Abstrakt: |
Following a prolonged miscarriage in the spring, Mary Toft – a poor woman from the Surrey town of Godalming – began giving birth to parts of animals in the autumn of 1726. Reportedly beginning with initial deliveries of parts of cats, pigs and rabbits in September, Toft's deliveries were soon exclusively of rabbits and these continued to appear until mid November. Historians have focused on the medical and wider cultural context of the episode. Other scholars have explored what this case reveals about contemporary ideas about frauds, monstrosity and the self. Mary Toft and her rabbit births have become an exemplary case in cultural history. This article is part of a recent reassessment of cultural history and the renewed emphasis on its relationship with the study of social and material relations of power. This article situates Mary Toft and her rabbits in the social and political contexts of family, neighbourhood, parish, town, county and metropolis. It undertakes a micro-history to expose the stark inequities and quotidian exclusions that shaped the hoax and responses to it, arguing that the case was shaped by the politics of social conflict and disaffection amongst the poor. The article then views the case within the social and political context of the 1720s, showing why it was of interest not just to doctors, but to lawmakers and law enforcers. The case developed amidst considerable fears about unrest, disorder and crime amongst the local and county elite and particularly tense social and political relations in south-east England as discussed in E. P. Thompson's Whigs and Hunters (1975). Toft's case invites consideration of how accounts of protest such as Thompson's – one exclusively about men – might be adjusted to take account of the practices of women and the family within the domestic environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |