In 1726, a woman in the town of Godalming, Surrey, convinced some of the most educated men in England that she was giving birth to rabbits.

Her name was Mary Toft. She was twenty-three, illiterate, and the wife of a journeyman clothier. In September of that year, she went into labour and produced several pieces of animal flesh. Her family called John Howard, the local surgeon. Over the following weeks, Howard attended as Toft delivered what he reported were nine baby rabbits.

Howard was not a fool. He was a respected practitioner in Guildford. He wrote to the most prominent physicians in England. He wrote to the secretary of King George the First.

The King sent two men to investigate. The first was Nathaniel St Andre, the King's own surgeon and anatomist. St Andre arrived, examined Toft, and personally witnessed her deliver a fifteenth rabbit. He was convinced. He went back to London and published a forty-page pamphlet titled "A Short Narrative of an Extraordinary Delivery of Rabbets."

The second investigator, a surgeon named Cyriacus Ahlers, was not convinced. He noticed the rabbit droppings contained corn and hay. Wild rabbits do not eat corn.

Toft was brought to London for further examination. For several days, under close watch, she produced nothing. Then a porter at the lodging house was caught trying to smuggle a rabbit to her room.

Under pressure from Sir Richard Manningham, who threatened to perform experimental surgery on her to determine if she was formed differently from other women, Toft confessed on December 7th, 1726. She had been inserting dead rabbits into her body and allowing them to be removed as if she were giving birth.

She gave three separate confessions on three separate days, each time naming a different accomplice.

Her motive, she eventually admitted, was money. A travelling woman had told her the scheme would ensure she would never want as long as she lived.

Nathaniel St Andre, who had staked his reputation on the forty-page pamphlet, recanted two days after Toft confessed. His career never recovered. John Howard was investigated. William Hogarth made an engraving satirizing the entire affair. The case became a national joke.

Mary Toft served a brief prison sentence for fraud. She returned to Godalming and lived quietly until 1763. She never explained how she had endured what must have been extraordinary pain.

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