The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits Read Free Page A

spoke in a soft voice, almost gentle. "Either you make a full confession of how you have imposed upon the whole medical establishment of England with your motions and your pains—in which case I will attempt to have your sentence reduced—or else I must here and now put you to a painful experiment to see how you are made different from other women, that you have managed to convey into your uterus what should not be there."
    The fever had dried up my voice; it came out as a croak. "Sir, for mercy's sake, give me one more night."
    He rubbed his eyes wearily. He spoke more like an ordinary man. "What, girl, can the conjurer at every fair bring a rabbit out of a hat, and you cannot produce one more from between your legs, when you claim to have brought forth so many already?"
    I clutched my belly. "It is there, sir. I feel it stir and press, but it can't find its way out." And then I put my face in my hands and it felt like a burning thing. "Sir," I said, "I won't stay here any longer. I'd sooner hang myself."
    Sir Richard said he would give me one more hour to consider the state of my soul. Then he locked the door on me.
    But for a month I had been nothing but a body. Though I believed that every body had a soul, as my mother taught me, I held no idea where it might reside. How could there be anything hiding in me that had not been turned inside out already?
    The crack of the bolts. Not Sir Richard, but the unsmiling nurse, with a leg of chicken for my supper.
    I gave her one great shove and ran past her, out the door and down one corridor and then another.
    My breath ran out soon enough; my head hammered like an army. I had to stop and lean against a wall for weakness. I hadn't my guinea anymore, I remembered, nor my shoes even; what would become of me?
    I heard laughter from one of the chambers. The door was open a crack, and I peered in. There was a sofa, and a girl lying on it, with her skirts up to her shoulders, and an old man kneeling between her legs, his back heaving as he thrust. Now I knew what kind of a place this so-called bath house was. I couldn't help but watch for a moment. I never saw a man and a woman do what they are born to do, except for Joshua and myself, and that I never looked at from outside. The girl's eyes were shut; I could tell she was used to it. It came to me then that it is the way of the world for a woman's legs to be open, whether for begetting or bearing or the finding out of secrets.
    I looked up the corridor, then down. I knew I would never find the way out on my own. So I turned and walked back to the room where Sir Richard was waiting for my story.

Note
    For "The Last Rabbit," which was inspired by William Hogarth's famous engraving of Mary Toft (1703–63) giving birth, I have drawn on many contradictory medical treatises, witness statements, pamphlets, and poems, including Nathaniel St. Andre,
A Short Narrative of an Extraordinary Delivery of Rabbets (
1726); Dr. Cyriacus Ahlers,
Some Observations Concerning the Woman of Godlyman in Surrey (
1726); Sir Richard Manningham,
An Exact Diary, of what was Observ'd during a Close Attendance upon Mary Toft (
1726);
The Several Depositions of Edward Costen, Richard Stedman, John Sweetapple, Mary Peytoe, Elizabeth Mason and Mary Costen (
1727); and "Lemuel Gulliver" [pseud.],
The Anatomist Dissected (
1727).
    Dr. Howard was charged with conspiracy, and Mary Toft was sent to the Bridewell jail as a "Notorious and Vile Cheat," but she was released after a few months, probably to save the prominent Londoners taken in by the hoax from further embarrassment. Back in Godalming with her husband, Mary had another baby in 1728 ("the first child after her pretended rabbett-breeding," according to the parish register), and was occasionally shown off as a novelty at local dinners. In 1740 she was charged with and acquitted of receiving stolen fowl, and she lived to the age of sixty.

Acts of Union
    The young captain was stationed in Ballina, in that part of