(Vol. ii., p. 459.)
The curiosity excited by the perusal of my previous communication under the
foregoing head, and the interesting editorial note appended in "NOTES AND
QUERIES," induce me to continue the attempt to verify one of the most
remarkable instances of abnormal fecundity in an individual of the human
species recorded in modern times. The reader must judge of the following
"circumstantial evidence:"--
1. I have just seen widow Platts (formerly Sarah Birch), a poor, fat,
decent woman, who keeps a small greengrocer's shop, in West Bar, Sheffield.
She says she was born in Spring Street in the same town, on the 29th Sept.
1781; well remembers wondering why she was so much looked at when a girl:
and her surprise, when afterwards told by her mother, that she was one of
ten children born at the same time. Had often been told that she was so
small at birth, that she was readily put into a quart measure; and for some
time, lay in a basket before the fire "wrapped in a flannel like a newly
hatched chicken."
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.