Mary Toft's rabbit births confession

In autumn 1726 Mary Toft was reported to have given birth to rabbits. On 7 December 1726 she confessed in front of the physicians examining her.

Mary Toft was a woman examined by physicians after reports that she had delivered rabbits. Wikipedia records that the physician Manningham questioned her for several days and then threatened a painful operation. Atlas Obscura gives his stated purpose: to find out whether she had unusual reproductive organs.

On 7 December 1726 Toft confessed. Wikipedia places Manningham, Douglas, John Montagu and Frederick Calvert in the room. It says that after a miscarriage an accomplice had put a cat's claws and body, plus a rabbit's head, into her womb. It adds that the two had made up a tale about a rabbit startling her in a field while she was pregnant. The Public Domain Review gives a different version: she admitted she had inserted dead rabbits herself and then had them taken out as though delivering them. In several confessions she named others as involved, among them a stranger, an organ grinder's wife and her mother-in-law.

Two days later she was sent to Bridewell prison on a charge worded as "Notorious and Vile Cheat". The Public Domain Review says her warders showed her to curious crowds there. Atlas Obscura notes that the confession came four days after St. André published his own account of the births, and that his career changed afterwards.