Mary Toft.- Anonymous (1720s) The Doctors in Labour; or a New Whim Wham from Guildford, twelve scenes relating to the affair of Mary Toft, "the rabbit breeder", etching on laid paper without watermark, sheet 350 x 246 mm. (13 3/4 x 9 3/4 in), trimmed to image, with some minor nicks and areas of small loss, tipped at corners onto paper support, unframed, 1726

Literature:
BM Satires 1781

⁂ A large and extraordinary print about one of the most notorious and amusing frauds of the early 18th century. Mary Toft was a poor illiterate Surrey woman, and "On 23 April, 1726, she declared that she had been frightened by a rabbit while at work in the fields, and this so reacted upon her reproductive system that she was delivered in November of that year first of the lights and guts of a pig and afterwards a rabbit, or rather a litter of rabbits" [DNB]. In time the miracle was exposed as an elementary piece of deception, but not before it gave rise to a torrent of pamphlets (including a poem by Pope, see Foxon D238) and several prints, including one by Hogarth. The present sheet is an excellent example of what was for the period a rather new departure in social commentary, as artists, especially the young Hogarth, expanded the range of graphic satire to include various aspects of daily life, and laid the foundations for the work of such later figures as Gillray, Rowlandson, and Cruikshank.