How Mary Toft Gave Birth to Rabbits—and an Elaborate Hoax

Mary Toft, who became known as the woman who gave birth to rabbits, was a peasant English woman from Godalming, Surrey. Toft became the subject of controversy when she tricked doctors into believing that she had given birth to rabbits.

According to Mental Floss, Gill fetched Toft’s sister-in-law, who was a midwife by trade, to tell her the baffling news. Mary Toft’s “baby” didn’t look like a human child at all, but a rotten ball of animal parts.

Howard was skeptical that the thing that came out of Mary Toft was human, to begin with. Begrudgingly, she visited Toft, in which she complained that she was difficult to work with, writing “[Mary is] of a very stupid and sullen temper” (via Mental Floss). Then, Howard changed his mind after Toft gave birth to something shocking.

“Imagining Monsters: Miscreations of the Self in Eighteenth-Century England” author Dennis Todd found a note in which Howard wrote on Nov. 9: “I have taken or deliver’d the poor Woman of three more Rabbets, all three half grown, one of them a dunn Rabbet; the last leap’d twenty three Hours in the Uterus before it dy’d. As soon as the eleventh Rabbet was taken away, up leap’d the twelfth Rabbet, which is now leaping. If you have any curious Person that is pleased to come Post, may see another leap in her Uterus, and shall take it from her if he pleases .. I do not know how many Rabbets may be behind.”

St. André visited Mary Toft, feeling her belly and stating that her right Fallopian tube was creating the baby rabbits and that pressure crushed the rabbit into pieces. St. André later believed that his diagnosis was correct when he helped Toft deliver a rabbit’s head with some body parts of a cat, her 15th non-human baby.

According to the report, Toft had miscarried her first child. During that time, she could only think about rabbits, somehow manifesting and giving birth to them. While some believed that Toft and her rabbits were an abomination, many looked at the issue with curiosity.

The story piqued people’s interest, but it also turned the public against eating any rabbit, negatively affecting rabbit-peddling merchants. “The public horror was so great that the rent of rabbit-warrens sank to nothing; and nobody, till the delusion was over, presumed to eat a rabbit,” wrote James Caulfield.

Despite this, Ahlers believed that what Toft felt was very real pain. Ahlers returned to London with several of Toft’s rabbits. Upon closer study, Ahlers reportedly found evidence that they had been cut with a man-made tool. However, the king wanted to see Toft give birth in front of him, and arranged for Mary to be transported to London.

In early December, a porter reported that Toft had attempted to bribe him into smuggling pieces of rabbit into her quarters. A colleague of St. André, Richard Manningham, confronted Toft, who rejected the accusation until she was threatened with exploratory surgery. Fearful for her life, Toft broke down, confessing that the whole thing had been a hoax.

In Toft’s own stories, she had developed an agonizing craving for rabbit meat, obsessing over it as the Tofts’ income was spread thin over the family of five. She possibly thought that she could showcase herself and her “human monstrosities” as many parents did to their conjoined twins of stillborn children, so she could make a little extra money.

William Hogarth helped popularize the 18th-century London slang word coney, which became a double pun on the Latin word for rabbit (cuniculus) and female genitalia (cunnus) with his illustration “Cunicularii.”

After her release, Toft gave birth to a little girl and attempted to avoid the unfortunate title she had earned for the rest of her life. While Toft seemingly disappeared from records, a newspaper reported that she was convicted of a petty theft. Toft died in 1763, with her epitaph reading: Mary Toft, Widow, the Impostress Rabbitt.