Vulgar History - Women Behaving Badly, part 5： Mary Toft Pulled (Several) Rabbits (Out Of Her Vagina)

00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome to Vulgar History. My name is Anne Foster and this is my feminist women's 1.00

00:00:17.680 history comedy podcast and you might notice an improvement or maybe just like a change or

00:00:23.140 difference in the audio quality and that is I watched a tutorial on how to use my microphone

00:00:27.880 and I think I'm talking into the correct part of it now. So hopefully you're able to hear me a bit

00:00:33.080 better because this is a one-woman operation and I'm figuring this out as I go along. So welcome

00:00:39.560 to the podcast. This is the fifth episode of the podcast and the first one since I've been iTunes

00:00:46.240 official. So welcome to all the new fans who came to me from iTunes and, you know, shout out to all

00:00:52.280 the fans who've been there since day one as I figure out what the hell I'm doing. So this is

00:00:57.260 a podcast where I look at the stories of women from history, and then we score them at the end 0.73

00:01:01.940 based on their, the four categories, which are scandalousness, scheminess, significance. And

00:01:08.520 then we give them a bonus for how, how much sexism might have impacted the things that happened to

00:01:13.480 them. It's a fun ride. Welcome aboard. So the first episodes that we've done of the show,

00:01:19.240 the first four episodes, we did one royal, two noble women, and one woman with connections

00:01:27.220 to royalty. So in terms of women's history, and the women's history that we're looking at on this

00:01:34.720 podcast so far, similar to what I have personally studied, is that of European, Western European

00:01:42.740 Australian women. As per the quote by Laurel Fletcher Ulrich that inspired this season,

00:01:49.060 well-behaved women seldom make history. And I dive into that in some previous episodes. So if 1.00

00:01:54.740 you've caught up to that, awesome. Or if not, briefly, basically what she was talking about

00:01:59.720 in an essay when she said that instantly iconic phrase is basically the only time that women pop 0.98

00:02:07.620 up in records are when perhaps when they get married, because there would be often documentation 0.92

00:02:14.560 about that when they died, maybe when they had children, even when they were royal, sometimes

00:02:19.040 you don't get all of those things. And even then you might not get anything more than that. The

00:02:24.840 only women who you hear more about are people who, I guess, for lack of a better term, misbehaved. 0.99

00:02:31.360 So people who somehow stepped outside of the status quo and what was expected of them in 0.98

00:02:35.620 society. And that's who we know about. And there are so many, I'm sure, amazing, cool women who

00:02:40.740 were well-behaved and we just don't know what they were up to. And that sucks. And

00:02:44.980 hopefully we can look at their stories somehow once time travel is invented and we can go back

00:02:50.340 and learn their stories. But until then, the ones that I'm personally choosing to look at for this

00:02:55.140 podcast are the women who, especially for the season, quote unquote, misbehaved. And so we've 0.85

00:03:00.360 looked at people with connections to the nobility, to the royalty. And today's topic is a woman who

00:03:07.340 had no connections to either. She was an absolutely standard issue, peasant woman. 1.00

00:03:15.140 And what happened in her life is why we know about her. And this is so messed up. 0.99

00:03:21.340 here we go so we're looking at the story of mary toft who i'll give a little content warning just

00:03:31.100 because we're going to get into this is vulgar history in the name of the topic of the of the

00:03:36.300 show you see that i'm going to maybe say some some vulgar things i might have a swear word here then

00:03:41.600 um all the podcasts so far that i've uploaded actually i've had to put the explicit filter on

00:03:46.640 So this is like, prepare yourselves. But also today, we're going to be like, not shying away

00:03:51.120 from the gynecological details of some absolutely horrific stuff that involved vis-a-vis dead animal 0.99

00:03:58.420 parts inside of her vagina. So just content warning, that's not for everybody. And we're 0.92

00:04:04.420 going to be talking about that a lot for the next like, meh, 45 minutes. So here we go.

00:04:09.740 This story begins with the parents, whose names are Jane and John Denyer. They were

00:04:15.580 so when we say like working class like or even high class or lower class like basically

00:04:22.080 this is the year 1703 is when mary was born and so it was a sort of situation where you've got

00:04:28.640 sort of like your nobility your aristocracy you've got your royals and then you've kind of got

00:04:34.100 like really poor people like homeless level people and then you've kind of got like the working poor

00:04:40.940 and that's kind of what they were more than like working class i'd say they were like the working

00:04:45.620 poor so john and jane denier they had five children overall all together and their oldest was a girl

00:04:53.200 named mary so she was born mary denier and she was baptized february 21st 1703 and like a lot of

00:05:02.760 people not just women not just working poor people but just like anyone in general even like royals

00:05:10.300 people whose every action you'd think would be written down like no one really knows much about

00:05:14.520 what she got up to because no one really wrote down a lot of what anyone was getting up to because

00:05:18.260 everyone was too busy working the fields etc but when she was 17 years old Mary Denier married a

00:05:24.840 man or a boy she was 17 and her husband was 18 year old Joshua Toft and so this is young to be

00:05:33.400 married even then even though there's sort of this sort of misconception slash myth that people got

00:05:40.200 married when they were like 12 or whatever back then. And I mean, like, yeah, betrothals happened

00:05:44.040 between rich people. But for a 17 year old girl to marry an 18 year old boy, probably either they

00:05:50.740 were in love, or she was pregnant, or one or the other, or both. So basically, they got married in

00:05:57.820 the year 1720. And Joshua Toft's family becomes important. So we're gonna dive a little bit into

00:06:04.980 who they were and what that whole situation was. So Joshua Toft was the sixth of 12 children

00:06:12.400 and his family, the Tofts were better off than Mary's family, the Deniers. So they had been 0.97

00:06:19.160 working for several centuries, like literally hundreds of years as clothiers. And this is the

00:06:26.360 sort of thing like we're seeing these days with people talking about like, you know, agriculture

00:06:30.160 industry or like coal mining or things where it's like, this was a thing of family occupation

00:06:35.420 business that people did for a really, really long time, but then sort of industrial change

00:06:40.720 and times change and the weather and whatever makes it less tenable as a career choice.

00:06:46.360 And so for them, their choice of being clothiers was not doing super well by the year 1720,

00:06:53.120 which is when Joshua married his friend, Mary.

00:06:55.580 So a clothier, in this sense, basically means somebody who is in charge of sort of a fabric slash clothing making organization. So the clothier would be people, the head bosses, they would sort of employ people who would shear the sheep, they would employ the people that would like turn that into wool, they would hire the people who made that wool into fabric, like it's a whole sort of fashion empire situation.

00:07:22.640 But basically, the Tofts had been, they had sort of made their fortune and their reputation through the successful clothiary business. But by 1720, they were sort of more on the shearing sheep level of work than the like overseeing an entire company level, but they still called themselves clothiers on census documents. So that's still kind of how they presented themselves.

00:07:45.460 So like the Toft family had a good pedigree, but they weren't especially financially well off. And especially Joshua being the sixth of 12 children, there wasn't a lot of money for him personally to inherit or to have.

00:08:02.560 though he himself worked in the family clothier business as well. So Mary and Joshua's first

00:08:09.860 child was a daughter named Mary, which is just a thing that people used to do that I wouldn't

00:08:15.180 mind seeing come back again, which is that daughters were given the same names as their

00:08:20.000 mothers. I think it's cute. So Mary Toft had a daughter, also called Mary Toft, who was born

00:08:26.120 sometime around when they were married, probably around 17, let's say 21. And then in 1723,

00:08:32.760 Mary gave birth to a second child, a daughter whose name was Anne. Amazing name. I'm also in

00:08:37.980 favor of people being called Anne, but this Anne unfortunately died of smallpox, aged around four

00:08:43.520 months, which is awful. And then the next year, they had a son whose name was James. So it's 1724.

00:08:51.660 before mary has been married for four years so she's 21 years old mother of three she and james

00:08:59.200 were renting a home from a farmer and as this is like not a weird arrangement this is just like

00:09:06.000 what what was up so they rented a home from a farmer and as a condition of living there they

00:09:11.020 worked for the farmer in his fields so this meant that during her three pregnancies and then also

00:09:20.040 like postpartum, like just after having had the babies, she would be not just working in the

00:09:26.460 fields, but also basically walking, commuting to the fields. And it was basically something like

00:09:31.840 a two hour walk there, two hour walk back. The work was very physical work. And that was just

00:09:38.180 what the situation of her life was. So Mary worked in the fields more than her husband did,

00:09:43.440 because he also had to dedicate some of his time to being a clothier. He was a journeyman

00:09:50.380 clothier, which is like one step up of an apprentice, I think. So he was sort of like

00:09:56.020 on this career path, but there weren't very many jobs for clothiers. So he was basically a poorly

00:10:01.920 paid laborer slash working on the farmland of the place where they were renting slash his wife was

00:10:08.640 also working on that same farmland. And that is what is going on in their lives. So just to set

00:10:15.140 the scene. So by the time they were both 25 years old, they were the parents of two small children,

00:10:21.720 one of whom had recently just died. They're both working, physically demanding low paying jobs in

00:10:27.040 a community where the Tofts used to be wealthy, but now weren't anymore. And Mary was pregnant

00:10:33.340 again. So as far as they knew, there's going to be one more mouth to feed. Any minute now, 0.95

00:10:39.060 more money would be fantastic and also less backbreaking work and also her getting to put

00:10:45.520 her feet up, but that's not going to happen. So in August 1726, so again, Mary is 25 years old.

00:10:55.780 Yes. 25-ish years old. She has a miscarriage. So this story, as I mentioned at the beginning,

00:11:03.020 in the content warning has a lot of gynecological information involved in it. And a lot of it is 0.66

00:11:10.120 self-reported gynecological information from Mary Toft, who was a woman living in the early

00:11:15.900 1700s, which was a time when even the doctors didn't know what was going on in terms of a

00:11:22.740 uterus, a cervix. So she's just sort of like saying, here's what it felt like to me. So what

00:11:29.020 she later described this miscarriage as was she described passing an object as big as her arm

00:11:34.620 and then experiencing a flooding, quote unquote, that lasted about a week. So we can assume some

00:11:42.340 cramps were happening. We can assume bleeding was happening. The other women who she worked with in

00:11:48.340 the fields likely would have covered for her because she couldn't do this whole job she was 1.00

00:11:53.580 doing. She couldn't commute there. But what was unusual to her and others about this was that 0.96

00:11:59.760 her miscarriage didn't look like a baby. It looked like an object. And they all thought it looked

00:12:08.480 quote unquote monstrous. So Mary Tuft went back to work as soon as she could. But then three weeks

00:12:16.760 later, while she was working in the field, she experienced further flooding. This is the word

00:12:21.620 that she used herself to describe what's happening. So I'm guessing bleeding, cramping situations and

00:12:26.620 great pain. So this was some sort of, it was like a two part miscarriage situation, perhaps. And

00:12:35.160 this is where I'm just going to say that I off the record consulted with a woman who I know who is a

00:12:41.760 obstetrician slash gynecologist just to say like, here's what Mary Toft was saying. What do you

00:12:48.120 think this was and so she said again totally just like you know in those magazine articles where

00:12:53.780 it's like the body language expert is like oh here's what this means when this person put her

00:12:58.980 arm like this in the picture it's like this person didn't actually is not the psychologist of these

00:13:03.340 people so the woman who I consulted I just gave her here's Mary Toft's recounting what do you

00:13:08.260 think this was and so what she suggested based on sort of the description of the miscarriage

00:13:14.040 and what it looked like, the miscarriage situation, might have been an incomplete

00:13:19.900 molar pregnancy, M-O-L-A-R. So this is what happens when a non-viable fertilized egg implants

00:13:26.680 in the uterus. So totally unpleasant, awful, traumatizing thing to happen to her.

00:13:32.380 But at this point, her in-laws, the Toft family, thought like, well, what if this was a monster

00:13:39.520 And then we could get rich by saying, Mary Toph just gave birth to a monster.

00:13:45.400 This is quite a turn in events.

00:13:48.480 So we'll just take a step back to be like, why, why would anyone ever think that?

00:13:55.220 And how would that make them rich?

00:13:58.740 And the answer to that is basically freak shows.

00:14:03.420 So English culture, as in culture in England at this time, was very interested in anything

00:14:10.480 they saw as monstrous.

00:14:13.080 So ambitious people could try to round up interesting people or quote unquote monsters

00:14:18.260 to take on exhibit to get rich.

00:14:20.040 So basically you would take somebody, someone who's very tall or someone who's very short

00:14:24.380 or someone whose body hair situation was unusual and you would take them to dinner parties.

00:14:29.160 You would take them and put them on exhibitions.

00:14:31.260 you'd make people pay to see this person and you would make money as their agent and the person

00:14:36.960 would be probably horribly mistreated. So one year before Mary Toft's very significant miscarriage,

00:14:43.500 a young boy known as Peter the Wild Boy had been very trendy to invite to your dinner party. So

00:14:50.040 he was a boy who, you can Google this, Peter the Wild Boy, who had been basically found. He was

00:14:55.660 like feral I guess is the word people use he to us now might say was like severely autistic

00:15:03.020 or something but basically he just acted in ways that people didn't expect boys to act

00:15:07.480 and he would be taken around and people would pay money to see him so freak shows were also popular

00:15:13.540 and so the Toft family who remember they used to be pretty well off in their clothier business now

00:15:21.380 they were less well off they were like this is it this is how we're going to make our fortune

00:15:25.140 We're going to use our sister-in-law's horrible miscarriage situation to get rich quick.

00:15:32.340 So the person who seems to have been the instigator of this whole scenario was Mary's mother-in-law, whose name was Anne Toft.

00:15:43.420 And with an assist from Mary's sister-in-law, Anne's daughter, Margaret Toft.

00:15:48.320 So Anne and Margaret are kind of the schemers here.

00:15:53.360 mary toft is just sort of like their unwilling but necessary accomplice so from mary's statements

00:16:00.400 which is it's really a treasure trove of just sort of seeing how she herself perceived what

00:16:05.900 was happening to her and what she thought about what was happening to her etc she presents herself

00:16:10.220 as not having been on board for any of this when we get to the details of what this is going to

00:16:16.000 involve it's like yeah of course she was not involved like she didn't want to do this stuff

00:16:20.540 But anyway, so Mary had her miscarriage in two parts and the object, the quote unquote

00:16:27.860 object the size of her arm, which is potentially this molar pregnancy. 0.72

00:16:32.900 This has all been disposed if it wasn't around anymore.

00:16:36.100 So Mary and Anne, or sorry, Margaret and Anne couldn't show it to people as like, look 0.53

00:16:41.040 at this crazy monster that she gave birth to.

00:16:43.860 so as as they needed something to present as proof what the tofts did was they either killed a cat

00:16:52.700 my cat is here with me while i'm recording that and i'm just like she and i are just like we're

00:16:58.340 not into this happen i'm sorry there's going to be some weird cat stuff in this story so put your

00:17:03.920 hands over your cat's ears so they either killed a cat or found a dead cat removed its guts um and

00:17:10.620 then put a dead eel. I guess they also found a dead eel or killed an eel. So they put a dead eel

00:17:16.360 inside of a vivisected cat carcass, and then put this whole scenario up inside of Mary via her 1.00

00:17:24.900 vagina. They put this dead cat with eel inside into Mary Toft's vagina, which is the name of 1.00

00:17:35.020 the like canal inside so mary herself would later claim that the cat parts have been inserted into 0.99

00:17:42.500 her cervix and the cervix is like the part at the top of the vagina that like opens but very rarely

00:17:50.280 and only a little bit um and my my obstetrician slash gynecologist friend said basically like no

00:17:56.540 like even after you've had a miscarriage or had a baby like the cervix like seals itself back up

00:18:00.580 like chances are there was not cat parts inserted up literally into her cervix but that's what she

00:18:07.280 thought had happened and it probably felt just as shitty as that happening anyway so here we have

00:18:14.660 mary um with a dead cat carcass with eel inside of it inserted inside of her vegetal canal and so

00:18:22.440 she pretends she's in labor and then as you did then because remember she'd had the miscarriage 0.97

00:18:27.440 So maybe people still thought she was pregnant or something.

00:18:30.520 No one really interested in gynecology back then, including the male doctors, but we'll

00:18:34.040 get to them in a bit.

00:18:35.380 So one of her neighbors came over to help and the neighbor came over and was like, oh

00:18:39.320 my God, she just gave birth to a cat monster eel.

00:18:44.180 And so she went to get Anne Toft, the mother-in-law slash person who invented this whole situation,

00:18:49.980 who is also some sort of midwife person or said she was a midwife person or something

00:18:56.700 like that.

00:18:57.440 They were gathering witnesses is basically what was happening.

00:19:02.180 And Toft came over and she's like, oh, my God, did my daughter just give birth to a cat carcass with an eel inside of it?

00:19:09.940 That's wild.

00:19:12.300 And so she took the quote unquote monster to a surgeon slash midwife who lived nearby so he could tell them what was going on.

00:19:20.460 And the surgeon slash midwife is a man named John Howard.

00:19:25.960 and to his credit he was like this seems unlikely like thank you so much for bringing me this um

00:19:33.740 perhaps skinned vivisected cat carcass with eel inside of it and saying that it came out of a 0.91

00:19:40.720 vagina but that is just like pretty hard for me to believe but not just because that's like of 0.59

00:19:46.120 course it's hard for them to believe that's impossible but his reasoning was like there's 0.80

00:19:49.320 not a head on this and i guess they had cut the head off of the cat body i'm just looking at my

00:19:54.660 cat it's like little cat ancestors so yeah he was like if mary had actually given birth to this

00:20:01.760 monster there would be head on it but there's not a head on this ergo this woman didn't give birth

00:20:06.640 to this monster but he was like so i'll just come over to the house and see what's going on

00:20:10.700 because you know given birth maybe the head is there i don't know what he was thinking this

00:20:14.780 whole situation gets like super weird like even weirder so john howard came by and by the time

00:20:22.920 he got there, Mary just happened to be going in quote unquote, going into labor again. Um,

00:20:28.820 her mother-in-law and delivered more dead cat bits, which I guess were from the same cat or

00:20:34.800 a different cat. Like, does it matter? I don't know. So John Howard was like, Hmm, like you

00:20:40.440 witnessed this happening or he witnessed Mary screaming. And then someone being like, look,

00:20:46.220 this cat just came out of her or whatever, but there still wasn't a cat head or a cat tail.

00:20:51.160 and he's like great i see that she may have just given birth to this monster situation but again

00:20:57.860 without a head i just can't get on board so somehow uh margaret and ann toft had lost track

00:21:06.620 of the cat head and there wasn't another one nearby or whatever so they decided to go for

00:21:12.120 rabbit bits because there were rabbits were easier to come by than cats and so they just 1.00

00:21:17.400 wanted to stuff some dead animal up inside of Mary's vagina because this whole thing is a 1.00

00:21:23.340 nightmare. So pause, side note on rabbits in general, which is just to say that there was 0.99

00:21:32.520 a lot of rabbits all over England at this time. Maybe there are still, I don't know. I don't live

00:21:36.620 there, but hundreds of years before. So medieval lords, like back in the day, in the day, medieval

00:21:42.480 lords had built uh sort of little rabbit warrens to raise rabbits for meat and fur so the medieval

00:21:49.060 lords could have the meat and the fur for their fancy medieval lord outfits and meals etc but

00:21:55.080 rabbits cannot be tamed so they escaped from these enclosures and became basically pests

00:21:59.780 to the working poor to lower status people to the farmers etc so just rabbits the whole peter

00:22:06.380 rabbit situation the rabbits would come into people's farms eat all their lettuce etc so

00:22:11.340 So rabbits were all over the place, making them the easiest thing for the Tofts to acquire.

00:22:17.580 But also the rabbits had this sort of political implication as they were sort of seen as symbolic of the carelessness of the upper classes.

00:22:24.600 So this is where the whole situation takes on a sort of political context that Margaret and Anne may or may not have consciously thought about.

00:22:35.440 But that becomes part of the story as well, because this is just getting wilder. 0.97

00:22:39.540 It's, I know we've already had an eel in a headless cat inside a woman's vagina and a 0.89

00:22:47.600 doctor being like, but with no head did this happen, but this is going to get weirder. 0.96

00:22:52.040 So what happened?

00:22:53.340 Like flashback, what happened was John Howard was still like, yeah, I see some rabbit parts

00:22:57.800 just came out of this woman, but still no head. 0.51

00:23:00.900 So I just can't, can't be on board. 0.89

00:23:03.400 So basically, Anne Toft, who is the mother-in-law inserted the upper jaw of a rabbit into 1.00

00:23:09.400 mary's vagina and then just like peaced out she just left to be like okay mary like give birth to 1.00

00:23:16.300 this in the morning i'm not sure mary was in a horrible amount of pain because the uh upper jaw 1.00

00:23:22.980 had pointy bits on it like bones and so she called for help and somebody helped remove that from

00:23:30.200 inside of her but then the next day anne came back and she was like oh you've got that like 1.00

00:23:34.580 we need to have a head inside your vagina so then she forced the rest of the rabbit skull inside of 1.00

00:23:39.080 mary such that by the time that john howard arrived mary was bleeding i mean legitimately 1.00

00:23:46.540 bleeding from her inside vagina area not just from having like very recently had a miscarriage 1.00

00:23:54.140 but also from the like having had a rabbit skull inserted and then removed from her vagina 0.99

00:24:00.580 so john howard was like huh you know what this looks like a head i guess this is a monster 0.97

00:24:06.580 so now i'm on board so just side note on john howard in general so basically he was not just

00:24:14.740 like this altruistic man midwife running around helping women etc he was somebody who was like

00:24:22.200 oh man if he if she gave birth to a monster i john howard can also become rich as the guy who

00:24:29.180 delivered the monster babies so there's a lot of money in it for him in this so he might have been

00:24:36.100 of fooled by this but i think it's more likely that he was kind of in on it likely teaming up

00:24:42.100 with ann toft the mother-in-law but basically from this point like he did not change his perspective

00:24:47.580 he had no doubts at all he was like into this situation he supported what the tofts were saying

00:24:53.320 and he was like i am the man who delivered the rabbit monsters such that he uh started giving

00:25:00.200 money to the toft family every time mary gave birth to another part of rabbit because her doing

00:25:07.340 that was like good business for him in some sort of way apparently so what happens next is that

00:25:14.340 so now that so they had done like the cat with eel but that didn't quite work because of the

00:25:19.700 head situation so now there was a rabbit head but also other rabbit bits so the toft family 0.98

00:25:26.880 started coming up with a sort of an explanation for why this human woman was starting to give

00:25:33.140 birth to rabbit bits. And the story that they decided on and the story that Mary started telling

00:25:38.700 people and the story that you still hear sometimes when the story is told as a legend is that Mary

00:25:43.880 began to claim that she dreamed of rabbits throughout her actual pregnancy, the one that

00:25:49.420 had ended with a miscarriage. And she said that during the whole time she was pregnant, she'd had

00:25:54.500 a craving to eat rabbits she was just like thinking about rabbits during the whole pregnancy

00:25:58.140 and so their explanation was basically she thought about rabbits so much during the pregnancy

00:26:03.380 her baby was a rabbit basically which is wild and very strange conjecture but this all ties in with

00:26:15.920 some of the medical science of the day which basically talked about the importance of quote

00:26:20.380 unquote prenatal influence. Like basically whatever pregnant women think about can affect 0.90

00:26:25.760 their babies. Like not in a 21st century way where you put headphones on your belly and like play

00:26:30.880 baby Mozart or whatever. But sort of like if you dream about rabbits, you will give birth to rabbits

00:26:37.060 sort of way. And so for financial reasons and also to, I don't know, because they'd figured

00:26:44.140 out a plan and they were just like, we're good at it now. And Mary started delivering entire rabbits

00:26:49.600 on a daily basis, piece by piece, from out of her vagina. John Howard delivered them all. 0.99

00:26:57.160 His were the unwashed 18th century hands reaching up inside of her over and over again. The fact

00:27:01.980 she didn't die is incredible because doctors back then didn't wash their hands between,

00:27:08.300 for instance, I also learned this from my doctor friend. So the reason that some women, many women 0.71

00:27:13.640 died in childbirth in this sort of situation, including potentially Jane Seymour, the third

00:27:20.320 wife of Henry VIII, is because doctors used to do like autopsies and cut up and whatever dead people

00:27:25.500 maybe wipe their hands in their apron, maybe not even, and then go and like deliver a baby by like 1.00

00:27:29.980 putting the hand up inside the vagina of the woman and then the woman will get a horrible 1.00

00:27:33.980 infection and die. And now we're just going to take a break for a word from our sponsors. 0.99

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00:27:55.320 The war is over and both sides lost.

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00:28:56.700 Welcome to the realms of peril and glory.

00:29:01.960 Explore the mechanically magical vistas of Vale,

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00:29:22.840 Search realms of peril and glory to find out more.

00:29:26.120 The world of Sonic the Hedgehog has been thrust into a not-so-dark, not-so-stormy, hard-boiled detective story that probably nobody saw coming.

00:29:42.100 Follow Sonic and the Intrepid Chaotix Detective Agency as they take on their biggest case yet.

00:29:48.920 This high-flying, action-packed adventure will take them across the world, fighting for every quill they can fight.

00:29:56.120 It's one heck of a tale.

00:29:59.120 Which is good, because this story might be the only thing that can save their lives.

00:30:07.080 Well, if that's all, I can just dispose of you.

00:30:09.760 Wait, what?

00:30:14.020 All will be revealed in Sonic the Hedgehog Presents The Chaotix Case Files.

00:30:20.840 Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts. 0.93

00:30:26.120 and we're back so the fact that she mary toft was having these rabbit parts put inside of her 0.99

00:30:38.500 vagina and then john howard repeatedly delivering them it's incredible she didn't die from this 0.99

00:30:44.220 which spoiler she doesn't so he was delivering the pointy claws of dead rabbits from her vagina 0.99

00:30:52.180 like so it wasn't like a whole rabbit all up all at once it was like parts at a time and so over 0.96

00:30:58.320 the course of like a day she would quote unquote deliver a whole rabbit with her mother and sister

00:31:04.680 mother-in-law and sister-in-law the ones like helping to slide the bits up inside of her but 0.82

00:31:09.480 mary was the one who had to like spread her legs and deliver these rabbit parts so basically at

00:31:16.760 this point, John Howard was spending so much time with her and her like rabbit birth situation that

00:31:22.800 he entirely moved his entire medical practice so he could be with her 24 hours a day because one

00:31:28.480 never knew when a new rabbit part might need to be delivered. And he was the doctor that delivered

00:31:32.740 the rabbit babies. So by the end of November, 1726, Mary Toft had given birth to, did you hear

00:31:40.380 my little quotes quote-unquote given birth to 12 complete rabbits piece by piece from her vagina 1.00

00:31:49.060 they like the pieces were put up the pieces were removed 12 rabbits so sometimes she had to keep 0.85

00:31:57.800 rabbit bits up inside of her for days or even weeks so john howard wouldn't see them being put

00:32:02.620 inside and again the fact she didn't die of a blood infection is really speaks to the resiliency

00:32:09.060 of her immune system. So while this was all going on, so John Howard was like, this is great. I'm

00:32:14.620 the man who delivered the rabbits, but they weren't getting as famous as he wanted. Or as

00:32:19.140 the Tofts had obviously also wanted. Mary, again, I don't think this was what she wanted for herself,

00:32:25.680 but she would get some of the money as well. Basically they're like, we just, how do we take

00:32:29.520 this to the next level? Which is like, oh my God, like what is the next level of this? So we'll find

00:32:36.360 So what happened is John Howard wrote letters to every rich and important person he knew, hoping for more publicity, which would bring him more money and glory. And to be prepared, he pickled all the rabbit bits that he delivered. And he offered to like take his little jars of pickled rabbit bits. He could bring them to your dinner party. He could bring them to your soiree. He could bring them to your medical lecture and he could talk about it.

00:33:00.620 So basically, he was blabbing about this so much that basically, eventually, a small notice came up in a newspaper in London, saying like, this woman's been giving birth to rabbits, like, isn't that weird? And that newspaper article gained the attention of some men who served the king. Some of the courtiers of the king at this time was King George, the first.

00:33:24.020 And one of the people who noticed this or who heard about it from the newspaper article was the king's personal physician, which is a man named Nathaniel St. Andre. And so now this takes this whole story takes its next mega twist moment, courtesy of the king and St. Andre.

00:33:42.720 So first of all, a note on King George I. So he was the grandnephew, so not the grandson, but the grandnephew of Queen Anne I, as played by Olivia Colman in The Favourite. So if you remember from The Favourite, also a movie with a lot of rabbits in it, also related to fertility.

00:34:01.000 so the queen anne the first had given birth to so many children and sadly none of them survived

00:34:08.880 childhood she had a huge number of miscarriages as well so basically she was the queen and no one

00:34:14.420 knew who would inherit from her because she did not have any surviving children so basically

00:34:20.100 because she died without any living heirs and she was protestant and nobody wanted a catholic to

00:34:25.440 inherit. They just sort of looked at her family tree to figure, like, who is the next closely

00:34:31.000 related to her Protestant person? And that was George. So the thing about George is he was

00:34:38.060 German, and he never learned how to speak English, despite being the king of Britain.

00:34:44.740 And he spent most of his reign, like, literally living in Germany, not even in England.

00:34:51.260 all of which to say when it came time for george the first to hire a personal physician to be his

00:34:57.900 doctor in england he was like well as long as the doctor speaks german that's fine so as his doctor

00:35:04.000 he chose nathaniel saint andre who was from switzerland who spoke german and who's also

00:35:10.640 a terrible doctor slash even worse person slash okay so we'll get into it so nathaniel saint andre

00:35:19.420 had a long history of odd behavior. If you, there's not time in here to get into all of the

00:35:26.080 Nathaniel St. Andre of it, but his story involves like wife stealing. His story involves poisoning.

00:35:32.600 His story involves like, was he even really a doctor? Like he was just a messy bitch who lived 1.00

00:35:36.860 for drama, Nathaniel St. Andre. So he happened to find himself caught up in weird scandals a lot 1.00

00:35:43.300 more than basically anybody else because he loved scandal. He loved drama. And if there was a scandal

00:35:49.160 happening, he would like fling himself into the middle of it because he was desperate to keep his

00:35:53.580 name in the newspapers as this like famous eccentric genius. So he just really wanted to

00:35:59.580 be associated with anything dramatic. John Howard just wanted money, basically. And Mary Toft is

00:36:06.980 just like this person in the middle of all these other people's wild ambitions, which is such a 0.98

00:36:11.760 common, I mean, not this story, not the rabbit vagina situation of it all. But it's such a common 0.82

00:36:18.380 thing of like a bunch of men are just really ambitious about something and they see a way

00:36:23.300 to get power and the way to do it is just by using a woman like to a different extent this is sort of

00:36:29.040 the story of uh the beginning of queen elizabeth the first sis reign but anyway mary toft is having 0.99

00:36:37.680 i mean she's suffering she's physically suffering like having rabbits pulled out of your vagina 1.00

00:36:45.100 every day. Having to put in and then pull out the pointy bits. Like she just had a miscarriage. Like 1.00

00:36:52.620 anyway, so she's just like, she didn't want this. She didn't want this, but more and more people

00:37:00.620 around her are just like counting on her to keep doing this so that they will get rich or more 0.52

00:37:05.920 powerful or whatever. So basically the story of her rabbit births by now had gotten so locally

00:37:13.020 famous that, you know, there wasn't paparazzi or whatever, but basically she couldn't stay in her

00:37:17.100 little house that they were renting from the farmer, who was also her boss. So she's moved

00:37:21.900 to a bigger town. John Howard came along with her to live in this town where she just continued.

00:37:27.220 And, you know, hopefully her mother-in-law and sister-in-law came along too, so they could like 1.00

00:37:31.520 procure rabbit carcasses and shove them up inside of her. Actually, the person who was procuring 1.00

00:37:37.600 the rabbit carcassus was her husband, Joshua. Remember him from back before the story got so

00:37:43.900 distressing. So he's basically running around buying dead baby rabbits from whatever, I don't

00:37:50.100 know, rabbit vendors there are. And he was not being discreet whatsoever. Like later, the rabbit

00:37:56.220 vendors would be like, he would come up and say stuff like, yeah, I need to buy some rabbits for 1.00

00:38:00.040 my wife. Like, do you have any dead rabbits? It'd be great if they were dead baby rabbits. 1.00

00:38:04.540 my wife needs dead baby rabbits no reason so it was not a smooth operation oceans 11 it is not

00:38:14.420 so nathaniel saint andre was like i'm into this and so he swept up in town just in time

00:38:20.480 to personally witness mary's 15th rabbit birth so nathaniel saint andre horrible person 0.95

00:38:28.860 messy bitch who lived for drama technically the king's personal physician in england but also just 0.95

00:38:35.300 like also a terrible doctor so he personally helped her deliver one of these rabbits and then 1.00

00:38:42.580 he ran off to autopsy it to see like what's going on you know like is this some sort of human fetus

00:38:47.840 that looks like a rabbit like what's the deal and so it's at this point that one of the things he

00:38:52.960 did was he took the lungs of the rabbit put them in water and they floated and the reason he did

00:39:00.200 that was to see like if they floated that means that those lungs had breathed air and so the

00:39:05.360 rabbit seemed to have been born dead but like if the lungs had air in them that means the rabbit

00:39:11.180 at some point breathed which means it probably didn't grow inside of matoft's uterus but he was

00:39:18.940 not ready to to debunk this he was there to support it basically so he just like didn't really

00:39:25.720 get too concerned about that like i guess there's just air inside of her uterus like why not there's

00:39:30.700 already rabbits growing there so and just after this autopsy he went over he was called back to

00:39:35.800 her side again and witnessed the birth of another rabbit carcass and so now he also not just

00:39:43.040 autopsying the the rabbit bits but he also examined her whole vaginal area did a little

00:39:51.020 peeking around seeing what's up he's like let's just see if there's any more rabbit parts

00:39:56.000 hiding up inside here and he's like nope i don't see anything in there so i guess 0.99

00:40:00.640 i guess you're not secretly putting rabbit parts inside your vagina and then he left 0.99

00:40:05.240 but then he came back and he delivered another dead rabbit and he was like oh my god i looked 0.99

00:40:10.620 inside her vagina there's no rabbit parts there then she delivered a rabbit so like i am convinced 0.94

00:40:16.220 but also he went in there like ready to be convinced he didn't require much convincing 1.00

00:40:21.300 and then also later like as much as one can love a detail in a story as profoundly fucked up as

00:40:27.920 this story i love this detail which is in her later deposition mary explained that like when 0.98

00:40:34.020 he looked up inside her vagina there were rabbit parts there there literally were he just didn't

00:40:38.960 know what he was doing or what he was looking at vis-a-vis a woman's vaginal canal. So like he was 0.98

00:40:46.540 just such a useless and unqualified doctor that he didn't notice a rabbit carcass inside the vagina 1.00

00:40:51.760 of a woman whose vagina he was inspecting to see if there was a rabbit in it. So basically poor her 1.00

00:40:59.620 and Nathaniel St. Andre sucks and and guess what story gets weirder. So by now the king was kind 0.98

00:41:07.060 of like, even from Germany was like, what's going on? This all seems a little weird. And he was

00:41:12.780 like, I kind of know Nathaniel St. Andre, messy bitch who lives for drama. So let's just like get 1.00

00:41:18.140 like a objective third opinion on the situation. So he sent his other personal physician who is

00:41:27.340 named Syracchius Ahlers. I'm going to call him Ahlers. Ahlers was the official royal doctor of 0.55

00:41:35.080 the German royal family, which is the one that George cared more about. So he chose like an 0.52

00:41:39.060 actual good doctor for there. Allers was, came into this whole thing, thank God, skeptical of

00:41:46.640 the whole situation. He showed up basically like, Mary Toft, I don't believe you've given birth to

00:41:51.020 15 rabbits. Prove me wrong. So from moment one, like he was not impressed with the whole clown

00:41:57.080 car that was this whole scheme. So for instance, when he arrived, he showed up and Nathaniel

00:42:02.380 it, Andrea was like, oh, look, this rabbit skin, she just gave birth to this. You just missed it.

00:42:08.900 And Ollers was like, I don't think so because there's no blood or fluid on this rabbit skin

00:42:15.260 whatsoever. There's literally no way this was just born out of either a human woman 0.99

00:42:19.580 or a female rabbit. Also, he was just like looking in the room. He's like, oh, and also Mary Toph

00:42:26.240 doesn't look pregnant at all. I feel like she's literally wearing a corset right now. And she's 1.00

00:42:31.220 also walking around, like holding her knees together, like she's trying to make something 1.00

00:42:34.660 not fall out of her vagina. So it's all just like a little suspicious. And Mary's like, 0.99

00:42:40.560 oh no, I'm going into labor. And Allers was like, okay, I'm going to take care of this situation.

00:42:47.260 And despite him being skeptical, which made me sort of side with him a little bit,

00:42:52.700 turns out he didn't know what he was doing at all vis-a-vis childbirth delivery. He was a doctor,

00:42:57.440 but he was not a obstetrician, nor was he a gynecologist. So he reached his hand up inside

00:43:03.040 of Mary to like help her give birth. But what he did is he accidentally shoved the rabbit

00:43:06.900 higher up into her vagina, which is just like, oh, so Mary screamed in probably absolute genuine 0.98

00:43:15.560 pain. And John Howard was like, I got this. But so while John Howard, John Howard delivered the 0.96

00:43:23.460 new rabbit carcass. Allers sneakily stole some of the rabbit bits and he like went off into his

00:43:28.720 room. And then even though he was supposed to stay in town for three more days, he pretended that he

00:43:33.760 had a headache and then he secretly left town with him. So again, he shoved the rabbit further

00:43:40.520 up the vagina, but I like Allers for his sneakiness here. So basically he just like 0.98

00:43:44.960 crapped out of town. I picture him climbing out a window. He probably didn't, but he might have.

00:43:48.720 so in london he took the rabbit bits and he did further testing where he found that a the rabbits

00:43:56.320 had had their muscles cut from their bones with sharp knives not something that could have happened

00:44:00.000 in utero and b the rabbits had pellets in their bums with corn and wheat and grass in them meaning

00:44:07.060 that the rabbits had eaten corn and wheat and grass meaning they had not just been born so

00:44:11.540 similar to what nathanael c andre had found with the floating lungs like these had been

00:44:15.760 alive rabbits who were then killed and then put inside of Mary. They did not gestate inside of

00:44:22.960 her. So he had absolute proof now, as much as one could have, you know, CSI 1726, he had proof that

00:44:30.660 this was a hoax. So at this point, we picture Mary herself, just whatever the 18th century

00:44:37.440 equivalent of holding frozen peas to your vulva would be, just like trying to make herself not

00:44:44.900 hurt as much as she was obviously hurting both psychologically and physically but nobody else 0.89

00:44:52.160 nobody nobody cared about her because what happened next is that allers john howard and 0.72

00:44:56.900 saint andre have basically a dick swinging contest about which of them was the smartest doctor

00:45:01.620 which basically was all three men kept like one would write a letter to the editors of the 0.80

00:45:05.680 newspaper being like mary toft is a hoaxer and then one of them would write a letter being like 0.97

00:45:09.780 no allers is a hypocrite and then one would write a letter being like no no saint andre's a messy 1.00

00:45:13.900 bitch who lives for drama and like nathanian andre probably sent that one so just a war of words but 1.00

00:45:19.460 not even about her just between them about like who's the smartest and best doctor throughout all 1.00

00:45:24.240 of this anne toft kept shoving rabbit bits into her daughter-in-law john howard kept delivering

00:45:29.140 them and finally just to settle this all the king commanded an obstetrician like thank god

00:45:36.680 named sir richard manningham like sir like he was a knight like he was such a trusted obstetrician 0.83

00:45:43.240 he was a knight of it to go and visit mary toft and figure out literally what the fuck was going 0.94

00:45:47.860 on sir richard manningham goes to see mary and he's like so i don't see a rabbit inside her 0.99

00:45:56.340 vagina her cervix seems closed as per usual for a person not actively giving birth to anything

00:46:04.100 um but then just after he left the room john howard was like oh i just just after you left

00:46:08.980 to look. She gave birth to these membranes. I guess you must not have noticed them when you

00:46:13.740 were examining her. And Manningham looked at the membranes, which were clearly bits of a bladder

00:46:19.600 from a pig that smelled like pig urine. And he was like, I think this is a pig's bladder. Can you 0.98

00:46:26.760 bring me like a pig's bladder to compare it to? And then someone did that because there's a pig's 0.99

00:46:33.020 letter around. I don't know. And he's like, yeah, this is clearly a pig's butter. This is hashtag

00:46:38.980 a hoax. And Mary just started crying. Like, honestly, of course she did. And so the men,

00:46:47.480 the man doctors all agreed to bring Mary back to London for further examinations, which like, 1.00

00:46:52.800 can't we just not have any more hands on her vagina ever again? Apparently not. So on to London. 1.00

00:47:01.160 now at this point what happens is saint andre wanted her next rabbit birth to happen publicly

00:47:08.900 like in a theater you know like those theaters like in um what's called the nick was that what

00:47:13.880 it's called the show but like the oldie time doctors where you like or like in frankenstein

00:47:17.980 and stuff where like a doctor's in the middle of an auditorium and there's all medical students

00:47:21.820 watching so saint andre wanted her to do that with everybody watching so that he could get fame

00:47:27.200 and glory but what happened when they got to London is Mary was for the first time no one

00:47:33.140 thought of this before was put under basically round-the-clock surveillance so there's no 0.97

00:47:37.020 opportunity for anyone to bring her a rabbit to put inside of her vagina so she didn't go into 1.00

00:47:42.520 birth so she couldn't have it happen in auditorium anyway but also just like I hope she just like 1.00

00:47:47.960 went in the room whatever it was like a jail room a hotel room and just like squeezed her legs

00:47:54.020 together and just was grateful that her in-laws weren't there to do this to her again but she was

00:47:59.960 also at this point legitimately sick because obviously because no kidding because she probably 0.99

00:48:05.440 had like a thousand various internal infections from all the hands they probably had gross pointy 0.98

00:48:12.100 nails also the rabbit bits the skulls like of course she was sick basically she started having 0.97

00:48:18.900 fits and the doctors were like oh these fits kind of look like she's going into labor but they were

00:48:22.300 probably involuntary convulsions from various serious infections she was having and then a man

00:48:28.900 was caught trying to smuggle a dead rabbit into her room and he when he was caught they were like

00:48:33.820 why are you delivering this rabbit into her room and he was like because her sister-in-law Margaret

00:48:37.840 paid me to do that and the jig was up because he was not good at rabbit sneaking. Margaret Toft

00:48:45.620 the sister-in-law was brought in for questioning and she was like okay yes I hired that guy to 1.00

00:48:50.020 sneak the dead rabbit into mary toff's room but not for vagina reasons it was because she likes 1.00

00:48:55.340 to eat rabbits it was a special treat for her to eat a raw rabbit and they were like sure so then 0.80

00:49:03.560 they went to talk to mary and she was like yes is if that's what she said then that's true the

00:49:08.500 rabbit was just for me to eat so for two days they interrogated mary trying to get her to admit

00:49:13.540 to the hoax and she wouldn't give in and she wouldn't give in because of family loyalty and

00:49:18.240 like I don't know delusional blood infection brain but eventually Manningham was like okay

00:49:25.800 so if this is true if you gave birth to whatever it is at this point 17 rabbits that means that 0.98

00:49:31.100 there's something really fucked up inside of your like innards so we just need to like literally 0.99

00:49:36.600 vivisect you now like cut you open in a surgical manner and look at your insides and Mary was like 0.99

00:49:42.520 okay please don't do that it's a hoax so december 7th 1726 mary dictated her confession and this is

00:49:53.160 where we got a lot of the information from about the whole scenario because she came clean so the

00:49:58.900 first first round confession version one she claimed that she'd met a strange woman on the 1.00

00:50:04.360 road who had suggested that she should put rabbits in her vaginas pretend to give birth to them 0.97

00:50:09.120 because that would be a way for her to never want as long as you live like aka would make her rich 1.00

00:50:14.840 and they're like really a strange woman on the road told you this and then you just did it like

00:50:19.540 that's okay like a little unbelievable and mary toft was like okay version two it wasn't a strange

00:50:26.660 woman on the road it was in fact my in-law's idea it was my mother-in-law and my sister-in-law and

00:50:32.840 she also said that john howard was in on the scheme as well and she was steadfast in all of

00:50:36.920 her confessions and she herself was innocent in all of this. She didn't want to do this. Like who,

00:50:42.200 who would ever have wanted to do this? Of course she didn't want to do this. So she was basically

00:50:45.580 blaming other people, which is like, you know, people might do that when they confess, but for

00:50:49.400 her, it's like, I believe her based on every reason in the world. But based on this confession,

00:50:56.920 Mary was officially charged with a crime of being a notorious and vile cheat, which was a crime

00:51:03.380 back then in that place in time so she was put into prison and crowds would like mob outside 0.96

00:51:10.460 just like desperate to see the rabbit queen and during this time period she had a portrait painted 1.00

00:51:17.260 of herself which is like people like mary toft like aside from the whole rabbit vagina scenario

00:51:24.140 like she would have never probably had a portrait painted so it's kind of this is where it's like 1.00

00:51:28.120 well-behaved women don't make history like we heard about mary toft because of this scheme 0.99

00:51:31.440 She only really got her portrait done because of the scheme. And so from that, we kind of see what 1.00

00:51:35.980 she looks like, which is just sort of like a pleasant looking person. Of course, in the portrait,

00:51:39.840 he painted her holding a live rabbit in her lap because, you know, that's what the crowds would

00:51:45.460 have wanted to see or whatever. So she was only in jail for three months. She was discharged

00:51:50.380 mostly because the crime of being notorious and a vile cheat isn't easy to prosecute because it's

00:51:56.080 kind of not a thing. But during the three months in jail, her health issues improved, partially

00:52:01.200 because she wasn't having dead animal bits and unwashed men's hands forced into her vagina 0.97

00:52:05.280 on a daily basis so feeling better bounced back she returned back to her husband and her two 1.00

00:52:12.000 children and her in-laws which must have been so awkward because they are nightmare horrible people

00:52:17.860 and got her in the situation in the first place and about a year after um mary toft now age 26

00:52:25.600 although it feels like she's aged 100 years in this experience. She gave birth to another daughter

00:52:32.020 who she named Elizabeth. From then on, writers and newspapers and like, you know, cartoonists

00:52:38.100 and things would still continue to bring up the story, especially because of the whole rabbit

00:52:41.180 political angle. But Mary herself fades from public record almost entirely until she died in 1763.

00:52:49.520 so when she died her husband had died first because the parish register recorded her as

00:52:55.720 Mary Toft comma widow they noted after her name as well that she was the imposterous rabbit breeder 0.88

00:53:02.560 and although poor women from where she grew up weren't ever written about in London newspapers 0.63

00:53:09.040 when they died her obituary was actually published in the London newspapers alongside those of 0.95

00:53:13.560 aristocrats because she was still so famous for this whole fucked up situation. So a couple of 0.95

00:53:21.120 things I want to mention. First of all, there's a new biography coming out of Mary Toft. I'm really

00:53:26.560 excited about it. It's called The Imposterous Rabbit Breeder. It's coming out in early 2020,

00:53:32.060 and it's written by a researcher, historian named Karen Harvey. And the thing that I'm really

00:53:37.380 excited about with this book is that she's really making the book about Mary Toft, not about all the

00:53:42.380 men and doctors who were around her. In researching this whole situation, there was a really great

00:53:47.640 essay by the author of this book, Karen Harvey, that I read. All of my references are all put

00:53:55.420 a link to them in the show notes. But basically, I'm really excited to read this book. Karen Harvey's

00:53:58.660 point of view is really compelling. And she really puts a really person first spin on a story that's

00:54:05.880 become sort of a myth at this point. Also just came out, I haven't read it yet. But there's a

00:54:11.780 fiction historical fiction novel written by dexter palmer called mary toft or the rabbit queen

00:54:17.360 which seems like the main characters in it are the men doctors and there's certainly a lot of

00:54:23.140 drama to be cleaned from imagining what they were up to i read a lot of things to research this i'll

00:54:29.060 put the research notes um i'll link to those in the post i won't say them all out but just know

00:54:34.380 that there's a lot of interesting stuff out there discussing this topic including um the lore

00:54:40.520 podcast episode number 45 first impressions which talks a bit about the myth around this

00:54:47.020 whole situation and now it's the part in every episode of vulgar history where we score this

00:54:53.000 and this is a weird one because it's like mary toft i feel i've read about her a lot and i feel

00:54:59.880 like i know her and i feel like she didn't want this she wasn't like if we were scoring nathaniel

00:55:04.840 saint andre like he would get whatever high scores because he was all about the scheminess

00:55:10.360 but mary toft i feel like was not in it for herself so the first category is a scandaliciousness

00:55:18.080 and this is where even though she did she may or may not have wanted to do this like 1.00

00:55:23.980 like whatever it wound up being i think 17 rabbits like giving birth them from her vagina 1.00

00:55:31.220 the like months long conspiracy of it. It got up to the king. She was sent to jail. Like 0.98

00:55:37.240 the scandalousness is pretty high here. I think I'm going to give her a seven for

00:55:45.240 scandalousness, partially because she didn't do it on purpose. Like it wasn't necessarily her idea,

00:55:51.340 but it's just, I mean, it's a juicy, juicy scandal. Her scheminess, her personal scheminess,

00:55:57.140 I think was not super high, which is to her credit, really. Again, we're not scoring her

00:56:02.480 in-laws for them, much higher score, because they were the ones who came up with this. But

00:56:06.700 that being said, Mary Toft stuck with it. She pretended to give birth to all these things.

00:56:11.300 She stuck to her story. She didn't give up for two days of questioning. I'm going to give her

00:56:16.480 a scheminess of four. The next category is the significance, which is like, had you heard of her

00:56:23.900 before this i'm guessing for a lot of you not because it's not a super famous story even if

00:56:31.660 you've heard about the woman who gave birth to rabbits you may not know her name the significance

00:56:36.640 of it she didn't like it fucked up the career of nathaniel st andre but like that would have

00:56:41.920 happened anyway because that was just how he lived his life the significance i'm gonna give her 0.76

00:56:47.540 the significance i mean i'm gonna give her two two for significance because you know it's being

00:56:55.380 revisited we're talking about it here it's not it's more significant than if it hadn't have

00:56:59.860 happened but it didn't change the course of world history the final category is where we give her

00:57:04.920 bonus points based on how much sexism played a part in this situation and i'm going to give her 1.00

00:57:11.020 an eight for that because she was I could even go higher because she was so helpless in this 1.00

00:57:19.500 situation like her in-laws like regardless of fact they were women doing this to her like she 1.00

00:57:25.300 was stuck in a situation where she was so helpless when the male doctors came in like she had no say

00:57:31.300 in anything that was going on she was just a victim of everybody oh you know what no I'm 1.00

00:57:36.600 going to give her a seven, a seven for sexism. So it gives her a total of 14, 15, 18, 20. This gives 0.98

00:57:43.340 her a score of 20, which is tied with Caroline of Brunswick, which I think is respectable,

00:57:51.640 but they're tied with the smallest amount right now, the two of them. So yeah, that was, I think,

00:57:59.340 officially the most fucked up story I've told on this podcast yet. My name is Anne Foster, 0.98

00:58:03.540 and this is the vulgar history podcast so there's a bunch of of places where you can follow me oh

00:58:10.240 oh but i need to mention so i've been doing a thing where for each episode of this podcast

00:58:16.420 i'm putting a new item in the vulgar history store on teespring and i was like what what could sum up

00:58:23.860 mary toft's whole life experience in the form of a magnet or a shirt or whatever and basically

00:58:30.600 there were some contemporaneous political cartoons that were drawn of her situation one of which was

00:58:36.800 by an artist called William Hogarth and it's basically a picture of her it's like a line

00:58:42.240 black and white line drawing of her like pretending to give birth well like one of her in-laws is next

00:58:48.020 to her looking like oh no what's happening and there's just like all men around her they're all

00:58:52.040 just like we're all men and it's just like is a nightmare and so I just took a black and white 0.98

00:58:57.780 picture and I overlaid it in red font, the phrase, fuck everything. And I feel like that just kind of 0.97

00:59:04.540 says it all. You can find that at teespring.com slash vulgar history. It's one of the things you

00:59:13.600 can get there. What do we have? We have that as a mug. We have it as a t-shirt, lots of different

00:59:18.060 things. Great for Christmas presents, but also you can find the podcast on Twitter. We're on

00:59:25.420 Instagram, just like a vulgar history. The podcast itself is now on iTunes and basically nearly all

00:59:33.000 of the various podcast sources. So you can find it there. And now I get to say to subscribe and

00:59:39.180 to rate and review because that would make me feel really good. And if you want to support me

00:59:44.940 financially to help me with things like I bought the thing for the microphone so that my peas don't

00:59:50.920 pop. I had the time to read about how to use the microphone and talk into the right part of it.

00:59:56.040 If you want to support me financially, I have a Patreon, which is patreon.com

00:59:59.760 slash Anne Foster Writer. So yeah, I guess I'll talk to you all next time. Have a good one,

01:00:06.840 everybody. Vulgar History is hosted, written, and researched by Anne Foster and edited by Christina

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Vulgar History - December 04, 2019

Women Behaving Badly, part 5： Mary Toft Pulled (Several) Rabbits (Out Of Her Vagina)

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