The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits: Godalming's Gift to Grub Street

Robert Clarke
In November 1726, England was shocked by the astonishing news that Mary Toft, a poor cloth-worker’s wife from Godalming, was giving birth to rabbits. When King George heard of this medical miracle, he sent two of his royal surgeons down to Surrey to investigate. They both delivered rabbits from Mary on separate occasions. After giving birth to seventeen rabbits, Mary was brought to London where, “great Numbers of the Nobility have been to see her and many Physicians have attended her, in order to make a strict Search into the Affair”.  
Mary’s story was a great gift to Grub Street. As well as providing several months of sensational material for the newspapers, it inspired a host of pamphlets, caricatures, ribald ballads, and satires, and made the medical profession look a bunch of gullible fools.  
This well-researched but entertaining book will appeal to anyone interested in the quirkier side of history, covering a sensational event that generated hilarity and anxiety, splitting the nation between those who believed the births were genuine and those who considered them fraudulent. As well as being a human-interest story, it deals with print culture, medical developments, and beliefs, among other aspects of eighteenth century life.  
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Genre: History, Europe, Great Britain