London with Toft, so that further investigations could be carried out).  He was accompanied by Richard Manningham, a well-known obstetrician who had been knighted in 1721, and who was the second son of Thomas Manningham, the Bishop of Chichester.  He examined Toft and found the  side of her abdomen to be slightly enlarged.  While there, Manningham delivered what he thought was a hog's bladder (although St. André and Howard did not agree with his identification).  Manningham became suspicious as the bladder smelled of urine, but those involved agreed to say nothing in public, and on their return to London on 29 November lodged Toft in Lacey's Bagnio, in Leicester Fields.

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<section id="21717" fatherid="0" title="Examination" lv="" priority="-4" level="1">
Printed in the early days of newspapers, the story became a national sensation, although some publications were sceptical; the Norwich Gazette viewed the story simply as female gossip.  Rabbit stew and jugged hare disappeared from the dinner table.  As unlikely as the story sounded, many physicians felt compelled to see for themselves. The political writer John Hervey later told his friend Henry Fox that:

Under the strict control of St. André, Toft was studied by a number of eminent physicians and surgeons.  John Maubray was one such visitor.  In The Female Physician he had proposed that it was possible for women to give birth to a creature he named a Sooterkin.  Maubray was a proponent of maternal impression, a widely held belief that conception and pregnancy could be influenced by what the mother dreamt, or saw.  Maubray also warned pregnant women that over-familiarity with household pets could cause their children to resemble those pets.  He was reportedly happy to attend Toft, pleased that her case appeared to vindicate his theories.  Man-midwife James Douglas however, like Manningham, presumed that the affair was a hoax and kept his distance despite regular invitations to attend from St. André.  Douglas was one of the most respected anatomists in the country, and a well-known man-midwife, whereas St. André was often considered to be a member of the court only because of his ability to speak German (the King could not speak English).  St. André therefore desperately wanted the two to attend Toft; after George I's accession to the throne the Whigs had become the dominant political faction, and Manningham and Douglas' Whig affiliations and medical knowledge would elevate his status as both doctor, and philosopher.  Despite his early scepticism (Douglas thought that a woman giving birth to rabbits was as likely as a rabbit giving birth to a human child), Douglas went to see Toft.  Manningham informed him of the suspected hog's bladder, and, after examining Toft, he refused to engage St. André on the matter:
Under constant supervision, Toft went into labour several times, but nothing was delivered.

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<section id="21718" fatherid="0" title="Confession" lv="" priority="5" level="1">
The hoax was uncovered on 4 December.  Thomas Onslow had begun an investigation of his own and discovered that for the past month Joshua Toft had been buying young rabbits.  Convinced he had enough evidence against Toft, in a letter to physician Hans Sloane he wrote that the affair had "almost alarmed England", and that he would soon publish his findings.  On the same day, Thomas Howard, a porter at the bagnio, confessed to Sir Thomas Clarges (a Justice of the Peace) that he had been bribed to sneak a rabbit into Toft's chamber by Toft's sister-in-law, Margaret.  Mary was arrested and questioned; she denied the accusation but Margaret claimed under questioning by James Douglas that she had obtained the rabbit for eating only.
Manningham examined her and thought there was still something in the cavity of the uterus.  He successfully persuaded Clarges to allow Toft to remain at the bagnio.  Douglas, who was by now visiting Toft, questioned her on three or four occasions, each time for several hours.  After several days of this Manningham threatened to perform a painful operation on her, and on 7 December, in the presence of Manningham, Douglas, John Montagu and Frederick Calvert, Toft finally confessed.  Following her miscarriage, and while her cervix permitted access, an accomplice had inserted the claws and body of a cat, along with the head of a rabbit, into her womb.  They had also invented a story in which Toft claimed that during her pregnancy she had been startled by a rabbit while working in a field, and had since become obsessed with rabbits.  For later parturitions, animal parts had been inserted into her vagina.
Pressured again by Manningham and Douglas (it was Douglas that took down her confession), she made a further confession on 8 December, and another on 9 December before being sent to Tothill Fields Bridewell, charged on a statute of Edward III as a "vile cheat and imposter".  In her earlier, unpublished confessions, she blamed the entire affair on a range of other participants, from her mother-in-law to John Howard.  She also claimed that a travelling woman told her how to insert the rabbits into her body, and how such a scheme would ensure that she would "never want as long as I liv'd".  The British Journal reported that on 7 January 1727 she had appeared at the Courts of Quarter Sessions at Westminster, charged "for being an abominable cheat and imposter in pretending to be delivered of several monstrous births".  Margaret Toft however had remained staunch, and refused to comment further.  Mist's Weekly Journal of 24 December 1726 reported "the nurse has been examined as to the person's concerned with her, but either was kept in the dark as to the imposition, or is not willing to disclose what she knows; for nothing can be got from her; so that her resolution shocks others."

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<section id="21719" fatherid="0" title="Aftermath" lv="" priority="6" level="1">
In the aftermath of the hoax, the medical profession suffered a great deal of public mockery for its gullibility. William Hogarth published Cunicularii, or The Wise Men of Godliman in Consultation (1726), which portrays Toft in the throes of labour, surrounded by the chief participants of the tale.  Figure "F" is Toft, "E" is her husband.  "A" is St. André, and "D" is Howard.  In Three Characters in Hogarth's Cunicularii and Some Implications (1982) by Dennis Todd, the author concludes that figure "G" is Mary Toft's sister-in-law, Margaret Toft.  In her confession of 7 December, Mary Toft was insistent that her sister-in-law had no part in the hoax, but Manningham's An Exact Diary of what was observ'd during a Close Attendance upon Mary Toft, the pretended Rabbet-Breeder of Godalming in Surrey (1726) offers eyewitness testimony of Margaret's complicity.  Hogarth's print was not the only image that ridiculed the affair—George Vertue published The Surrey-Wonder, and The Doctors in Labour, or a New Wim-Wam in Guildford (12 plates) (1727), a broadsheet of twelve scenes satirising St. André as a jester, was also popular at the time.
The timing of Toft's confession proved awkward for St. André, who, on 3 December, had published his forty-page pamphlet: A Short Narrative of an Extraordinary Delivery of Rabbets.  St. André had staked his reputation on his publication, and although it offers a more empirical account of the Toft case than earlier more fanciful publications about reproduction in general, ultimately it became the source of much derision.  Ahlers, his scepticism now justified, published Some observations concerning the woman of Godlyman in Surrey (1726), which details his account of events and his suspicion of the complicity of both St. André and Howard.
St. André never recovered from the affair.  He recanted his views on 9 December 1726, and in 1729, following the death of Samuel Molyneux from poisoning, he married his widow Elizabeth—a situation which did little to impress his peers.  Samuel Molyneux's cousin accused him of the poisoning, a charge that St. André defended by suing for defamation, but the careers of St. André and his wife were permanently damaged by the scandal.  Elizabeth lost her attendance on Queen Caroline, and St. André was publicly humiliated at court.  Living on Elizabeth's considerable wealth, they retired to the country, where St. André died in 1776, aged 96.  Manningham, desperate to exculpate himself, published a diary of his observations of Mary Toft, together with an account of her confession of the fraud, on 12 December.  In it he suggested that Douglas had been fooled by Toft, and concerned with his image Douglas replied by publishing his own account.  Using the pseudonym 'Lover of Truth and Learning', in 1727 Douglas also published The Sooterkin Dissected.  A letter to Maubray, Douglas was scathingly critical of his Sooterkin theory, calling it "a mere fiction of your Maubray's brain".  The damage done to the medical profession was such that several doctors not connected with the tale felt compelled to print statements that they had not believed Toft's story.  John Howard appeared before the bench on 7 January 1727 (along with Toft) and was fined £800 (£ today).  He returned to Surrey and continued to practise.  He died in 1755.
Crowds reportedly mobbed Tothill Fields Bridewell for months, hoping to catch a glimpse of the now infamous woman who had by this time become quite ill.  While incarcerated she had her portrait drawn by John Laguerre, while holding a rabbit on her lap.  She was ultimately discharged on 8 April 1727, as it was unclear as to what charge should have been made.  The Toft family made no profit from the affair, and Mary Toft returned to Surrey.  She had a daughter in February 1727, and reappeared briefly in 1740 when she was imprisoned for receiving stolen goods, but was later reported to have died in 1763.
The case was cited by opponents of Robert Walpole as symbolising the age, which they perceived as greedy, corrupt, and deceitful.  One author, writing to the Prince of Wales' mistress, suggested the story was a political portent of the approaching death of the prince's father.  On 7 January 1727 Mist's Weekly Journal satirised the matter, making several allusions to political change, and compared the affair to the events in 1641, when Parliament began its revolution against King Charles I of England.  The scandal provided the writers of Grub Street with enough material to produce pamphlets, squibs, broadsides, and ballads, for several months.  With publications such as St. André's Miscarriage (1727) and The anatomist dissected: or the man-midwife finely brought to bed (1727) satirists scorned the objectivity of men-midwives, and critics of Toft's attendants questioned their integrity, undermining their profession by introducing sexual puns and allusions.  The case raised questions about England's status as an "enlightened" nation—Voltaire used the case in his brief essay Singularités de la nature to describe how the Protestant English were still influenced by an ignorant Church.
Toft did not escape the ire of the satirists, who concentrated mainly on sexual innuendo.  Some took advantage of a common 18th-century word for a rabbit track-prick-and others were scatological in nature.  Much Ado about Nothing; or, A Plain Refutation of All that Has Been Written or Said Concerning the Rabbit-Woman of Godalming (1727) was however one of the more cutting satires written about Toft.  The document supposes to be the confession of 'Merry Tuft', "... in her own Stile and Spelling".  Poking fun at her illiteracy, it makes a number of obscene suggestions hinting at her promiscuity-"I wos a Wuman as had grate nattural parts, and a large Capassiti, and kapible of being kunserned in depe Kuntrivansis."  The document also ridicules several of the physicians involved in the affair, and reflects the general view portrayed by the satirists that Toft was a weak woman, and the least complicit of "the offenders" (regardless of her guilt).  This notion contrasts with that expressed of her before the hoax was revealed, and may indicate an overall strategy to disempower Toft completely.  This is reflected in one of the most notable satires of the affair, Alexander Pope and William Pulteney's anonymous satirical ballad The Discovery; or, The Squire Turn'd Ferret.  Published in 1726 and aimed at Samuel Molyneux, it rhymes "hare" with "hair", and "coney" with "cunny".  The ballad opens with the following verse:

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<section id="21720" fatherid="0" title="References" lv="" priority="-7" level="1">
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<section id="21721" fatherid="0" title="Further reading" lv="" priority="-8" level="1">
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<section id="21722" fatherid="0" title="External links" lv="" priority="-9" level="1">
Category:1700s births
Category:1763 deaths
Category:People from Godalming
Category:Medical scandals
Category:Hoaxes in the United Kingdom
Category:18th-century English people
Category:English women

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