The men from London arrived just in time to see Mary Toft give birth to her fifteenth rabbit. It was the winter of 1726, and Nathaniel St. André and Samuel Molyneux arrived in the market town of Godalming in Surrey to meet Mary Toft, a short, stout peasant of "stupid and sullen temper" (per St. André's later, embittered description). They found the country-woman waiting at the house of local man-midwife John Howard. She was lingering on the edge of a bed, stripped down to her corset. Howard assured the Londoners that they had come just in time. Soon Mary Toft's body began to twist and contort. Her throes could be so powerful that her clothes would fly off her body, and the woman would have to be held down in her chair. Sometimes the labors lasted up to a day and a half. Toft's belly would "leap," a phenomenon Howard thought was caused by baby rabbits jumping around inside Toft's uterus. One was observed to hop like this for eighteen hours. But that winter day, the labor was not prolonged, and soon Toft had delivered her child--the skinned torso of a small rabbit. The men from London started dissecting it right there on the floor. St. André--surgeon anatomist to the King of England himself--took a section of lung and put it in a basin of water. It floated, showing that the lungs had air in them, which suggested that the creature had breathed before it died. The rabbit's anus was found to have feces in it, which meant that the small animal must have eaten something. There was no blood. St. André then turned his attention to the mother, who had been waiting patiently by the fire. He found that one breast produced a thin, watery milk. After palpating Mary's stomach, St. André found a hard lump in the woman's right side. From this he concluded that the rabbits had been bred in Toft's fallopian tubes, after which they had hopped down to her uterus, where they developed. With no prospect of another birth any time soon, the men retired. In the evening Mary Toft fell into convulsions again--this time so violent she had to be held in her chair. "After three or four very strong Pains that lasted several minutes, I delivered her of the skin of the rabbet, rolled and squeezed up like a Ball," St André wrote later. The rabbit's head came soon after, complete except for one ear. Satisfied, St. André and his companion Molyneux returned to London with some of Mary's purported offspring, preserved by Howard in jars of alcohol. By the end of the year, all of England--even King George I himself--would know about the woman who had given birth to rabbits. ______________________ She probably just tried mating with a male rabbit, look at her success I know you'll probably TL;DR but I found this pretty interesting. P.S. Some of this was copied and pasted on here from my email which a friend sent some of this story to me.
It's said that Mary Toft actually stuffed dead rabbits up there to trick people into thinking she gave birth to them..?
I love how it's a whole group of LS posting on here back to back, must you ask your clubbies to help you little LSers? I'd hate to be the owner of a club like that :lol: