Lore - Episode 45: First Impressions

Episode Date: October 17, 2016

We say it all the time. It’s a phrase we hang our hopes on. It represents our wants and desires. But “a dream come true” has an older, darker side as well. Darker, and a lot more creepy.   * * * Official Lore Merchandise: www.lorepodcast.com/shop Member-only Episodes: www.patreon.com/lorepodcast Access premium content!: https://www.lorepodcast.com/support  

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Dorothy Ford stood next to William Street inside his own church while a visiting priest performed their marriage rites. It was November 27th of 1667 in Southpool, a village in Devon, England. And the church was packed. Most people hadn't actually expected the wedding to take place. So they'd all come out to witness the miracle. They hadn't doubted it because William Street had been the rector of their own parish. They hadn't doubted the couple's love for each other or that Street was 66 years old.

And they certainly hadn't doubted it because the original wedding date had been postponed. They doubted it because William Street had died a year and a half earlier in a riding accident. His funeral was followed by a series of community dreams. Multiple people in Southpool began to have nightmares and all of them were eerily similar. And each street himself would appear and tell them that he couldn't find peace. Only his wedding could do that. After months of this, with dozens of people reporting the same dream like to man's from the dead clergyman, the village relented.

The church was decorated for a wedding. Street's coffin was exhumed and Dorothy stood beside it while the priest married them. Afterward, Street was reburied and the vision stopped. Dreams are a funny thing, aren't they? We don't always remember them when we wake up. When we do, they often leave us feeling entertained and informed. We see them as signs of things to come, of glimpses into treasured memories. They often seem real enough that we hope for dreams of lost loved ones.

In our dreams, we might fly or travel the world or run as if we're waist deep in a pool of water. But they aren't always a source of completion and peace. No, dreams can often leave us feeling uneasy, sometimes even frightened. Sometimes, you see, our dreams can turn into nightmares. I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is Lore. Dreams have held deep cultural meaning since the earliest days of humanity, and that meaning has always varied. Depending on when and where in history you pick,

dreams have been viewed as either a blessing or a curse. They've revealed unknown truths to rulers and warned others of impending danger, or, you know, so they thought. In ancient Egypt, if you had vivid dreams, you were considered special. How they proved that, I have no idea. They were so obsessed with it that they built special sleeping rooms where people could go to help them dream better. Practice makes perfect, I suppose.

The Greco-Roman world was full of dream interpretation. They even had a god devoted entirely to dreams named Morpheus. The ancient Hindu scriptures known as the Veda divide our existence into three distinct states. The waking, the sleeping, and the dreaming. But even without the attachment of religion, dreams have long been seen as a predictor of things to come. Whether we call them premonitions or dark omens, the things we see in our sleep have long been viewed by some as a preview

of what's about to happen, and history is full of stories that claim to be true life examples. John Brody Innes was a clergyman and close friend of Charles Darwin. In 1919, he recorded a story from his time in Germany decades earlier about two friends who had fallen into an argument over the love of a young woman. One friend was an American, and the other was a Hungarian nobleman. When the American felt slighted, he challenged the Hungarian to a duel. The two men set a date, and the Hungarian was given his pick of weapons.

When he picked cavalry sabers, the message was clear. This would be a fight to the death. Now, all they had to do was wait. A week before the duel, John was called to the Americans' quarters to see something. The man claimed to have had a vivid dream the night before, a dream in which he was wounded in the face before killing the Hungarian. John wrote that the American stood before him with a large red welt on his face, a product, so he claimed, of his dream.

That very same morning, John was summoned to the Hungarian's home, where he heard something even more fascinating. The nobleman told John that he'd also had an odd dream that night. In his, he claims that the Americans struck him down and killed him. The dream frightened the man so much that he issued what John called a handsome apology to the American, and the duel was called off. Both men were happy about that. This idea that the things we experience in our dreams

somehow have a physical effect on us after we wake up is an old one. Dreams, it's been said, have the ability to manifest, to take shape and walk among us. And it's not just about premonitions and visions of the future. Some believe that dreams can take physical shape. Take the story of a young woman from Scotland in the early 1800s. She was unmarried, but in late 1816 she became pregnant and sought to make things right and reached out to the courts for help. The woman was asked who the father was and she identified him

as one John Woods, a respectable local gentleman. After hearing the woman's claims and being called to the court over them, Woods adamantly denied them. He said, in fact, that he wouldn't believe he was the father unless his own name was written across the child's face. The young woman was devastated, and rightly so, the tragedy weighed on her constantly, more and more, as the baby grew inside her.

And then, in 1817, the woman gave birth to a healthy son. Healthy, except for some markings on the baby's face. It confounded the doctors, and so the mother and child were sent to Edinburgh for a more educated inspection. Professors, faculty, and experts in other fields were all brought in, and each of them left the room completely astonished. There, written on the boy's right eye in tiny letters, was the name John Woods.

On his left, it simply said, born 1817. John Woods, to his credit, had been waiting and watching. When he caught word of what the doctors had discovered, he bolted. No one ever saw him in town again. One last story. Joseph Merrick was born in England in 1862. In his early childhood, he started to develop growths on his skin.

His face was enlarged and covered with lumps that led to him eventually being known as the Elephant Man. For years, he toured England and Europe with human novelty exhibitions. Today, we might call them freak shows. During his lifetime, the accepted theory about the cause of his condition was that Merrick's mother had been frightened by an elephant while she was pregnant. Somehow, that traumatic event had embedded itself so firmly in her mind that the image manifested itself in her son.

As fantastical as it might sound for a pregnant mother's thoughts to have a real physical effect on her unborn child, it wasn't an idea limited to popular rumor or the musings of university professors. In fact, in the 18th century, something happened that left the medical world and everyone else completely baffled. They had a term for it like so many other mysteries in life. Centuries ago, it was referred to as maternal impression and it was a way of explaining the unexplainable.

According to the theory, strong emotional events in the life of a pregnant woman could have a lasting impact on her unborn child. It was a backwards approach to things that were outside the scope of our understanding, though. They looked at the evidence after birth and made assumptions about what caused it. Joseph Merrick is a perfect example of that logic. Why did his body begin to deform and twist? Well, it must have begun in the womb. And this logic was applied to things like birthmarks, depression, and congenital diseases.

If a baby seemed to be born with it, it chased the cause back to the life of the pregnant mother. Pregnancy is something that Mary and Joshua knew all too well. They were a young, poor couple from Godelming, a village in Surrey, England. They rented a small home on a farm that they were both required to work, although Mary was in the field much more than Joshua, who also worked as a clovier. Now, that might make his occupation sound fancy, but it wasn't, believe me. Joshua's family, the Toffs, had lived in the area for well over a century

and for a long time had been prominent successful cloviers. Apprentice records from the mid-1600s always listed family members among the masters in their trade and, of course, with all that prominence came wealth. It's easy to imagine that they grew very used to a certain standard of living. And then, manufacturing pushed its way onto the scene. Records started to show signs of that wealth and prominence slipping. When master cloviers were listed as dying inside workhouses, the signs were pretty obvious.

And this was the generation that Joshua was born into. Raised on tales of former glory, Joshua and his family now lived as peasants. At the risk of projecting, it probably stung a bit. The couple married young, and within five years Mary had given birth to three children. And then, at the age of 23, she became pregnant again. Remember, though, if you were poor and working in the fields to pay your rent in 1726, pregnancy wasn't enough to get you pulled off the job. So, like everyone around her, Mary worked.

She worked long and hard, and she did it day after day, well into her pregnancy. One day, she and another woman were in the field. There's no date for the story, but a safe guess would be sometime in late May of 1726. And while they worked, they talked. At some point, though, the other woman pointed over to the edge of the field, and Mary followed the gesture. There, nibbling on some weeds, was a rabbit. Or, as they would have called it three centuries ago, a good home-cooked meal. The women tried to catch it, but they failed.

A few days later, they saw it again and, like the first attempt, failed to get their hands on it. And that must have been frustrating. So, it's no wonder that Mary had a dream that night. She described it months later, and even then, it was still vivid in her mind. In it, she was sitting down in the field, her skirts piled up in her lap. And there, curled up in the folds of the fabric, were not one, but two rabbits. They were finally hers. It wasn't long after the dream that she started to have complications with her pregnancy.

For a while, the couple thought that perhaps she'd even miscarried, but by early September, she was still pregnant and still growing. So, she continued to work in the fields, continued to hope, and continued to have weird dreams about rabbits. On the 27th of September, Mary went into early labor. She sent word to her mother-in-law, Anne Toft, to help her. Anne, who was an experienced midwife, arrived later that day, and by the evening, Mary was in the final moments of birth.

But something was wrong. Something was so wrong, in fact, that Anne, a woman who had delivered eight children of her own, as well as dozens of others in the village, felt out of her league. So, she called for John Howard, the physician in nearby Guilford. Maybe he would know what to do, she thought. When Dr. Howard arrived, he asked Anne to bring him up to speed on the delivery so far, and then examine the situation for himself.

Like Anne, he stared in disbelief at what lay on the sheets in front of them. It defied logic, but it was right there for his eyes to see. Still wet, and still covered with blood. Mary, you see, had not given birth to a baby at all. Something had come out of her body, but it wasn't what anyone had expected. It was a large handful of pieces of an animal. The piece was hairless, as if it had been skinned, but despite that, it was still easy to recognize what the creature had been.

It was a rabbit. Dr. Howard was understandably horrified, but also skeptical. He told the others in the room that night that he wouldn't believe it to be true until he delivered the head, and for a while, that seemed like it wasn't going to happen. The labor stopped, and Mary rested. For days, it seemed as if the events of that night were going to fade into memory and be written off as a medical oddity, and nothing more.

But one week later, Mary went into labor again. This time, Dr. Howard was present, and it appears that he got his wish. Mary delivered the rabbit's head. At this point, Howard decided that Mary needed more observation, so he had her move from her home to his own. Maybe it was just the action of a concerned physician, but it also could have been an attempt to discover if the unnatural births were really just a hoax. Surely, he thought, Mary wouldn't be able to keep up the act

if she were right under his roof. But the mystery continued. In the days that followed, Mary proceeded to give birth to more and more rabbits. Sometimes they came days apart, and sometimes closer together. And each time, Dr. Howard was right there, a 30-year veteran of childbirth, to help her through the ordeal. He reported that he would often place his hand on her belly and feel movement as if whatever it was inside of her wanted out.

This went on long enough that Howard even gave Mary some money to make up for the work she was missing out on. I think that's also a good sign that Howard was fascinated. And how could he not be, though? He was delivering rabbits from a human. By early November, according to the doctor's own count, Mary had given birth to a total of nine rabbits. They were all dead, all hairless, and all young.

It was mind-boggling and defied all logic and reason. Mary, however, was just getting started. After delivering nine rabbits personally, Dr. Howard decided it was time to bring in more experts, so he sent word to Nathaniel St. Andre, physician to the royal household. St. Andre brought a friend with him named Samuel Molina, who worked as secretary to the Prince of Wales.

The man arrived and found that Howard had amassed a collection of the delivered animals, all arranged in glass jars with clear liquid. They set to work examining the samples, studying their color and features, and then the men opened the jars and took the pieces out. When I was in college, we dissected pigs in my biology class. Thanks to that experience, I have images in my head of metal trays containing dead animals,

with pins holding back flaps of gray skin. I'm sure it wasn't pretty, but it was a good way for them to see things that Dr. Howard might have missed. These men were trying to be scientific and analytical. After all, if these births were fake, then there must be a clue hidden somewhere inside the animals themselves. According to a later report,

the lungs floated in water, which suggested that the animals had breathed air at one time. But while that information was persuasive, both men were present at a number of new births, each producing the same result, more dead rabbits. And the longer they lived, the more difficult it was becoming to not accept what their eyes were seeing.

After the 15th rabbit was born, news was sent back to King George, who responded by sending his personal surgeon, Syriacus Allers, to investigate. Allers arrived just in time to witness the 16th, but right away, he noticed some odd circumstances. First, prior to the birth, Mary seemed to walk to the bed with her knees held tightly to her.

It was as if, he suggested, she was afraid something might fall out. Second, Dr. Howard eagerly suggested that Allers deliver the first rabbit, but after it was done, he wasn't allowed to examine her further. The final oddity was something he kept to himself that day. After helping with the birth of the first piece of dead rabbit,

Allers was ushered out of the room by Howard, but he managed to smuggle a partial rabbit with him. In a private room, Allers set about dissecting it and discovered something remarkable. Its bowels were full of pellets, pellets that contained corn, and hay.

Allers made an excuse and left Guilford, heading back to London early to report his findings to the King. Once King George was up to speed, he ordered Saint Andre and Malino to return as well. When they arrived, they brought news that Mary Toft

had given birth to yet another rabbit. Her 19th, in fact. And that was it for the King, apparently. He wanted to properly get to the bottom of the matter, so he ordered her to be brought to London for examination there. And at this point, word was spreading about Mary

and her miraculous discoveries, so she was discreetly put up in an out-of-the-way, low-cost boarding house without Dr. Howard, mind you. And Saint Andre was assigned to keep a watchful eye on her. And then something amazing happened. The births stopped. For Allers, who'd already been suspicious up to this point,

this was the final straw. He had a judge sent to the boarding house to question Mary and get the truth out of her. The judge was met with silence. Mary didn't want to talk about it, and he left empty-handed. So Allers dug around for the truth in other places and struck gold.

First, Dr. Howard approached Allers and asked him to give him a piece of paper and asked Dr. Howard approached Allers after Mary's arrival and asked for help. Mary had been out of work for a long time now, he told Allers. Considering how much of a medical marvel she was, he suggested that perhaps the king

might grant her a pension. Howard asked Allers to make that request, and Allers, being a smart man, saw right through it. Second, Mary's sister Margaret was smuggling a rabbit into the boarding house. She claimed it was a meal for Mary, well, that'd be a pretty tough sell

given the circumstances. Then it came to light that Mary's husband, Joshua, had been pretty busy over the previous weeks, buying all of the rabbits he could find. The younger, the better, apparently. Finally, when word got out that Mary herself had tried to pay the porter of the boarding house to go out and buy her a rabbit,

the authorities had all the evidence they needed. She was taken into custody in early December of 1726 and immediately questioned about the mysterious births. How, they asked her, did you pull off such a hoax? Mary denied the hoax entirely. She claimed she'd asked the porter to buy her the animal because she was hungry. She insisted she was currently pregnant with more rabbits,

and despite all the questions that were thrown at her, she refused to budge from that declaration. That is, until she received an offer, she couldn't refuse. One of the men questioning her, us, Sir Richard Manningham, was a prominent physician in London. He was brought in as an expert in the field, having specialized in pregnancy and birth for much of his career. On December 6th, he looked at Mary from across the room

and told her that if she didn't confess, he would, and I quote, perform very painful operations and experiments on you to discover your secret. Mary took just one night to think it over. She confessed to the hoax the next morning. Historians are a bit torn about what Mary's motivation really was. Some view her as a woman caught up in something bigger than herself.

They think that she was the victim of a mother-in-law with the hunger for fame and fortune, and a local doctor with his eyes set on moving up the medical ladder. Others, though, see her as a shrewd and careful individual. She planned every last detail, they say, and orchestrated all of the events, from chasing the rabbit with a neighbor woman to the purchase of more rabbits,

all without anyone noticing. Maybe no one thought she was capable of it. Certainly, no one would have expected a woman to skin and cut up a bunch of young rabbits and then insert them. Well, I think you get the idea. It's hard to know for sure whether Mary believed in some strange detached way that her dreams and emotions

were truly creating the rabbits inside of her. It is clear, though, that enough of the world around her believed that it was possible. For a couple of months, at least, it appeared that all of London was falling for it, hook, line, and sinker. Either way, Mary's adventure seems to have been a chase for glory. She wanted the fame and all that came with it,

the attention, the money, the renown. She'd married into a family that had once been prominent and important, so perhaps she just wanted to do her part in restoring them to that position. But after her confession, that House of Lies came crashing down, and it took a lot of the key players with it.

Two years after Mary's trial, Samuel Malino became sick and collapsed while on the floor of the House of Commons. His old friend, St. Andre, was right there to treat him, but he died a few weeks later. St. Andre somehow managed to retain his position as the royal physician for a while, although the king took away his salary for the services.

Interestingly, on the same night as Malino's death, St. Andre eloped with Malino's wife, or widow, you get the point. And naturally, that aroused suspicions. Malino's cousin accused St. Andre of murder. His career was never the same. His new wife lost her position in the court of the queen, and the couple retired to an estate outside of London.

He died at the ripe old age of 96. On January 7th of 1727, after carrying on the hoax for months and then undergoing weeks of questioning, Mary Toft and Dr. John Howard were brought before the judge's bench. Howard was fined the equivalent of $140,000 in modern currency, and then released. He went home and continued to practice medicine

for another three decades. Mary, though, was charged with, and I quote, being an abominable cheat and imposter in pretending to be delivered of several monstrous births. She was sent to Tuttlefield's prison for, well, they weren't really sure, being deceitful, tricking a lot of people, cruelty to animals. Mary's story was complicated after all.

She was released in April, just a few months after arriving. To be honest, the court wasn't sure what charge she could be held on. They didn't have an official sentence for pretending to give birth to rabbits. Plus, crowds were gathering outside the prison each day to catch a glimpse of her. It was annoying.

Better to just let her go home, they figured. I can't blame them. Mary went back to her home and her family and back to work in the fields. Within weeks, she was pregnant again. In February of 1728, she went into labor and gave birth. It was a baby girl. This episode of Lore was written and produced by me, Aaron Mankey,

with research help from Marsette Crockett. Lore is much more than a podcast. There's a book series in bookstores around the country and online, and the second season of the Amazon Prime television show was recently released. Check them both out if you want more Lore in your life. I also make two other podcasts. Aaron Mankey's Cabinet of Curiosities,

and Unobscured, and I think you'd enjoy both. Each one explores other areas of our dark history, ranging from bite-sized episodes to season-long dives into a single topic. You can learn about both of those shows and everything else going on all over in one central place. TheWorldOfLore.com Slash Now. And you can also follow the show on Facebook,

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