The Imposteress Rabbit Breeder by Karen Harvey

Author:Karen Harvey
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780191054082
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Published: 2019-12-19T16:00:00+00:00

Roast beef, rabbits, and rabbets

This was a serious matter for the doctors, then, as it was for the lone writer who saw in the monstrous births genuine religious portent. William Whiston had been giving his interpretation of the Toft case in amongst lectures on topics ranging from magnetism to sacred temples since autumn 1726, only committing it to print only in 1753. He argued that the evidence showed that Toft’s monstrous births were real: her testimony, the involvement of the doctor John Howard, the evidence published by Samuel Molyneux, the Prince of Wales’ secretary, and Nathanial St André, and the fact that it was ‘believed by King George to be real’, all pointed to this fact. Along with two other monstrous births, Whiston stated that the rabbit births signalled the completion of the prophecy of Esdras: that as the end of the world approached, women would bring forth monsters. Regardless of his concern for God’s judgements, Whiston was acutely aware of the humour that the case had triggered. In his publication of 1753 he acknowledged that the case had ‘been so long laughed out of Countenance’ and reasoned that the doctors had changed their minds to deny the monstrous births only once they were ‘unjustly made Sport of by the Scepticks of the Town’.19 Whiston was live to such treatment no doubt because he himself was ridiculed for his views as soon as he began uttering them in 1726. The author of A Philosophical Enquiry into the Wonderful CONEY-WARREN (1726) thought Whiston may as well argue that Toft had enjoyed ‘a Criminal Conversation with a Buck-Rabbit’, had been bewitched by a witch or was in fact herself a rabbit in disguise. How can we trust Whiston, this author teased, when he was also curious about a purported story that a woman had birthed a side of roast beef?20

The motives in covering Toft’s case were often less than noble. The press claimed to satisfy genuine enquiries about the processes of human reproduction and the procedures of law and justice; yet the coverage was also designed to sell copy. Not all the coverage of Toft sought to intervene in public debate about the status of medical professionals, the veracity of the theory of the maternal imagination, or the wider state of the public sphere. As suggested by the responses to the serious-minded Whiston, humourists of different kinds saw in the case a cache of rich source material. Mary Toft provided opportunities for nifty quips and clever satire. It is striking that the extent of this comedic coverage produced a culture of self-referential jokes around the case. Pudding and Dumpling Burnt to Pot (1727) replied to the earlier work, The Dissertation on Dumpling, teasing ‘our most eminent Physicians, Surgeons, Anatomists and Men Midwives’ (as well as the ‘great Wits’) for their lack of consistency in their spelling of rabbit: was it with an ‘e’ or an ‘i’? Humourists ridiculed the doctors more commonly than each other, though. One produced a cheap, three-pence three-page poem relentlessly teasing James Douglas for his excitement about the rabbit births.

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