Disclaimer: Details of this story vary from source to source
Mary Toft was a peasant woman who lived during the 18th century. She had a hard life, working long hours as a servant day after day with little to no power both as a woman and as an impoverished person. She appears to be just like millions of other people throughout history; a small fish in a big pond, soon forgotten by the world. However, despite her humble roots Toft would not be soon forgotten. You know what they say, all press is good press. Well, Mary Toft has gone down in history as the woman who gave birth to rabbits.
In September 1726, Toft took a break from her typical rise and grind lifestyle to give birth to what was described as a “strange creature.” Her mother-in-law, Ann Toft, was alarmed and sent for a doctor. A man named John Howard examined Toft but didn’t find anything out of the ordinary. That is, until she popped out three cat legs, a rabbit leg, a cat who had its liver removed, and the backbone of an eel. (It’s a good thing gender reveals weren’t commonplace yet because I don’t know what color they would have made the inside of the cake.) Howard was baffled, Toft had suffered a miscarriage a month prior and still appeared to be pregnant, so it seemed to check out that she would give birth. What didn’t check out was the offspring she seemed to be producing.
After this, Toft began to give birth to a rabbit almost every day. It didn’t take long for the bunny birther to become very hot gossip, gaining the attention of doctors, physicians, and even King George l. The king was intrigued and sent some of his people to investigate. When questioned about how she could possibly be giving birth to rabbits, Toft explained that she had had a run in with a rabbit during her pregnancy and afterwards thought about the rabbit obsessively, even craving rabbit meat. The idea that her thoughts could create rabbits in her womb aligned with pseudo science at the time. According to Burials and Beyond “John Maubray, a famous physician, was particularly pleased with Mary’s plight. In his work, The Female Physician, Maubray proposed that women could give birth to non-human children, which he named ‘sooterkin’. He believed in the power of ‘maternal impression’, in that sooterkin came about through the dreams and thoughts of the expectant mother. He subsequently warned women not to become too fond of, or over-familiar with, household pets during pregnancy, lest their children resemble those pets. Through Mary’s animal births, for a short period, Maubray’s theory was somewhat vindicated.”
Eventually, Toft was promised compensation to stay outside of her home so that medical professionals could more closely monitor her. This is where Toft’s hoax started to fall apart. Her “labor” did not have normal characteristics such as placenta, blood, or raised pulse. Under the new surveillance she also stopped giving birth to rabbits. What finally exposed Toft was a porter being caught sneaking in a rabbit. The porter had been bribed by her family to do so. Toft finally gave up the charade, confessing that she had been giving birth to animal parts that had been manually inserted inside of her. She claimed to have been forced by her mother in law who was searching for money and fame. For herself, she hoped to have enough money to never want again and to be able to provide for her family.
I personally have a lot of sympathy for Toft and understand where the logic came from to attempt such a ridiculous hoax. Toft and her family were very poor. So poor in fact that her recent miscarriage likely occurred due to the fact that she had to continue to do hard labor for her entire pregnancy. The idea of becoming famous and, more importantly, rich was enticing and at the time giving birth to animals wasn’t that insane of a way to go about it. Ann Foster Writer explains “English culture at this time was very interested in anything they saw as “monstrous”, and so ambitious people would try and round up interesting people or “monsters” to take on exhibits to get rich.” It also is incredibly likely that she was forced into doing this either through mental manipulation or pyshcial force. The amount of pain Toft went through during these “births” was immense and the people who ended up looking dumb were the rich white dudes who sought to exploit her anyways. So ha.