The Supernatural Bunnymother Of Surrey

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.