Mary Toft: The woman who convinced eighteenth-century doctors she was giving birth to rabbits

In 1726, a poor woman from Surrey became the center of one of Britain’s strangest medical scandals. The rabbits were not real births, but the fraud exposed how evidence, authority and public excitement can collide.

Mary Toft was living in Godalming, Surrey, when reports began circulating in the autumn of 1726 that she had experienced a series of extraordinary deliveries involving rabbits and other animal material. The claim spread first through local witnesses and newspapers, then into the medical and political elite. Modern historian Karen Harvey describes the episode as a major eighteenth-century media sensation, while surviving contemporary pamphlets show that the alleged births were being debated almost as they happened (Harvey, 2020; Manningham, 1726).

To a modern reader, the claim appears biologically impossible. In 1726, however, some educated Europeans still took the idea of ‘ maternal imagination ‘ seriously: the belief that a pregnant woman’s powerful sights, fears, or cravings might physically mark or shape a fetus. Toft told a story about encountering rabbits while pregnant and developing an intense longing for them. That explanation fitted an existing framework of reproductive thought, which helps explain why the case was investigated rather than dismissed instantly (Harvey, 2020; Wall, 1985).

A local surgeon and man-midwife, John Howard, became one of the first medical men to report and attend the supposed deliveries. The affair then attracted physicians from London and eventually the attention of King George I. Several prominent practitioners examined Toft, and she was moved to London so that her condition could be observed more closely. The Royal College of Surgeons’ historical account notes that royal physicians and other specialists became involved, demonstrating how quickly a local curiosity had turned into a test of professional credibility (Royal College of Surgeons of England, 2018; Harvey, 2020).

Skepticism grew as observation became tighter. Sir Richard Manningham, a physician and Fellow of the Royal Society and the College of Physicians, kept a detailed diary of his attendance from November 28 to December 7. His published account described increasing suspicion and ultimately recorded Toft’s confession that the phenomenon was fraudulent. The existence of Manningham’s 1726 diary is important because it is not a later legend: it is a contemporary printed source produced while the scandal was still unfolding (Manningham, 1726).

The mechanics of the hoax are more disturbing than the comic versions often told today. Contemporary confessions and later historical research indicate that animal material was introduced into Toft’s body so that it could later appear to have been delivered. Yet historians should be cautious about reconstructing a single, perfectly clear plot. Toft gave statements while under intense medical and legal pressure, and surviving accounts differ about who devised the scheme, who supplied animal remains, and how responsibility was shared among relatives and medical attendants. Harvey’s archival work emphasizes that Toft’s own agency cannot simply be assumed from hostile contemporary portrayals (Harvey, 2020).

After the confession, Toft was taken into custody and became an object of public fascination and ridicule. The scandal generated pamphlets, songs and caricatures, including a famous satirical print by William Hogarth. The medical men who had shown credulity were mocked as harshly as Toft herself. The affair therefore became more than a fraud case: it was a public argument about expert authority, reproduction, class, gender and what counted as believable evidence in an age when print culture was rapidly expanding (Harvey, 2020; Wellcome Collection, 1726).

Toft was held in the Westminster house of correction, but the expected prosecution did not result in a trial. Historical research based on court and newspaper records indicates that she was eventually released in April 1727 without a completed prosecution. She returned to Surrey and lived for decades afterward. The verified story is remarkable enough without pretending she literally gave birth to rabbits: a fabricated medical event persuaded or at least seriously engaged prominent doctors, reached the royal court, became national news and left behind a documentary trail that historians still study nearly three centuries later (Harvey, 2020).

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REFERENCES

Harvey, K. (2020). The imposteress rabbit breeder: Mary Toft and eighteenth-century England. Oxford University Press. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-imposteress-rabbit-breeder-9780198734888

Manningham, R. (1726). An exact diary of what was observ’d during a close attendance upon Mary Toft, the pretended rabbet-breeder of Godalming in Surrey. Fletcher Gyles. Wellcome Collection. https://wellcomecollection.org/works/dvqrvszx

Royal College of Surgeons of England. (2018, February 16). A hare-raising tale. https://cutover.rcseng.ac.uk/library-and-publications/library/blog/a-hare-raising-tale/

Wall, L. L. (1985). The strange case of Mary Toft (who was delivered of sixteen rabbits and a tabby cat in 1726). Medical Heritage, 1(3), 199–212. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11620636/

Wellcome Collection. (1726). Mary Toft (Tofts) appearing to give birth to rabbits in the presence of several surgeons and man-midwives sent from London to examine her [Etching by W. Hogarth]. https://wellcomecollection.org/works/k3zyn6tm

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