Did Mary Toft GIVE BIRTH TO 17 RABBITS in 1726? In one of those strange tales from history that I like to cover here on History Calling sometimes, I’ll introduce you to the woman who fooled her doctors into believing that she was genuinely pregnant with and giving birth to rabbits, along with some bits of other animals, such as cats and pigs. This famous medical hoax has led to Mary’s reputation as the rabbit queen, though she herself said she was giving birth to monsters after having suffered a miscarriage earlier in the year. The tales of bizarre pregnancies and preternatural births she told, complete with rabbits leaping inside her, caught the attention of the eighteenth-century press (who reported on it for months) and even King George I. Indeed his own doctors were sent to investigate the bizarre birth stories emanating from Mary’s hometown of Godalming in Surrey. How did Mary perpetrate this fraud however, who helped her, why did they do it and why was it so convincing that medical men of the day, including Nathaniel St Andre, believed her? What’s more, how was the fraud uncovered and what happened to Mary afterwards? This medical history documentary will answer these questions and show how much or how little Mary’s husband, Joshua Toft and her mother-in-law, Ann Toft, were involved in the strange events of 1726.
Though one of the more bizarre stories from history, the life and lies of Mary Toft do at least provide a window into historic medical practices and show how superstitions about how a woman’s thoughts could affect her baby helped to allow one of the weirdest historical hoaxes I’ve ever come across get a grip on the popular imagination.
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