Speaker 1: You're listening to Hoax, a production of iHeart Podcasts. Folks,
Speaker 1: it's a hug.
Speaker 2: No, I haven't seen me when us see.
Speaker 1: The Welcome to Hoax, a podcast about the lies we
Speaker 1: wish were true.
Speaker 2: And truths that sound like lies.
Speaker 1: I'm the ghost of Danish Schwartz.
Speaker 2: And I'm the evil twin of Lizzie Logan. Welcome to the.
Speaker 1: Show, Lizzie. Before we start on this episode, I want
Speaker 1: to ask what your tolerance is for body horror? But
Speaker 1: do get grossed out easily? Do have Do you watch House?
Speaker 1: Did you watch The Pit?
Speaker 2: I liked the Pit quite a bit. Okay, rhyme intentional.
Speaker 2: I can close my eyes during body horror stuff. I
Speaker 2: guess since this is audio medium, I can clue my ears.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm not going to show you any photos, okay,
Speaker 1: because this story takes place in the seventeen hundreds.
Speaker 2: Okay, Yeah, I'm not a huge fan of gore or
Speaker 2: body horror, but I understand that bodies decay and we
Speaker 2: have blood inside of us.
Speaker 1: Bodies are a horror, yes, and one just sort of overall.
Speaker 1: Note before we start this episode, if you're someone who's
Speaker 1: very sensitive to issues of fertility or miscarriage. This might
Speaker 1: not be the episode for you because it involves pregnancy
Speaker 1: and pregnancy loss and sort of pregnancy trauma. Okay, we're
Speaker 1: going to start in a town called Godalming, which is
Speaker 1: a very small market town fifty miles southwest of London.
Speaker 1: We're in the seventeen hundreds, so this town is a
Speaker 1: very very poor town and it's basically just like a
Speaker 1: stagecoach stop and route to London. So the people who
Speaker 1: are living there are living there very boring lives, but
Speaker 1: they're seeing people in like glamorous London stage coaches come by. Okay,
Speaker 1: so it's a it's not a great place to live
Speaker 1: from what it sounds like. Our heroin for this episode
Speaker 1: is a woman named Mary Toft. She lives with her
Speaker 1: husband and their three young children. She got married when
Speaker 1: she was seventeen to Joshua Toft, who was eighteen. He's
Speaker 1: a clothier, which means he makes cloth, but work is
Speaker 1: very hard to come by. She works in a hop field.
Speaker 2: Okay. Hops is like a type of grain that you
Speaker 2: make beer out of.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, but she's like harvesting that for that, you know,
Speaker 1: works in a field with a lot of other women
Speaker 1: at this point in the story when we're starting, she's
Speaker 1: twenty four years old. She has two living children and
Speaker 1: one that has died, although details on which children are
Speaker 1: living at what point in the story is a little tricky. Okay,
Speaker 1: So by this point we believe she's had three pregnancies
Speaker 1: and she's pregnant with her fourth child. Okay, and still
Speaker 1: walk in two hours a day to get to the
Speaker 1: hop field, working grueling hours and then walking two hours back.
Speaker 1: Rough This is not a good life.
Speaker 2: I don't think.
Speaker 1: It doesn't sound like a fun life.
Speaker 2: No, she's she's going through it.
Speaker 1: So imagine like being pregnant, having two children at home
Speaker 1: at least two, possibly three, a husband who is likely
Speaker 1: out of work, and just like living this miserable existence
Speaker 1: watching people in their fancy London carriages. In August of
Speaker 1: seventeen twenty six, Mary has a miscarriage. Unfortunately, very sad,
Speaker 1: very sad, a thing that happens to this day that
Speaker 1: people don't talk about. So what's strange is that she
Speaker 1: has this miscarriage in August, and in September, a month later,
Speaker 1: she starts having the symptoms of labor. Oh, which is
Speaker 1: not a thing that should be happening. Now, she's attended
Speaker 1: by her mother in law, Ann Toft, and a neighbor.
Speaker 1: Antoft is not like registered as a midwife in like
Speaker 1: the parish registries, but she has, you know, has had
Speaker 1: many kids I think sort of helps people out. Is
Speaker 1: sort of a maternal figure. So it's not like Mary's
Speaker 1: being treated by doctors yet, but she's being treated by
Speaker 1: like the local women who can help her out. But
Speaker 1: they do not know what is happening. Yeah, and so
Speaker 1: they call what is known as a male midwife from
Speaker 1: the nearby town of gil Guildford, which is like the
Speaker 1: nearest not big town, but bigger town. And this doctor
Speaker 1: or male midwife comes named John Howard, and he comes
Speaker 1: to examine Mary Toft, and he sees that she has
Speaker 1: given birth not to a human baby, but to strange
Speaker 1: animal parts. Oh oh dear, which is not a thing
Speaker 1: that happens. Nope, usually nope. And so John Howard reports.
Speaker 2: That usually not happens I've ever ever, not at all,
Speaker 2: not at all. I would say like zero percent of
Speaker 2: the lies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But John Howard is astonished and is taking note
Speaker 1: of this thing that is happening, and over the next
Speaker 1: few weeks he records that Mary Toft gives let's say
Speaker 1: birth for lack of a better word, to a pig's bladder,
Speaker 1: a cat's paw, the backbone of an eel, and then
Speaker 1: multiple dead baby rabbits. And it's the rabbits that are
Speaker 1: the most notable.
Speaker 2: Listener, you can't see me, but I'm making a face
Speaker 2: like that's gross.
Speaker 1: It's gross. I wanted to warn you before this episode.
Speaker 1: It's it's pretty gross.
Speaker 2: That's pretty gross. And I'm not grossed out by miscarriage
Speaker 2: or birth. I'm grossed out by dead baby rabbits coming
Speaker 2: out of a human lady's.
Speaker 1: Vagina, dead baby coming out of human ladies vagina.
Speaker 2: That's gross. I'm gonna I think I'm okay to say that.
Speaker 2: I don't think that makes me a bad feminist. I
Speaker 2: think that's a little gross.
Speaker 1: It's gross. It's not a thing that should biologically happen.
Speaker 1: People are confused, but they have an explanation, and aren't
Speaker 1: they She's a witch.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 1: Mary says that back in the spring when she was pregnant,
Speaker 1: she was out weeding in the field and saw a
Speaker 1: rabbit and she was hungry and craving rabbit meat, which
Speaker 1: would have been really expensive and she wouldn't have been
Speaker 1: able to afford it, And she chased the rabbit but
Speaker 1: couldn't catch it, and then kept having super strong pregnancy
Speaker 1: craving for rabbit meat, like to make into a stew
Speaker 1: or pie, which is kind of like the beginning of
Speaker 1: Rapunzel when the mom really wants that one like the
Speaker 1: cabbage or whatever. Yeah, from the witch's garden, but anyway,
Speaker 1: she says. A later doctor wrote in an interview that
Speaker 1: this set her a longing for rabbit. Being then as
Speaker 1: she thought five weeks gone with child, the woman charged
Speaker 1: with longing for the rabbit that she couldn't catch, but
Speaker 1: she denied it. She then dreamt of rabbits and had
Speaker 1: a constant and strong desire to eat rabbit, but being
Speaker 1: very poor and indigent, could not procure any. So that
Speaker 1: was the idea of what caused this.
Speaker 2: So like the power of her mind turned her like
Speaker 2: half miscarried baby into like.
Speaker 1: Rabbit, multiple baby rabbits. Maternal impression is what the name
Speaker 1: of this was, and it was a fairly common belief
Speaker 1: at the time. People thought that pregnant women could influence
Speaker 1: their unborn babies with their thoughts and their experiences. Have
Speaker 1: you heard of like Joseph Merrick the Elephant Man. Yes,
Speaker 1: this is later, but his explanation for why.
Speaker 2: He was like his mom looked at an elephant.
Speaker 1: His mom was startled by an elephant, which again is
Speaker 1: like a we think is like a silly story. And
Speaker 1: I don't even know if he actually believed it, but
Speaker 1: that was sort of the circus explanation. And in the
Speaker 1: eighteenth century work on Midwiffery by this doctor John Mawbrey,
Speaker 1: he advised women to avoid quote playing with dogs, squirrels, apes,
Speaker 1: and etc. As this could lead to the birth of
Speaker 1: vile creatures.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, you gotta be careful.
Speaker 1: What I kind of find interesting is this is the
Speaker 1: seventeen hundred, so the scientific Enlightenment is happening. But I
Speaker 1: think it's kind of important to remember that despite the
Speaker 1: fact the way that we're sort of taught history in
Speaker 1: schools where it's like, ah, this year the Scientific Enlightenment, Ah,
Speaker 1: this year the the you know, uh Renaissance, Like these
Speaker 1: things don't happen all at once. People don't just like
Speaker 1: make a declaration and then everyone's mind is changed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and like people still are like feeding babies honey
Speaker 2: and giving them botulism. Like, so like I would not
Speaker 2: be surprised if like the next TikTok trend was like
Speaker 2: my baby has like really wide set eyes because I
Speaker 2: watched you know, too many Nature documentary.
Speaker 1: Yeah I was pregnant, but yeah, it's this. Also, I
Speaker 1: think it also reinforces this idea that like the pregnant
Speaker 1: woman is like has magical like mysterious powers. Yes, which
Speaker 1: is I really hated when I was pregnant that sort
Speaker 1: of like you got it, mama, go girl, like you're
Speaker 1: a goddess, because I think it's condescending. Yes, I think
Speaker 1: it's very like women are over here and can be mysterious.
Speaker 1: Men will be in charge of politics and economics and
Speaker 1: literature and like actual tangible but you're a goddess like you.
Speaker 1: So that's why I sort of have like my it
Speaker 1: makes my teeth hirt a.
Speaker 2: Little, yeah, and like fanuous like palm fronds and like
Speaker 2: feed you grapes and like don't take your mind seriously
Speaker 2: but like focus on your belly.
Speaker 1: Yeah you go, girl, Mama, you're so mysterious. You're a
Speaker 1: moon goddess. While over here, like men are doing like
Speaker 1: art and commerce and politics. Sure, but all that's to say,
Speaker 1: is the idea that she is having these dead rabbit
Speaker 1: babies is not, like, on its face absurd. Okay, there
Speaker 1: is a culturally understood explanation, but it's still amazing because
Speaker 1: this is not something that happens every day. And over
Speaker 1: the next few weeks, Howard the male midwife keeps delivering
Speaker 1: these dead rabbits, and he writes to doctors and scientists
Speaker 1: in London, and he's kept the eleven rabbits that he's
Speaker 1: delivered pickled in jars on a shelf. Is she okay
Speaker 1: in what way?
Speaker 2: Like if there's dead rabbits? I mean, is she like dying?
Speaker 2: She's like hamborhage, like is she like up at about?
Speaker 1: No? She seems fine And the leader a doctor will
Speaker 1: be like, she's in pretty good humor. Okay, but yeah,
Speaker 1: so the word gets out.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: October tenth, seventeen twenty six, there's the first newspaper notice.
Speaker 1: Do you want to read this newspaper notice?
Speaker 2: From Guildford comes a strange but well attested piece of
Speaker 2: news that a poored woman who lives at Gondolman near
Speaker 2: that town, who has a husband and two children now
Speaker 2: living with her, was about a month past delivered by
Speaker 2: mister John Howard, an eminent surgeon and man midwife living
Speaker 2: at Guildford, of a creature resembling a rabbit.
Speaker 1: The news is out. It's a pretty like level headed
Speaker 1: news article, I would say, for a pretty unbelievable.
Speaker 2: Thing, free amble with like the punchline right at the end.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, oh yeah, doctor place creature resembling a rabbit born.
Speaker 1: So King George the First decides that he's going to
Speaker 1: send his court to anatomist, Nathaniel Saint Andre, to go investigate,
Speaker 1: and he also sends along the Prince of Wales's secretary,
Speaker 1: this guy Samuel Malino, who is a secretary but also
Speaker 1: a scientist who measures these things called stellar parallaxes, which
Speaker 1: are important and I do not understand them, but like,
Speaker 1: good on him. That's like an important scientific discovery unrelated
Speaker 1: to this.
Speaker 2: So science is happening in this kingdom in some way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this guy Samuel Malino is doing a great job
Speaker 1: somewhere else in unrelated matters.
Speaker 2: Unrelated to whether or not women can give birth to
Speaker 2: dead rabbits.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but the important figure here, the real star of
Speaker 1: the show is Nathaniel Saint Andre. Okay, and what you
Speaker 1: need to know about him is even at the time,
Speaker 1: he was a pretty controversial figure because my favorite sort
Speaker 1: of description of him came from an article in the
Speaker 1: Paris Review that described him as quote an opportunistic dilettante
Speaker 1: with a taste for ornately embroidered shirts, which is just
Speaker 1: like a great way to put someone down. He was
Speaker 1: born in Switzerland, traveled Europe as a servant, and he
Speaker 1: worked as a language teacher, a dancer, and a fencer,
Speaker 1: like a fencing teacher, and he's sort of like a
Speaker 1: charmer seducer type.
Speaker 2: I am getting like a real Derek Blasberg vibe.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah yeah. So when I say that this guy,
Speaker 1: you know, traveled as a servant, language teacher, dancing tutor,
Speaker 1: fencing tutor, you might not be thinking a surgeon or
Speaker 1: court anatomist.
Speaker 2: No, I'm more thinking he is of the like the
Speaker 2: softer arts, Like he is of the he is of
Speaker 2: the social graces and the the finer things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And basically what happened is he's injured by a
Speaker 1: fencing student, He's treated by a surgeon, and realized that
Speaker 1: that guy was making a lot of money, so he
Speaker 1: decided to pivot because he didn't think it seemed too hard,
Speaker 1: and at the time it wasn't like there were med
Speaker 1: school boards to deal with. Okay, So he just does
Speaker 1: a perfunctory internship apprenticeship in London, sets up a practice,
Speaker 1: and just charms his way all the way to the
Speaker 1: King Great. And I think the context is important that
Speaker 1: the king at the time is George the first. Who's
Speaker 1: the first Hanover King. I'm going to put my noble
Speaker 1: blood hat on just for a second. But did you
Speaker 1: see the favorite Yes, so Queen Anne, the one that
Speaker 1: Olivia Coleman is great Protestant. Okay, dies with no children, Yes,
Speaker 1: very important in England that she had a lot of miscarriages.
Speaker 1: She had a lot of miscarriages and in that movie
Speaker 1: a lot of rabbits. But that is not historically actor.
Speaker 1: That was just the director having some fun. Okay, she's
Speaker 1: brought dies with no babies. They very important in England
Speaker 1: at the time, and I'm brushing over a lot of
Speaker 1: important stuff. They're the king and Queen can only be Protestant,
Speaker 1: no more Catholics. So her nearest Protestant relative is a
Speaker 1: German cousin. Who's the handovers. So that's George the first
Speaker 1: comes over to England. He was not born in England.
Speaker 1: He does not speak English very well at all. So
Speaker 1: he's sort of this foreign German king that's coming over
Speaker 1: to be King of England kind of on a technicality, okay.
Speaker 1: And so this Saint Andre guy kind of represents everything
Speaker 1: that English people hate about George the first because he's foreign.
Speaker 1: He's like German speaking, and it's like charisma and fluff
Speaker 1: over substance and science.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So it's like people are not thrilled with the king
Speaker 1: right now, gotcha? And people are not thrilled that they
Speaker 1: think he's kind of stupid and easily seduced by these
Speaker 1: like charmers. Not popular, no, But Saint Andre arrives to Guildford,
Speaker 1: sees Mary while she's in labor with her allegedly fifteenth rabbit.
Speaker 1: He by this is from his account. He watches as
Speaker 1: her stomach is pulsing and quivering like there is like
Speaker 1: a living animal inside her, and then he sees the
Speaker 1: sorry like dead animal pieces that are expelled and the
Speaker 1: animal pieces are in pieces. Because his theory is that
Speaker 1: it's the forces of the uterus.
Speaker 2: It's it's not good, it's no, that's sad, and I
Speaker 2: want to know what's actually happening to this poor woman.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you asked how she's doing. He describes her
Speaker 1: as having a sullen temper, but says that except for
Speaker 1: when she was in labor pains, she quote laughed very
Speaker 1: heartily with us, So okay, she's doing okay, okay. Saint
Speaker 1: Andre takes some of the pickled rabbits back to the King,
Speaker 1: and the King is this is amazing. He arranges for
Speaker 1: Mary to be brought to London and give a pension
Speaker 1: for her trouble, which I guess is just the thing
Speaker 1: that happens if a medical anomally is happening to you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know what I was thinking about recently is
Speaker 2: how you you mentioned like the elephant man. We think
Speaker 2: about how like oh, there used to be like freak shows. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and like people pay to see the freak and like,
Speaker 2: isn't it good that we've grown past that as a society,
Speaker 2: And like, no, we haven't. We just have TLC.
Speaker 1: We have TLC and we have people doing it to
Speaker 1: themselves on TikTok truly.
Speaker 2: And like, yes, of course Mary Toff would have a
Speaker 2: pension now it would be called like a sponsorship on Instagram,
Speaker 2: she would be.
Speaker 1: Like story time, here's how we keep birth rabbits. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but the context I think also is like medical mysteries
Speaker 1: and marvels were like a common attraction.
Speaker 2: People are bored human interest, Like, yes, I would be interested,
Speaker 2: Like if this were happening, I would be like, what's
Speaker 2: up with this, lady?
Speaker 1: I mean A tidbit that I kind of think is
Speaker 1: interesting is in seventeen seventy seven, the year that Paris
Speaker 1: gets its very first newspaper, London already has three hundred
Speaker 1: daily newspapers.
Speaker 2: I was about to say that seems really late for
Speaker 2: Paris to get his first news.
Speaker 1: They're too busy smoking, reading a book. Paris get together poetry.
Speaker 1: But London is very much like a city of gossip
Speaker 1: and tabloid journalism. People are going to coffee houses to
Speaker 1: read the news, and this sort of thing is getting
Speaker 1: attention and apparently a pension from the king. People even
Speaker 1: at the time, and this, I feel like is a
Speaker 1: theme for hoax or It's like rather than people just
Speaker 1: being done back then, people even at the time are skeptical.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Mary is examined by a doctor named Richard Manningham, who
Speaker 1: sees her having something like a seizure or fit. He
Speaker 1: sees belly movement happening, something that lasts a little while
Speaker 1: he does not quite know what it is. But people
Speaker 1: also are skeptical because they examine the rabbits that Mary
Speaker 1: delivers and sees that they have corn and hay and
Speaker 1: grass in their stomach, So it's like these rabbits aren't
Speaker 1: originating from inside of her. And also Saint Andre tests
Speaker 1: the rabbit's lungs and determined that it had breathed air
Speaker 1: like it had already. I don't know what happens to
Speaker 1: lung tissue when it breathes air, but like I think
Speaker 1: I think tests an floats which indicates something. So there's like,
Speaker 1: how were these rabbits aren't being born inside her? Yeah,
Speaker 1: they take Mary to a bathhouse in London. I don't
Speaker 1: know why, not a hospital, but they take her to
Speaker 1: a place called mister Lacy's Bagnio in lester Fields, which
Speaker 1: is like.
Speaker 2: It is a just try to get her to chill out, maybe,
Speaker 2: but I also.
Speaker 1: Think it's like a place that like she could be
Speaker 1: examined within sort of not public, but she's being examined
Speaker 1: by as many as ten doctors at a time. Which feels,
Speaker 1: when you think about it, very invasive and is probably
Speaker 1: very unpleasant for her. Okay, she doesn't give birth to
Speaker 1: any more rabbits. Okay, but based on this sort of
Speaker 1: fit and seizure that that doctor has, I don't I
Speaker 1: don't know. I'm not going to diagnose some and posthumously,
Speaker 1: but it seems like she's probably suffering from a bad infection.
Speaker 2: Oh interesting.
Speaker 1: At the beginning of December, Saint Andre publishes his accounts
Speaker 1: of these events and it becomes a London obsession. He
Speaker 1: writes this public publication called a Short Narrative of an
Speaker 1: Extraordinary Delivery of Rabbits. But three days later it all
Speaker 1: falls apart, okay, because a porter at the bathhouse reports
Speaker 1: that either Mary or depending on the accounts, married sister
Speaker 1: in law Margaret Toft, attempt to attempted to bribe him
Speaker 1: into smuggling pieces of rabbit into the bath house, manning him.
Speaker 1: The doctor basically confronts Mary and says if she doesn't
Speaker 1: tell the truth, they'll need to do exploratory surgery on her,
Speaker 1: which is a pretty bad threat.
Speaker 2: Also, like without her consent, I mean, can't she just
Speaker 2: be like no, you cannot do explore her surgery on me, like, I.
Speaker 1: Think, I think he's bluffing. Yeah, I deeply hope he's bluffing.
Speaker 1: The bluff works. She immediately breaks down and confesses that
Speaker 1: it was a hoax the way she confesses. December seventh, again,
Speaker 1: just a few days after Saint Andre published his big
Speaker 1: account of this amazing thing happening, she publishes her own
Speaker 1: apology and confession. She blames her husband, her mother in law,
Speaker 1: and strangely, the wife of a local organ grinder for
Speaker 1: giving her this idea and sort of pushing her into it.
Speaker 1: To me, it seems like an insane hoax, but I
Speaker 1: guess it was working, and it was like going to
Speaker 1: give her a pension from the king, and it was
Speaker 1: giving her a lot of attention. But the way she
Speaker 1: frames it is she was scared and impressionable and trying
Speaker 1: to make some extra money for her family. And the
Speaker 1: idea was that because she had had these pregnancies in
Speaker 1: this miscarriage, her cervix was open, yeah, and they were
Speaker 1: putting dead animal pieces inside of her manually to be delivered.
Speaker 2: Oh boy.
Speaker 1: One like modern day researcher points out that it's amazing
Speaker 1: that she didn't die of a bacterial infection.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And also something horrific that I just want to acknowledge
Speaker 1: is that Saint Andre and his account will talk about
Speaker 1: how these animal pieces, some of them had their nails
Speaker 1: still intact. Yeah, so this is like an incredible it's
Speaker 1: a it's a hoax.
Speaker 2: And I'm putting you're even supposed to leave a tampon
Speaker 2: in for very long. You're supposed to be really careful
Speaker 2: with what you put up there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So this is like this woman is sort of
Speaker 1: being tortured by this scam that her husband, mother in law,
Speaker 1: sister in law, and I guess like a local organ
Speaker 1: grinder is putting her up to. It is. Yeah, it's gross,
Speaker 1: and but it worked in terms of the hoax temporarily.
Speaker 2: I wonder if she just had like crazy post miscarriage
Speaker 2: depression and was just like needed like attention and like
Speaker 2: a break from the fields and.
Speaker 1: Like, yeah, you know, also, her life is miserable. Yeah,
Speaker 1: her life is boring, sad and miserable. If her one
Speaker 1: of her children hadn't died by this point, one of
Speaker 1: her children would die. She had a miscarriage. She walks
Speaker 1: two hours back and forth her husband's unemployed manual labor
Speaker 1: every day, making so little money they can't afford rabbit meat.
Speaker 1: I mean, she lives a boring, miserable life. Someone probably
Speaker 1: came to her with this idea and it's like, okay,
Speaker 1: maybe it's and she was willing to endure this for
Speaker 1: money and like a little bit of attention and excitement. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's awful. It also makes me think of
Speaker 1: have you seen the movie Catch Me If you Can?
Speaker 2: Many times?
Speaker 1: Delightful film, one of my favorites. I think it was
Speaker 1: on my New York Times when You're like your top dad.
Speaker 1: I love it. There's that scene that Tom Hanks is like,
Speaker 1: I gotta know, how did you pass the bar? And
Speaker 1: he's like, I studied, I passed the bar. That kind
Speaker 1: of it's like, how is she delivering rabbit parties? The
Speaker 1: rabbit part? Yeah, she is physically delivering rabbit parts. It's
Speaker 1: not a sleight of hand routine, oh sure, yea. Or
Speaker 1: it's like David it's a sleight of vagina vagina routine.
Speaker 1: Or it's like David Blaine, like when he holds his
Speaker 1: breath for like a long time, Like sometimes they are
Speaker 1: not magic tricks. Sometimes he just like teaches himself sure, so, yeah,
Speaker 1: this becomes a It was already a major story because
Speaker 1: it was like this body horror sensation, but it's like
Speaker 1: a perfect storm to become a massive story. The satirists
Speaker 1: have a field day because they get to they get
Speaker 1: to do their favorite thing. They get to make fun
Speaker 1: of foreigners, the elite, and women all at once.
Speaker 2: I mean, and not to be like as they should
Speaker 2: stick it to her, but like you set yourself up
Speaker 2: for that, Mary, like you're just shoving dead animal parts
Speaker 2: up your lady bits. Like, yeah, people are gonna make
Speaker 2: some jokes. The satirists have a field day. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They mostly love making fun of Saint Andre because he's
Speaker 1: the silly foreigner. Great, that's their sort of famous target.
Speaker 1: Mary is kind of framed as like a stupid victim,
Speaker 1: even though she was the one who sort of did
Speaker 1: the hoax on the doctor. She's sort of framed as
Speaker 1: like a country bumpkin, and it's the doctors who are
Speaker 1: stupid idiots. The most famous takedown is from an artist,
Speaker 1: William Hogarth, who spoofs it as like the Adoration of
Speaker 1: the Magi with like Tafta's Virgin Mary and the like
Speaker 1: wise men are Saint Andre and his colleagues like get
Speaker 1: it because they're they're not wise indeed, And the illustration
Speaker 1: is titled caniculari, which is a double pun because the
Speaker 1: Latin for rabbit is caniculous and vulva is kunitz you
Speaker 1: might imagine, So it's very clever. And also it's like
Speaker 1: because those are the roots, there's a similar word cony,
Speaker 1: which is a ubiquitous sort of eighteenth century London slang
Speaker 1: for both rabbit and female genitalia. So like the jokes
Speaker 1: right themselves, the the the.
Speaker 2: Kimmel monologue of this era would have just been hit
Speaker 2: after hit after hit after hit.
Speaker 1: It's like a sex scandal. It's like a comedy sex scandal.
Speaker 1: Like the absurdity and silliness of it is also why
Speaker 1: it just keeps getting made fun of again, because Saint
Speaker 1: Andre was already this figure that people hated and like
Speaker 1: hated that he charmed his way all the way to
Speaker 1: the king. But now there's like a vagina involved, was there?
Speaker 2: Did he like lose his positions?
Speaker 1: We will get get okay, But the satirists are also
Speaker 1: they are making fun of Mary, but they're not framing
Speaker 1: her as we said, as like conniving or conniving a
Speaker 1: someone writes this like spooful, like you can't take her
Speaker 1: down any farther, she's already pouring poor person who lives
Speaker 1: in a nothing village and has a miserable life. Someone writes,
Speaker 1: like a spoof confession by her, Like I don't even
Speaker 1: know what the equivalent is, Like a spoof first person
Speaker 1: confession called much ado about nothing that paints her as
Speaker 1: like grasping and stupid and sexually promiscuous.
Speaker 2: The classics, the classics.
Speaker 1: Again, like like I said, like you get to make
Speaker 1: fun of stupid, slutty women and foreigners, everyone's favorite thing.
Speaker 1: Mary is actually arrested as a quote notorious and vile
Speaker 1: cheat for you know, fraud, and she sent to Bridewell Prison,
Speaker 1: where people would pay almost to see her as a
Speaker 1: zoo animal, like she would have to be like paraded
Speaker 1: out to Like it's public humiliation by design, yeah, because
Speaker 1: that's what they were doing at the time. There's entertainment.
Speaker 1: It's like very much like Live by the Sword, Die
Speaker 1: by the sword unfortunately.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you know, here's that attention you ordered.
Speaker 1: She is eventually released after a few weeks no charges,
Speaker 1: probably because pushing it further just would have embarrassed everyone
Speaker 1: who felt for it. Yeah, because again like the king
Speaker 1: and like the King's royal anantimus like had fallen from this,
Speaker 1: so they just sort of like go back to your
Speaker 1: no nowhere town.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and like get some clean underwear and like let
Speaker 2: your servix close up and stop shoving things up yourself.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Please. Saint Andre, who you asked about, is publicly humiliated.
Speaker 1: His royal duties stop, his salary is removed. He is
Speaker 1: He tries to get another audience with the King, can't.
Speaker 1: The King is like, I I'm not with this man anymore.
Speaker 1: He does still get to keep the title of court Anatomist,
Speaker 1: but I wonder if it is something almost like because
Speaker 1: he's not getting a salary anymore, it's like you can
Speaker 1: use it like New York Times bestseller, like once it
Speaker 1: happens to one, so get the title forever. But he's
Speaker 1: not getting a salary. King doesn't want to see him anymore.
Speaker 1: But you want to hear the craziest part of the
Speaker 1: story really unrelated again to the merry thing, but relevant
Speaker 1: to the Saint Andre of it all. Remember how I
Speaker 1: told you that the first visit to Guildford he went
Speaker 1: with the secretary Malino, who was like also a scientist.
Speaker 1: Mm hm, So Malino a few years later, not a
Speaker 1: few years the next year, suffers a fit in the
Speaker 1: House of Commons and he's treated by Saint Andre, and
Speaker 1: Malino dies that night.
Speaker 2: He's treated by disgraced anatomist St. Andrews.
Speaker 1: Yeah, man gets the friends. He's still a doctor, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm still using the title court anatomist. He's treated by
Speaker 1: disgraced anatomius Saint Andre. He dies that night, so maybe
Speaker 1: you shouldn't have gotten gotten that court anatomus. And that
Speaker 1: very night Saint Andrea elopes with his widow that very
Speaker 1: night body not even called yet, So suspicion.
Speaker 2: Loki the winner of the whole song.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's right. Probably as you can imagine, one
Speaker 1: of Malono's relatives accuses uh St Andrea of poisoning him,
Speaker 1: but he like then sues and like wins an action
Speaker 1: for defamation because he can't prove that he killed him
Speaker 1: on purpose, even though he eloped with his widow right away. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not great. But and then when unfortunately, when Elizabeth, that
Speaker 1: widow dies, Saint Andre loses her inheritance, so then loses
Speaker 1: access to her money he had already lost a ton
Speaker 1: of other money in investments and a lot of his
Speaker 1: belongings in a fire. So when he dies at age
Speaker 1: ninety six, he's in an almshouse, so he doesn't have
Speaker 1: a great go of it. He probably was pretty good
Speaker 1: actually while he was married to Elizabeth. But over on
Speaker 1: the whole, pretty disgraced dies in poverty, and after this
Speaker 1: marry took thing. He claims that he never ate rabbit
Speaker 1: again for the rest of his life.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't either, Yeah, yiesh, yeesh. Yeah, I mean started
Speaker 2: from the bottom. Germany sweet talked, he did the whole
Speaker 2: what a life he dies.
Speaker 1: He started as a servant. He was born in Switzerland
Speaker 1: and was a servant. He had no money or title.
Speaker 2: And he talked his way all the way through all
Speaker 2: the wrongs.
Speaker 1: All the wrongs. If only he had understood the human
Speaker 1: nature of a poor woman trying to get money and attention.
Speaker 1: She's also twenty four. I don't know. People do stupid
Speaker 1: things in the early twenties.
Speaker 2: True, including cheven animal parts of.
Speaker 1: What. I'm gonna go on the record and say, I
Speaker 1: don't think this was a good idea for her to do.
Speaker 2: No, And I would I feel like she also would
Speaker 2: agree with that assessment.
Speaker 1: I mean, she pretty much disappears from public view after this.
Speaker 1: Good she gives birth to a baby girl apparently healthy,
Speaker 1: which is good a case. So what a.
Speaker 2: Cervix, what a servant?
Speaker 1: Bad? He could come back from this that a healthy
Speaker 1: baby's being.
Speaker 2: What an immune system down there?
Speaker 1: Honestly? Now, if ever I'm worried that I've kept a
Speaker 1: tampon in too long, you're like, well, if Mary.
Speaker 2: Talk could come back from all those animals.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Occasionally, the Duke of Richmond, who is like the
Speaker 1: nearest major nobleman, would invite her to show her off
Speaker 1: at dinner parties because she was like a tabloid figure.
Speaker 1: So he would have dinner parties and be like, this
Speaker 1: is the rabbit lady Mary. I mean, I don't think
Speaker 1: it's not like she gets money, because we have the
Speaker 1: record that in seventeen forty she's charged with the petty
Speaker 1: theft of fowls of like chickens. She's acquitted, but again
Speaker 1: she's like, I don't know, not doing great.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: She dies January thirteenth, seventeen sixty three, when she's like
Speaker 1: six about sixty years old, and she's noted by the
Speaker 1: parish as quote Mary Toft widow the imposterous rabbit. That's
Speaker 1: like her notation. When she dies, we don't know where
Speaker 1: her grave is, no grave found, probably lost or destroyed,
Speaker 1: and that's kind of her sad life.
Speaker 2: Well quite the hoax, Mary, Yeah, it.
Speaker 1: Was a hoax. It worked, unfortunately, the hoax. The reason
Speaker 1: it took off was mostly because people wanted to make
Speaker 1: fun of doctors. Yeah, like she had fooled these like
Speaker 1: doctors who were pretty dumb and were ready to be
Speaker 1: believe something kind of stupid, and then people mostly made
Speaker 1: fun of them, and I think that's why the hoax
Speaker 1: took off. It's like sometimes there's like a perfect storm
Speaker 1: of something that that receives main main character of the
Speaker 1: day energy where it's like, oh, I'll say remember even
Speaker 1: though it's kind of in the news now, but by
Speaker 1: the time this comes out, the cheating couple at a
Speaker 1: cold Play concert, where it's like, on the whole, that's
Speaker 1: not that big of a deal, but it really united
Speaker 1: the internet because it's like it's such an easy target
Speaker 1: of things we love to make fun of, yes, which
Speaker 1: is like people in power, workplace scandals, cheating, like silling.
Speaker 1: It like the.
Speaker 2: Felt like getting caught, getting caught the way you least
Speaker 2: expect it, so.
Speaker 1: It's like a perfect storm. And in this case, it
Speaker 1: was a perfect storm, even though it's like on its
Speaker 1: whole it's this is a sad story about like a
Speaker 1: poor women going to very grotesque measures for money and
Speaker 1: a little bit of attention. But because people got to
Speaker 1: make fun of this, like foreign doctor and people didn't trust,
Speaker 1: like the king who surrounded himself with German speaking nobody's
Speaker 1: and people love a sex scandal like that. You know,
Speaker 1: it's not sex, but it involves a vagino and people
Speaker 1: think is funny at the time for a political cartoon,
Speaker 1: it really captured the moment and had this lasting legacy
Speaker 1: for centuries.
Speaker 2: I also think it is like childbirth is just mysterious enough. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you were saying that, like maternal imprintation is like material impression. Impression.
Speaker 2: Like I read this thing that people used to believe
Speaker 2: that kittens could like crawl up inside a woman. Oh,
Speaker 2: and that like getting kittens removed was like Victorian was
Speaker 2: like if you had to go get an abortion, you
Speaker 2: were like, no, I was getting kittens removed. And I
Speaker 2: read that on Tumblr when I was really young, and
Speaker 2: I was like, that's fascinating, and then I've tried to
Speaker 2: look for it and I can't ever find anyone ever
Speaker 2: saying that that's true. So that might have just been
Speaker 2: a thing someone made up on Tumblr. So if that's
Speaker 2: not true, I think that is fake. But someone wrote
Speaker 2: it on Tumblr once and it sounded so real and
Speaker 2: I believed it.
Speaker 1: If you have any information on that, please share, because
Speaker 1: that is fascinating.
Speaker 2: Doesn't that sound real?
Speaker 1: Though it also does sound plausible. How people come up
Speaker 1: with these sort of whole life Yeah, but also like
Speaker 1: Victorian Air would come up with like polite explanations for
Speaker 1: I was getting kittens removed, I was getting kittens removed.
Speaker 1: I've never been able to find even the fake post
Speaker 1: from Tumblr. I've never been able to find any mention
Speaker 1: of it. It exists only in my mind. I think that.
Speaker 1: Also a takeaway from the story is kind of how
Speaker 1: unbelievable and how little we know about childbirth even now
Speaker 1: where people because you can't really test on pregnant ladies
Speaker 1: for legitimate ethical reasons, But that just means there's so
Speaker 1: much recent that we don't have about pregnancy and childbirth.
Speaker 1: Like I am someone who takes uh anti depression and
Speaker 1: anxiety medication, and I had to go off them when
Speaker 1: I was pregnant because they were like, we just don't.
Speaker 2: Know, no one knows.
Speaker 1: They just no one knows the research. So they have
Speaker 1: done the research for some of them, but the one
Speaker 1: I was on specifically, they were just like is it
Speaker 1: good or is it I mean, is it fine or
Speaker 1: is it bad? We don't know, so you better not
Speaker 1: take them just to be safe, which is nuts.
Speaker 2: It's crazy. So that's the and you know who really
Speaker 2: could have used some antidepressants.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, Mary very talked, Oh I really want to,
Speaker 1: like you.
Speaker 2: Imagine if you could just go back in time and
Speaker 2: just hand out lexibro.
Speaker 1: I also sort of am getting like a tie from
Speaker 1: clueless vibe, like easily manipulated and just wants to be
Speaker 1: loved and like wants a little bit of attention.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just don't.
Speaker 1: You just want to sit her down and be like Mary,
Speaker 1: it's okay, yeah, just stop, let's like stop it. Give
Speaker 1: her a massage and a warm bath, and like someone
Speaker 1: to watch her kids while she takes a nap and
Speaker 1: just have to work in the fields all day. Yes,
Speaker 1: Because even when she was like at the peak of
Speaker 1: her hoax, like even when it was like quote unquote working,
Speaker 1: What that meant is she was being examined in probably
Speaker 1: a very violating way by ten male strangers. So this
Speaker 1: wasn't even a fun hoax. It was physically uncomfortable, probably
Speaker 1: hurt a lot, a miracle she didn't die of an infection,
Speaker 1: and probably very violating for And I hate that she
Speaker 1: was manipulated by her husband and sister and mother in
Speaker 1: law who were all like, yeah, let's do it. It's bad, yeah,
Speaker 1: downer of a hoax. There's actually a novel about this,
Speaker 1: which I didn't read because while I was doing historical research,
Speaker 1: I didn't want to read a novel and then get
Speaker 1: mixed up about anything that might not be real. But
Speaker 1: I have this book, so I'm going to read it now.
Speaker 1: It's called Mary Toft or the Rabbit Queen by Dexter Palmer.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to read it, and I don't know
Speaker 1: chat to you about it, probably Lizzie. Maybe I'll post
Speaker 1: about it on the hoax Instagram account, which you should follow, yes.
Speaker 2: And a little behind the scenes information. This is the
Speaker 2: first episode that we're recording since we've been like posting
Speaker 2: on the host Hoax Instagram. We're live, it's happening, and
Speaker 2: you guys have been so fun to interact with, so
Speaker 2: please continue like tagging us and dming us and like
Speaker 2: commenting and posting on our stories. We're having so much
Speaker 2: fun talk to you guys.
Speaker 1: And also our email address is just Hoaxthpodcast at gmail
Speaker 1: dot com.
Speaker 2: Our Instagram is at hoax the podcast message us.
Speaker 1: Interact with us. Let us know if you know anything
Speaker 1: about removing kittens.
Speaker 2: Yes, if you find any evidence of this Tumblr post
Speaker 2: that I saw ten years ago, find it, send it
Speaker 2: to us.
Speaker 1: Probably the most vagina heavy episode of Hoax that we're
Speaker 1: gonna do, but there's no guarantee.
Speaker 2: About it, Absolutely no guarantee.
Speaker 1: Lizzie, where can the people find you?
Speaker 2: The people can find me on la zz zz z
Speaker 2: a E. L og An dot substack dot com. If
Speaker 2: you want to subscribe to my.
Speaker 1: Newsletter, it's a really great newsletter.
Speaker 2: I love you, Thank you very much. Dana, where can
Speaker 2: we will find you?
Speaker 1: Follow me on Instagram at Dana Schwartz with three z's
Speaker 1: listen to Noble Blood. Additional show notes and sources are
Speaker 1: in the episode description, and please if you are enjoying
Speaker 1: this podcast support us just by rating, reviewing, subscribing, and
Speaker 1: sharing it with friends.
Speaker 2: Please do and please hoax responsibly. Hie Hoax is a
Speaker 2: production of iHeart Podcasts. Our hosts are Dana Schwartz and
Speaker 2: Lizzie Logan. Our executive producers are Matt Frederick and Trevor Young,
Speaker 2: with supervising producer Rima L. K Ali and producers Nomes
Speaker 2: Griffin and Jesse Funk. Our theme music was composed by
Speaker 2: Laine Montgomery. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.