###Karen Harvey, 'Rabbits, Whigs and Hunters: Rethinking Mary Toft's Monstrous Births 1726', IHR Long Eighteenth Century Seminar, 10 December 2014
Live notes, so an incomplete, partial record of what actually happened.
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My asides in []
From Guildford on August comes the news... Exposed as a hoax two months later. But believed by many respectable doctors. Underpinned by belief that maternal thoughts could affect the baby.
Removed to the bagnio in Leicester Fields late-1726. Surrounded by the great.
Once she admitted her hoax, Toft seen as an evil woman hood-winking men.
Her explore different contexts for the case: place and social relations. Title from EPTs Whigs and Hunters and the acts they brought in to protect their own interests, here from 'The Blacks' - gangs of men who stole deer from royal forests. Argue that Toft case linked to social tensions in southern counties that EPT described.
Toft from Godalming, Surrey. Tofts lived in away from the market town, in a poor area, had to walk through more wealthy parts of the town to get to the hop field she worked in. She had her miscarriage whilst doing this walk (in July/August).
Poverty clear (Godalming in the upper round corner of the red blog, bottom right)...
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At the time of the hoax Mary had given birth to two children with one still living.
Documents relating to Toft's confession heavily mediated. Confessions extracted under threat of painful experiment. And confessions not consistent, though with some consistencies: role of networks of kin, and women, in the hoax -- women gathered around her at every stage of the hoax -- hoax product of a family in which understanding of Toft's reproductive capabilities had become confused.
Local administration. Godalming parish - poor relief required conformity; workhouse last resort. Manor had a court, role in monitoring local behaviour. Court of the Godalming hundred.
Separate governance but converged around issues of behaviour. Tight web over inhabitants. Overlapping roles and networks meant a small number of men 'controlled' Godalming, though least strong overlap between manor courts. And the Toft network almost entirely seperate from the 'governing' network.
Joshua Toft, Mary's husband, involved in trespass and poaching (a fish pond). Small overlap of that group with governance lists. Toft's network excluded from powerful networks in the town.
Of course, neither group stable. And their mixed-class characteristics not dissimilar from the Blacks as EPT describes them. Poaching from fishponds a characteristic part of Whigs and Hunters.
Argument NOT that there were Blacks in Godalming. And though it is tempting to suggest that Toft hoax about protest, no evidence of rabbit protests in Blacks-style protest. But certainly Toft and Blacks were geographically close and tensions were there around poaching.
Anthony Allan Esq from Guildford, four miles from Godalming, for example, a man among many governors with oversight of Godalming with personal and judicial knowledge of trespass, theft, poaching, attacks... Beattie: CJS in Surrey 'particularly vindictive' in early 18th century, with behaviour of women seemingly of particular concern.
Aggressive behaviour of prosecutors towards Toft, channelling behaviour towards the poor more broadly. Contemporaries did relate Toft case to broader issues of governance, society, not just medicine.
Was Toft neutralised? She certainly spent plenty of time in Bridewell... but cases against Toft and the medic Howard dropped. What was the fraud? What would be the false token?
If the interest of doctors stoked the flames, the case came out of local, social concerns. Case shows difficulty of governance, an aspect of which clearly through their game.
People interested not because they think it might be possible but because they saw Toft as part of the unruly poor.
[what a lovely, novel analysis of something I didn't think much new could be said about...]
Q - does Toft establish authority as a mother 'too soon' for the community to bear? Does she possess unusual authority?
Documents present her as powerless (a case Toft would of course want to make...) -- most the women she describes are neighbours or kin -- I don't think Mary is instigating this -- is she a successful mother?
Q - why rabbits?
Starts with bits of pig, bits of cow... Coheres around rabbits a bit later, once it moves to London, they fit in pockets, can be snuk in...
Q - is there more the story of the rabbits? They are forbidden fruit, they cannot to eaten without breaking the law...
Rabbits private property owned by lords of the manor.
Q - did the couple live alone or with Toft's in-laws (Anne Toft widowed)?
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