From that time she hath not been able to avoid thinking of Rabbits
Since I wrote to you, I have taken or deliver'd the poor woman of three more rabbets
The medical community staunchly ignored John Howard. The country midwife was, perhaps understandably, written off as crank. By the time he approached doctors in London, he’d delivered nearly a dozen rabbits from his patient. All were dead on arrival, leaving Howard to studiously preserve each in jars, on display in his study.
One well-placed letter did, however, manage to grab the attention of an even more prominent authority.
“Since I wrote to you, I have taken or deliver'd the poor Woman of three more Rabbets, all three half grown, one of them a dunn Rabbet,” Howard wrote to a member of King George I’s cabinet, “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.”
The King’s secretary shared the note with the monarch, who promptly dispatched Swiss-born surgeon Nathaniel St. André, as well as Samuel Molyneux — a secretary to the prince of Wales — to investigate. The pair arrived in Guildford in the nick of time, witnessing Mary Toft delivering her 15th rabbit.
Once again, the animal was born dead.
The state of the animal only momentary gave pause to St. André, who reasoned that the violence of human birth may have ended the young life of the poor, fragile animal. On further examination, he determined that the rabbits were, indeed, birthed by Toft. The pair witnessed another birth, punctuated by violent contractions. This time the rabbits arrived in pieces, with a decapitated head and further parts that more closely resembled a cat.
St. André returned to London with multiple of Howard’s jarred specimen. His reports were enough to capture London’s imagination. Mary Toft became a sensation – an unexpected turn for the once-anonymous country wife of a hapless clothier. The matriarch of an impoverished family whose means were are already spread thin, she walked two hours every morning to toil a full day in the fields. Toft was 25 and pregnant with a fourth child in the months leading up to the delivery of her first stillborn rabbit.
At work in the field, she spotted a rabbit and immediately gave it chase, in hopes of apprehending a free supper for her growing family. The animal escaped, but the longing grew into a self-reported obsession.
“This created in her such a Longing to it, that she (being with Child) was taken ill and miscarried, and from that Time she hath not been able to avoid thinking of Rabbits,” Mist's Weekly Journal reported. “People after all, differ much in their Opinion about this Matter, some looking upon them as great Curiosities, fit to be presented to the Royal Society, etc. others are angry at the Account, and say, that if it be a Fact, a Veil should be drawn over it, as an Imperfection in human Nature.”
The first rabbit arrived a month after Toft miscarried what would have been a fourth human child.
Toft had become a minor celebrity by the time the King sent a second surgeon to follow up on St. André’s reports. Cyriacus Ahlers arrived in Guildford with decidedly more skepticism, doubting both the word of the woman and her midwife. He, too, returned to London with a specimen, only find that the young rabbit had ingested hay – a sure sign that it had lived for some time outside of Toft’s body.
A conflict brewed between the two surgeons, as St. André enlisted a parade of doctors to verify his own findings, including John Maubray. The prominent physician was a staunch proponent of the maternal impression theory, which posited that mothers would mark children with beliefs. He even went so far as suggest the presence of a Sooterkin.
In his best-known work, The Female Physician, Maubray claimed to have witness a Dutch woman birth the mythical creature first-hand. In his account, the animal was mole-like, leaping out of the woman ahead of the birth of her child and running across the room like a” little Daemon.”
Suspicions soon arose when Toft’s husband was discovered purchasing young rabbits. Soon, another man confessed to having been bribed to sneak another into Toft’s room. Threatened with a painful, experimental surgery, Toft ultimately gave in herself, penning three separate confessions, claiming separately to have been coerced by her mother-in-law, husband and a mysterious organ grinder.
Sources:
The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Short Narrative Of an Extraordinary Delivery of Rabbets https://www.gutenberg.org/files/62720/62720-h/62720-h.htm
An Extraordinary Delivery of Rabbits https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2016/07/05/an-extraordinary-delivery-of-rabbits/
Mary Toft’s Three Confessions https://tofts3confessions.wordpress.com/
She Gave Birth to Rabbits! (and Other Tales of Sooterkin) https://daily.jstor.org/she-gave-birth-to-rabbits-and-other-tales-of-sooterkin/