How could enlightened 18th-century Britain have believed that a woman could give birth to rabbits?

Does a practical joke differ from a hoax? It could be a matter of scale. Anyone can deploy a whoopee cushion, but it takes rather more — as Virginia Woolf and others did, long before Ali G — to kit oneself out as Abyssinian royalty for a 1910 state visit by train to the deck of a dreadnought in Weymouth harbour. There was nothing in it for them, but that hoax brought questions in the Commons. Monetary gain, as with the Hitler Diaries, certainly sours claims for hoaxes as a pure art form.

Where does this leave the humble,twentysomething mother-of-three Mary Toft, and those around her? The question is raised by Karen Harvey’s brief but amply detailed study of a woman who, in 1726, brought the Surrey market town of Godalming publicity it had not known before. Her story occasioned numerous contemporary publications, several unflinching engravings by Hogarth, a ballad by Alexander Pope and even aroused the curiosity of George I. Yet nowadays most are unfamiliar with the case. The details invariably bring a horrified yelp.

Put simply, Mary, a field labourer, gave birth to rabbits — 17 times. Naturally, none survived. Word spread locally. A doctor, John Howard, witnessed and even induced some of these extraordinary productions, and attested to their monstrous veracity. The Royal Household’s surgeon visited, as did the Prince of Wales’s secretary. The King requested Mary be brought to London, where she was installed at a bagnio in Leicester Fields (as was). There, recumbent, she was studied sedulously by eminent doctors. Pamphlets and articles proliferated; of rabbits there were no more.

With Mary’s humiliating installation at the bagnio, the scandal really blew up. The publicity helped the owner with his cash-flow problem, while the city was torn by faction, and the press — thousands of newspapers across England — seethed with speculation and vituperation.