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File:Cunicularii or The Wise men of Godliman in Consultation (BM 1868,0808.3517).jpg

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Cunicularii or The Wise men of Godliman in Consultation   (Wikidata search (Cirrus search) Wikidata query (SPARQL)  Create new Wikidata item based on this file)
Title
Cunicularii or The Wise men of Godliman in Consultation
Description
English: A sparse interior where (F) Mary Toft lies on a curtained bed apparently in the throes of labour. She is attended by (E) her husband Joshua Toft and (G) his sister Margaret, acting as nurse. (D) Dr John Howard is receiving a dead rabbit from a butcher at the door. There are three other men in the room: (A) Nathaniel St André, (C) John Maubray or Cyriacus Ahlers, and (B) a third (Sir John Manningham or Samuel Molyneux) whose arm is thrust beneath Mary's skirts. Rabbits scamper across the floor; others lie dead; to the right is a chamber pot. 1726
Etching
Depicted people Representation of: Mary Toft
Date 1726
date QS:P571,+1726-00-00T00:00:00Z/9
Medium paper
Dimensions
Height: 189 millimetres
Width: 250 millimetres
institution QS:P195,Q6373
Current location
Prints and Drawings
Accession number
1868,0808.3517
Notes

According to Hawkins's inscription (B), the doctor delivering the rabbits, is the eminent man-midwife Sir Richard Manningham who, having visited Guildford on behalf of George I with his colleague Philip van Limborch, was responsible for bringing Mary Toft to London on 29 November and lodging her at Lacy's bagnio in Leicester Fields. However Dennis Todd ('Imagining Monsters: Miscreations of the Self in Eighteenth-Century England', Chicago, 1995, pp.92-94) makes a case for identifying him as Samuel Molyneux, astronomer and secretary to the Prince of Wales; this is supported by the description in Hogarth's key of 'An Occult Philosopher searching into the Depth of things'. Hawkins identified (C) as John Maubray whose recent book on the birth of small furry creatures known as 'sooterkins' to mothers in the Netherlands gave some medical credence to Mary Toft's story. An impression of the print in the Royal Collection identifies (C) as Cyriacus Ahlers, surgeon to his majesty's German household, who had been sent to Guildford by the king to investigate Mary Toft and returned reporting suspicions that the "rabbit births" were fradulent; he published "Some Observations Concerning the Woman of Godlyman" on 8 December. According to Hogarth's early biographer John Nichols, the print was commissioned by a group of rival surgeons paying a guinea each.

Hogarth was to revive memories of Mary Toft more than thirty years later when he introduced her, with small rabbits running out from under her skirts, as an illustration of credulity in his print 'Credulity, Superstition and Fanaticism', published in 1762.
Source/Photographer https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1868-0808-3517
Permission
(Reusing this file)		 © The Trustees of the British Museum, released as CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

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current18:27, 9 May 2020Thumbnail for version as of 18:27, 9 May 20201,600 × 1,152 (505 KB)Copyfraud (talk | contribs)British Museum public domain uploads (Copyfraud/BM) Satirical prints in the British Museum 1726 #3,312/12,043

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