The Ghastly Story Of Mary Toft, The Woman Who ‘Gave Birth To Rabbits’

Like so many others in 18th-century England, Mary Toft lived in abject poverty. Born in one of the poorest areas of London, Mary was only 17 when she married textile worker Joshua Toft. Her status wasn’t exactly elevated by the marriage either. In some ways, her life got even harder.

Instead, Mary found herself working harder than ever to keep her family, which now included two young children, afloat. She walked two hours each day to work as a laborer, only to return to a hungry family and even more responsibilities at home.

Now, none of this can excuse what happened to Mary later on, but it’s important to remember when telling her story. After all, it all began with what was back then considered to be a lower-class tragedy: Mary had a miscarriage. It was a devastating experience, though its cause was clear.

Her backbreaking days likely brought on the miscarriage, which occurred frequently among poor women. Mary’s doctor brushed it off. Back in the early 1700s, the female reproductive system was even more of a mystery that it is today. And the medical system could only offer so much to the impoverished people of London. From there, things only got worse.

And mere months later, another mystery developed: Mary randomly started having contractions. Fear of another miscarriage alarmed her family enough to send for the doctor. Mary sweat, screamed, and shuddered with pain as the unexpected labor progressed... 

When obstetrician John Howard arrived at the Toft house, what he saw would frighten anyone. It was Mary, in the middle of a seemingly impossible birth. According to Howard, Mary birthed “three legs of a cat of a tabby color and one leg of a rabbit.”

Unfortunately, his description wasn’t done yet. The lurid details kept coming! He wrote, “The guts were as a cat’s and in them were three pieces of the back-bone of an eel.” By the time Mary’s shrieks ended, she had apparently given birth to nine baby rabbits...all dead.

Needless to say, Howard was shocked by what he’d witnessed. A small-town doctor, Howard immediately sent word of Mary’s situation to England’s most revered doctors in hopes of attracting national attention. And to his delight, that’s exactly what happened.

King George I found out about Mary and sent Nathaniel St. Andre, a surgeon-anatomist, to investigate the claims. With that, one of the pickled fetuses Howard had collected made its way from Mary Toft’s humble home all the way to the King. 

From then on, Mary was shepherded around London by St. Andre. She was poked, prodded, and examined by various doctors; all the while, Mary continued to give birth to rabbits... especially on days when she was to be seen by a large room filled with doctors.

It wasn’t long before the doctors, who thoroughly examined Mary and the “fetuses,” noticed some peculiar details about the bunnies: For one, there was no way they were formed in Mary’s body. One of the rabbits had grass in its stomach, proof it had once frolicked free.

The rabbits also differed in age; some were newborns while others were at least three months old. Still, St. Andre refused to see these suspicious factors for what they were. He reasoned that the contractions of the labor killed the rabbits and not foul play.

The other doctors, however, weren’t so easily fooled. They demanded an explanation from Mary, and she hurriedly gave them one: that she had once been startled by a rabbit, which led to her otherwordly pregnancies. Shockingly, this explanation made sense to some 1700s-era doctors.

Back then, a theory called “maternal impression” was quite common in the medical field. It was a way of explaining birth defects and congenital disorders. For instance, Joseph Merrick, known as the “Elephant Man,” told a similarly bizarre story to Mary’s.

Though we now know that Merrick was born with a congenital disorder, it was believed that Merrick’s mother was startled by an elephant while pregnant with him, resulting in his elephant-like facial deformity at birth. St. Andre believed this theory wholeheartedly.

The other doctors? Not so much. Still, Mary was continuously examined by as many as ten doctors at once, who were disappointed (if not unsurprised) to find that Mary, who suddenly stopped giving birth to rabbits, was actually quite ill. 

It was around this time that Mary was found out: A porter was caught sneaking into Mary’s room with a rabbit. He was quick to blame it all on Margaret, Mary’s sister-in-law, who, he claimed, asked him to find the smallest rabbit he could catch.

Still, Mary refused to admit that it was all a sham... until one of the doctors threatened to perform reproductive surgery if she didn’t tell the truth. That did the trick: to the surprise of no one but St. Andre, Mary confessed to the ruse. 

So, how did she do it? Again, we’ll spare you the truly gory details. The ruse was achieved the way you’d expect. Once in her body, the rabbits didn’t have far to travel during the fake “birth.” So much was a lie...

But what wasn’t faked was her screaming. Mary really was in excruciating pain, and it’s easy to see why. “It’s astonishing she didn’t die of a bacterial infection,” historian Karen Harvey said. The rabbits were often “concealed” for days, even weeks at a time...

Toft repeatedly blamed other people, from her husband to her mother-in-law and even to the wife of a local organ grinder. “I think she was just playing the lead role in a performance orchestrated by other people,” Harvey said. The papers at the time believed otherwise.

According to historian Niki Russell, Mary and her bizarre plight led to the media sensation of the year. “It certainly helped to tarnish the reputation of doctors as a profession.” Unfortunately for her, Mary wasn’t just an outcast as a result of the trick.

She was charged as a “Notorious and Vile Cheat” and imprisoned for four months. While in Bridewell prison, she was basically a sideshow for intrigued passersby: her cell faced the public, making her vulnerable to nearly constant torment.

She was eventually released without being charged but found that she could never quite return to her normal life. After all, what does "normal" mean in Mary's shoes? Still, believe it or not, parts of Mary’s story weren't so unusual for the time. In the ensuing years, more women would begin making peculiar medical claims, some of which threatened their own lives.

Today, the idea of going without food and drink completely sounds more than a little far-fetched. But in the 19th century, extreme fasting became something of a trend. And at a time when spiritualism and pseudoscience held a powerful sway over the western world, a strange narrative began to emerge.

Of course, the idea of extended fasting did not begin in Victorian times. In fact, the concept can be traced back to the Middle Ages, when saints such as Lidwina of Schiedam and Catherine of Siena were said to have survived without any physical nourishment at all. Then, hundreds of years later, young girls on both sides of the Atlantic began to mimic this astonishing ability.

Throughout the 1800s, a peculiar outbreak seemed to plague several communities across Britain and the United States. Again and again, young women were coming forward with the same astonishing claim: they no longer needed to eat or drink to survive. But who were these so-called fasting girls? And what was really going on?

By the 1870s, reports claim, fasting girls were common enough that they appeared in several articles in the British Medical Journal. Often, the sufferers of this strange affliction were young, but sometimes women as old as 70 claimed to be under the same spell. What all of them had in common, though, was an apparent ability to thrive in the absence of any nutrition.

One of the most famous of these cases involved Mollie Fancher, a girl living in the New York City borough of Brooklyn. The victim of two unfortunate accidents — one involving a horse and the other a rogue trolley car — this ill-fated teenager found herself descending quickly into a desperate and pitiful state.

The American journalist Herbert Asbury wrote about Mollie in All Around the Town, his 1934 sequel to The Gangs of New York. He said, “Her spine was injured, and her nervous system was completely deranged. She was able to be about, though ill, until February 3, 1866. On the morning of that day… she suddenly shrieked, stood on her toes, and spun around like a top.”

Asbury continued, “Then she bent forward, clasped her feet in both hands, and began rolling about the kitchen floor like a hoop. She was carried to her bed, and didn’t leave it for fifty years and eight days, until she died, on February 11, 1916.” But this was no ordinary convalescence.

If Mollie’s parents were to be believed, their daughter had begun exhibiting a series of extraordinary powers, including telepathy and the ability to predict the future. And that wasn’t all. These miracles, the family claimed, were connected to one peculiar habit: the girl’s refusal of all food and drink.

Mollie’s parents began accepting donations from onlookers keen to witness their daughter’s powers. And some accounts suggest that these punters were not short-changed, with reports of the girl entering trance-like states that lasted for years at a time. Eventually, though, she tired of the spotlight, enjoying a peaceful retirement before passing away in 1916.

Did Mollie’s injuries somehow spark an unusual ability to fast — and all manner of strange powers? Or was there something else going on? Taken on its own, this case might have amounted to little more than an odd footnote in the history of New York City. But in reality, the teenager was just one of many fasting girls who rose to fame at the time.

Perhaps the most tragic of all, though, was the story of Sarah Jacob, a young girl from a rural community in the Welsh county of Carmarthenshire. Like Mollie, she is said to have been confined to her bed — although this time it was seizures, not an accident, that sent her there. And like Mollie, she could apparently survive in the absence of food or drink.

According to reports, Sarah was just ten years old when she began exhibiting the ability to thrive without nutrition. And her parents leapt at the opportunity that this unusual ability presented. Again, curious onlookers were invited to witness the miracle of the fasting girl — in return for a small donation, of course.

In 1869 a letter was published in The Welshman newspaper, penned by the vicar of Sarah’s local parish. In it, he outlined the details of the strange case. By this time, the girl was 12 years old and her parents claimed that she hadn’t eaten in well over a year.

The vicar wrote, “[She] has not partaken of a single grain of any kind of food whatever during the last 16 months. She did occasionally swallow a few drops of water during the first few months of this period; but now she does not even do that. She still looks pretty well in the face, and continues in the possession of her mental faculties. She is in this, and several other respects, a wonderful little girl.”

In the letter, the vicar went on to say that doctors had dubbed the feat impossible — but the locals remained convinced of the phenomenon. In fact, he was so confident that he issued an invitation for any “medical men” to visit their community and witness Sarah’s remarkable powers for themselves.

As time passed, Sarah’s fame continued to spread, with an article appearing in the medical journal The Lancet. And eventually, a group of doctors and nurses were dispatched from London to study the girl in depth. The plan, it seems, was to observe Sarah and ensure that she wasn’t receiving food or drink from any sources.

On December 9, 1869, the small medical team began their round-the-clock observation of Sarah. Initially, the exercise was scheduled to last two weeks. But before long, the girl began to show clear signs of starvation. Reportedly, the vicar advised her parents to dismiss the nurses, but his pleas fell on deaf ears.

Even as Sarah continued to deteriorate, reports claim, her parents refused to feed her, believing that she would soon rally. But just over a week after the exercise had begun, the girl was dead — and starvation was the culprit. Later, when an autopsy revealed digested food in her intestines, people began to suspect that she hadn’t really been fasting at all.

Instead, it was theorized that Sarah had been sneaking food and drink at regular intervals. Whether or not her parents were aware of this deception remains unclear, but the tide of public opinion soon turned against them. And the following year, they were charged with manslaughter in relation to their daughter’s death.

But neither Sarah nor Mollie were the original fasting girl. In fact, one of the earliest examples of the phenomena didn’t involve a girl at all. Instead, it centered around Ann Moore, who was born in Derbyshire, England, in 1761 — and was well into her 40s by the time her unusual abilities came to light.

According to reports, Ann was abandoned by her first husband, leaving her to raise a young baby alone. And later, she gave birth to two more children, reportedly fathered by the man who hired her to do housekeeping. Facing destitution, she made her way to Tutbury in Staffordshire, where she hoped to find work. But in the end, she would make her fortune in a far more unusual way.

At some point around the winter of 1806 Ann developed a severe aversion to food. In one account, this affliction was attributed to a traumatic experience involving exposure to gruesome sores. But according to others, it was mere scarcity that led to Ann phasing out — and eventually eliminating — food from her diet.

Some four months later, Ann had apparently begun showing signs of physical distress, breaking out into fits and complaining of cramps. And like the girls who would come after her, she soon found herself bedridden. As word of the fasting woman began to spread, various theories were posited to explain her miraculous survival.

According to some, Ann’s fast was of a prophetic nature, foreshadowing the onset of a terrible famine in France. Meanwhile, others believed she had simply trained her body to gain nourishment from air alone. Eventually, a team of surgeons paid her a visit, determined to get to the bottom of her condition.

Apparently, the surgeons — with the help of Ann’s neighbors — monitored the fasting woman constantly for 16 days. Surprisingly, though, they found no evidence that any food or water was being consumed. And in 1808 two doctors penned an article for the Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal in support of her claims.

For the next five years, Ann attracted a steady stream of supporters, many of whom gave generous donations in return for an audience. In fact, she is said to have collected at least £400 in financial support, the equivalent of around $23,000 today. But despite this steady flow of cash, there were some who doubted the fasting woman’s outlandish claims.

By this time, Ann had grown so famous that a waxwork was carved in her image and exhibited in Boston, thousands of miles across the Atlantic. But all that would come crashing down in April 1813, when a local clergyman embarked on a close study of the phenomenon. For nine days, he watched the woman like a hawk — and she soon deteriorated in front of his eyes.

On the ninth day, Ann’s family called a halt to the proceedings. And when investigators took a closer look, they found physical evidence that suggested the woman had, in fact, eaten recently. Later, it emerged that she’d been gaining sustenance from a broth-soaked towel her daughter had covered her mouth with.

On top of that, experts claimed, Ann’s daughter had also been passing her food via a kiss on the mouth — a practice that had gone unnoticed for several years. But now the game was up, and the fasting woman admitted that she’d only been pretending. And just a few months later, she passed away.

While most historians have dismissed Ann as a total fraud, there are some who claim her experience was far more complex. She lived, after all, in a time when women and mothers could easily find themselves starving and destitute. With that in mind, might her actions have been a form of protest against the cruel realities of the Victorian world?

Whatever the truth, Ann’s exploits earned her a place in history. And even seven decades after her death, she remained famous enough to appear in a portrait by the English painter James Ward. Today, it sits in the archives of the British Museum, a testament to the lasting appeal of the mysterious fasting girls.

But while Ann, Sarah, and Mollie caused little harm with their exploits, the same could not be said for Linda Hazzard, a woman who took the fasting phenomenon to the next level. Back in the 1900s, you see, she established a sanitarium in Kitsap County, Washington. Here, she practiced her own unique brand of pseudoscience.

According to Linda, fasting wasn’t just something to be marveled at — it was cure-all for all manner of diseases and afflictions. And on the back of this belief, she starved the patients at her sanitarium, who sometimes consumed only juice for months on end. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they soon began dropping like flies.

Despite its local nickname of Starvation Heights, Linda’s sanitarium continued operating for many years. But things finally came to a head in 1912 after the treatment of two British women. Allegedly, the pair were subjected to the same program of starvation, although one, Dorothea, was smuggled out of the institution by a friend.

Unfortunately, help came too late to save the other sister, Claire, who weighed just 50 pounds when she ultimately died of starvation. With Linda’s cruel methods now out in the open, she was taken to court and charged with manslaughter. Found guilty, she was sentenced to a maximum of 20 years behind bars.

Just two years later, though, Linda was released, with a full pardon granted in 1916. And despite the fact that she’s believed to have been responsible for more than 15 deaths, she was allowed to move to New Zealand and continue her practice there. Ironically, she herself succumbed to starvation in 1938, brought about by one of her own fasting cures.

As the Victorian era gave way to the scientific advances and social equality of the modern world, the phenomenon of the fasting girls faded away. But the idea of survival in the face of prolonged starvation has remained an evocative one. And now, new age philosophies have emerged to fill the gap once occupied by young women such as Mollie and Sarah.

Take the concept of “breatharianism,” for example, a fringe belief system that suggests enlightened humans can survive on air and sunlight alone. Instead of food, its followers insist, individuals can gain all the nourishment they need from prana, a form of energy with its roots in Hindu mysticism. And over the years, several people have claimed to live in such a way — despite much evidence to the contrary.

Looking back, it seems clear that the fasting girls were a complex cultural phenomenon. They were as much a reflection of the era’s societal norms as they were a marvel in their own right. But hundreds of years later, we remain fascinated by the idea of extreme starvation. And even in modern times, we are ready to believe in miracles — no matter how implausible they might seem.