Читать книгу Notes and Queries, Number 58, December 7, 1850 - Various - Страница 4

The following circumstance, although perhaps hardly coming within the ordinary scope of the "Notes and Queries," appears to me too curious to allow a slight doubt to prevent the attempt to place it on permanent and accessible record. Chancing, the other day, to overhear an ancient gossip say that there was living in her neighbourhood a woman who was one of ten children born at the same time, I laughed at her for her credulity,—as well I might! As, however, she mentioned a name and place where I might satisfy myself, I called the next day at a small greengrocer's shop in this town, the mistress of which, a good-looking, respectable woman, aged seventy, at once assured me that her mother, whose name was Birch, and came from Derby, had been delivered of ten children; my informant having been the only one that lived, "the other nine," she added, "being in bottle in the Museum in London!" On mentioning the matter to a respectable professional gentleman of this place, he said "he had a recollection of the existence of a glass jar, which was alleged to contain some such preparation, in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, as mentioned when he was a pupil in London." Of the question, or the fact, of so marvellous a gestation and survivorship in the history of human nature should strike the editor of "Notes and Queries" as forcibly as his correspondent, the former, should he publish this article, may perhaps be kind enough to accompany it with the result of at least an inquiry, as to whether or not the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons does contain anything like corroborative evidence of so strange, and, if true, surely so unprecedented a phenomenon.

N. D.

[We are enabled by the courtesy of Professor Owen to state that there exists no corroboration of this remarkable statement in the Museum of the College of Surgeons. The largest number at a birth, of which any authentic record appears, is five, and the Museum contains, in case No. 3681, five children, of about five months, all females, which were born at the same time. Three were still-born, two were born alive, and survived their birth but a short time. The mother, Margaret Waddington, aged twenty-one, was a poor woman of the township of Lower Darling, near Blackburn in Lancashire. This remarkable birth took place on the 24th April, 1786, and was the subject of a communication to the Royal Society, which contained also the result of an investigation into similar cases which could be well authenticated, and which may be seen in a note in the admirable Catalogue of the College Museum, vol. v. pp. 177-185. As the remarkable birth described by our correspondent N. D. took place five years previously to these inquiries, and is not mentioned, it is scarcely possible to doubt that his informant must be labouring under some great mistake. If such a birth took place, it is probable that the parish register will contain some record of the fact. Our correspondent will, perhaps, take the trouble to make some further investigations, so as to trace the source of the error, for error there must be, in the statement of his informant.]