Book Review: The Portsmouth Road by Charles G. Harper, first published in 1895
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This article, written by Jackie Rickenberg, was published in the Thursley Parish Magazine in March 2026
Thursley History Society is building up quite the library of interesting books all concerning either the village, its occupants, buildings and/or surroundings. These can be lent out as required and expect to see them at many of the Society’s events throughout the year. As we have designated this year to transportation and its many facets, this month I am including passages from a book in our archives called The Portsmouth Road by Charles G. Harper, first published in 1895 and acquired by our Chairman, Sally Scheffers in her research for our society's year of transport in 2026.
It is a little jewel of a book, detailing the road from its London source, to its Portsmouth destination and everywhere in between. The road, of course, cut through our village and was a source of much folk lore and some incredibly mysterious goings on. I have included small extracts, but the book is a fascinating read with lovely illustrations by the author and “Old time Prints and Pictures”, a couple of which I have included here.
“The Portsmouth Road was measured from the Stones’ End, Borough. It went by Vauxhall to Wandsworth, Putney Heath, Kingston-On-Thames, Guildford and Petersfield; and thence came presently into Portsmouth through the Forest of Bere and past the frowning battlements of Portchester. The distance was seventy-one miles, seven furlongs; and our forebears who prayerfully entrusted their bodies to the dangers of the roads and resigned their souls to Providence, were hurried along this route at the breakneck speed of something under eight miles an hour, with their hearts in their mouths and their money in their boots, for fear of the highwaymen who infested the roads.
By 1821 the speediest journey was quoted as nine hours, performed in that year by what was then considered the meteoric and previously unheard-of swiftness of the “Rocket”, which, in that new and most fashionable of era of mail and stage-coach travelling, had deserted the grimy and decidedly unfashionable precincts of the Borough and the Elephant and Castle, for modish Piccadilly.
They were jolly coach-loads that fared along the roads in coaching days, and, truly, all their jollity was needed, for unearthly hours, insufficient protection from inclement weather, and the tolerable certainty of falling in with thieves on their way, were experiences and contingencies that, one might imagine, could scarce fail of depressing the most buoyant spirits”.
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At this juncture, I digress from my planned article and literally go down a rabbit hole as I read about Mary Tofts of Godalming. I previously wrote an article about Hammer Ponds, in which it was mentioned that there was an area of farmed rabbit warrens nearby (hence Warren Park) which had disappeared in the middle of the eighteenth century. It was supposed that rabbit meat went out of fashion, but perhaps it was a result of Mary Tofts legacy.
“Godalming was a place notorious in the eighteenth century as the scene of one of the most impudent frauds ever practised upon the credulity of mankind. The story of Mary Tofts, if not edifying, is at least interesting. She was the wife of Joshua Tofts, a poor journeyman cloth-worker of this little town, and was described as of “a healthy, strong constitution, small size, fair complexion, a very stupid and sullen temper, and unable to write or read”. Stupid or not, she possessed sufficient cunning to maintain her fraud for some time, and even to delude some eminent surgeons of the day into a firm belief in her pretended births of rabbits. For this was the preposterous nature of the imposition, and she claimed to have given birth to no less than eighteen of them.
A Mr Howard, a medical man of Guildford, who claimed to have assisted Mary in giving birth to eighteen rabbits, seems, from the voluminous literature of this subject, to have been something of a party to the cheat; and if we did not find him a guilty accomplice, there would remain the scarce more flattering designation of egregious dupe. But Mr Howard, dupe or rogue, was extremely busy in publishing to the world the particulars of this extraordinary case. Public attention was now roused in the most extraordinary degree, and the subject of Mary Tofts and her rabbits was in everyone’s mouth.
The King (George I), too, was numbered among the believers, and things came to such a pass that ladies began to be alarmed with apprehensions of bringing into the world some unnatural progeny. “No one presumed to eat a rabbit”, and the rent of rabbit-warrens sank to nothing. But a German Court physician – a Dr Ahlers – who had proceeded to Guildford in order to report upon the matter to his Majesty, was rendered sceptical as much by the behaviour of Mr Howard as by that of his interesting patient. He returned to town, convinced of trickery, and finally Mary Tofts and her medical advisor were brought to London and lodged on the Bagnio, Leicester Fields, where, in fear of combined threats of punishment and an artfully-pictured operation darkly hinted at by Sir Richard Manningham, Obstetrician, she confessed that the fraud had been suggested to her by a woman, a neighbour of Godalming, who, with the showman’s instinct of Barnum, told her that here was a way to a good livelihood without the necessity of working for it. The part taken by Mr Howard has never been satisfactorily explained, but as he was particularly insistent that Mary Tofts deserved a pension from the King on account of her rabbits, his part in the affair has, naturally, been looked upon with considerable suspicion. Doctor and patient were, however, committed to Tothill Fields, Bridewell. (a prison located in Westminster, Central London and demolished in 1834 – Ed.).
Could this account for the disappearance of the rabbit warrens in Thursley? To read the original Warren Park article, please visit the website https://www.thursleyhistorysociety.org/post/warren-park-and-loseley-house The subject of transportation and the history of the Portsmouth Rd will be continued next month – with absolutely no mention of rabbits!
