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Page 22
2. The improbability of finding any living gossip who was present at the
birth, must be obvious: but I have conversed with old women who had heard
their mothers describe the occurrence from personal knowledge.
3. One ancient dame had no more doubt of the fact than the cause of it.
Having apparently heard and believed a monstrous tradition of a
multitudinous gestation extant in common "folklore." "It was," said she,
with all gravity, "the effect of a wish," intended to spite the father;
who, having had two children by his wife, and an interval of _nine years_
elapsing before the portentous pregnancy in question, did not desire, it
seems, any further increase to his family.
4. The parents died, the daughter married, and the "story of her birth" was
forgotten: until the publication of White's _Sheffield Directory_ in 1833,
when, among other local memorabilia, the strange announcement of "ten
children at birth," was reproduced on the contemporary authority of the
_Leeds Mercury_. From that time Mrs. Platts has been more or less an object
of curiosity.
5. The _Directory_ paragraph is as follows:--
"An instance of _extraordinary fecundity_ is recorded in the _Leeds
Mercury_ of 1781, which says that _Ann_ [Sarah] _Birch_, of Sheffield,
was, in that year, _delivered of ten children!!!_ We, in our time, have
heard of Sheffield ladies having three children at birth; but we know
no other case, but that of the aforesaid Mrs. Birch, which countenances
the fructiferous fame which they have obtained in some circles."
I have been unsuccessful in an effort to collate the foregoing with the
original newspaper paragraph: but Mr. White, while he personally assured me
of the veracity of the transcript, also pointed out to me an earlier
version of the same fact from the same source in the _Annals of the
Clothing Districts_, published about thirty years since.
6. In conformity with the suggestion (NOTES AND QUERIES, Vol. ii., p. 459),
I have examined the Parish Register of Baptisms, but the entry is as curt
and formal as possible, viz.:--
"Sarah, Dr. of Thos. and Sarah Birch, Cutler,"
under the date, Dec. 12.1781.
Taking all the foregoing circumstances into account, there seems to me
little ground for the erection of any strong objection to the alleged
fact--extraordinary as it is--of ten children having been brought forth at
one time; or, to the hardly less interesting coincidence, that one of them
is still living. I cannot but add, that if the contemporary notice of this
extraordinary birth in the _Leeds Mercury_ of 1781 should not be admitted
as good evidence for the fact, it does, at least, negative the presumptive
value of any objection {65} derived from the silence of the writer in the
_Philosophical Transactions_ six years afterwards; strange as such silence
assuredly appears. After all, the question occurs: What has become of the
bodies said to have been preserved? As all parties concur in naming "old
Mr. Staniforth" as the accoucheur in attendance on Mrs. Birch; and as that
gentleman has been dead many years, I called upon his eldest surviving
pupil, Mr. Nicholson, surgeon, to ask him whether, in conversation, or
among the preparations in the surgery of his worthy master, he had ever met
with any illustration of the parturition in question? He replied that he
had not. It may not, perhaps, be out of place here to mention that the
above-named Mr. Nicholson, surgeon, himself delivered a poor woman of five
children, on the 10th of February, 1829, at Handsworth Woodhouse, near
Sheffield. This case was even more remarkable than that which gave occasion
to the paper which was read before the Royal Society in 1787, inasmuch as
not only were four of the children born alive, but three of them lived to
be baptized.
N.D.
Sheffield, Jan. 13. 1851.
* * * * *
SHAKSPEARE'S USE OF "CAPTIOUS."
(Vol. ii., p. 354.)
In _All's Well that Ends Well_, Act I. Sc. 3., Helena says to the Countess,
speaking of her love for Bertram,--
"I know I love in vain; strive against hope;
Yet, in this captious and intenible sieve,
I still pour in the waters of my love,
And lack not to lose still."
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