In 1559 Agnes Bowker gave birth to a cat. That’s where the investigation starts, and in this episode, we look at this strange and sad story, and what it says about life in the margins of Elizabethan England, unwanted pregnancies.
I have a book called Travesties and Transgressions in Tudor and Stuart England by David Cressy, which dives into some of the seedier, grittier parts of history, and looks at some of the less known stories, and what they say about society. One of those stories involves a woman who gave birth to a cat – we look at the story, what it says about the options and rights of women who were preyed upon, and how people viewed unwed pregnant girls.
The Book Recommendation:
Travesties and Transgressions in Tudor and Stuart England by David Cressy
Rough Transcript for Episode 164: Agnes Bowker and her Cat
Hello and welcome to the Renaissance English History Podcast, a part of the Agora Podcast Network. I’m your host, Heather Teysko, and I’m a storyteller who makes history accessible because I believe it’s a pathway to understanding who we are, our place in the universe, and being more deeply in touch with our own humanity. This is episode 164, and it’s still a women’s histoi88ry month themed episode looking at the scandal of Agnes Bowker and her cat, the story of a woman who gave birth to a cat, and everything that says about society for women who fell outside the boundaries. One thing I will say off that bat is that this episode is coming with a trigger warning – I am going to talk about a story that involves sexual abuse, and testimony that goes into detail on the birth of what was seen as a monster. If this is going to be difficult listening for you, please skip this episode.
But first, a little admin. Patreon supporters – how to support.
Intelligent speech conference
I have a book called Travesties and Transgressions in Tudor and Stuart England by David Cressy, documenting stories of scandals ranging from alleged bestiality to abortions, and lots of ridiculing church doctrine. In the introduction, author David Cressy writes that one of his teachers at Cambridge, HC Porter, “used to say that the history that most interested him was the history of ‘the quirky bits.” By paying attention to curious and unusual phenomena, to oddities, puzzles, and aberrations, one might find a path to the past that other historians may have missed.” I think this is true especially when looking at gender roles, and the expectations of women and men.
So… a story about a woman who gave birth to a cat. The British Library actually has a drawing of the cat, along with the transcripts of the event, which was supposedly delivered of Agnes Bowker, in 1569. The case became the stuff of supermarket tabloids – had they existed – for a while, making it all the way up to the QUeen’s Principal Secretary William Cecil, for consideration of the council, and all the way to the Bishop of London to consider. There are lots of tetimonials, and we will look at them, but,
As Lady Science writes in her blog (link in shownotes at englandcast.com/agnes) “these testimonials provide no information about the difficulties Bowker faced as a lower-class, disabled woman pregnant with an illegitimate child. Instead the testimonials focus on the concrete, factual aspects of the cat-birthing. The story is just about as delicate as it gets; it includes extramarital sexual relationships, emotional manipulation, bribery, abuse, and the dubious circumstances of an unwanted pregnancy.
Citing a court testimony recorded by Harborough’s commissary, Anthony Anderson, on the 12th of February 1569, Cressy reveals that Bowker started showing the signs of the “falling illness,” or epilepsy, after taking up work as a maidservant at Hugh Brady’s household. Describing her master as a “very vicious, evil man,” Bowker told the court that she was forced to have sex with him on multiple occasions. She claimed that she escaped quickly after one such incident, finding shelter in the nearby village of Braybrooke. But this still wasn’t the end; Bowker met Brady on numerous occasions afterwards, and the sexual abuse continued. Eventually, Bowker described a pact the two made, stating that Brady tried to exploit her illness by promising to cure her symptoms if she gave him a child, and Bowker went along with it. That’s all the testimonies include.”
Agnes Bowker was 27. She was the daughter of Henry Bowker of Harborough, and appeared in the archdeacon’s court on 22 January 1569 where she said the following: “That she was delivered of this monster (for so she called it) the 16th day of January between the house of 6 and 7 at night, and further sayeth that one Randal Dowley, servant to Mr Edward Griffin had to do with her at Braybrooke, over the porter’s ward at Michaelmas was twelve month.” Agnes apparently had a long term relationship – as such – with Randal.
She also went on to explain that a cat had also had “to do” with her six or seven times, and when Randal forsook her, in midwinter 1568, she wandered through the woods suicidal, and in a wood called Boteland tried to hang herself with her girdle, but the girdle broke. She also went into a pond and almost drowned, but was saved.
She returned to Harborough and met with a Margaret Roos, the wife of a gentleman who performed OBGYN services on an informal basis. She met with Agnes on New Year’s DAy 1569, and said that she felt very odd things when she examined Agnes. A few days later Agnes came to her already in the pangs of labor, and Mrs Roos said that in professional opinion, Agnes had already had the child, and she was trying to deliver the afterbirth. Whatever it was, the labor apparently stopped, and started again 8 days later, where a different midwife attended to her. That other midwife was Elizabeth Harrison, perhaps a competitor with Margaret Roos.
Midwives were important women in the community – as I said in an early episode on pregnancy and childbirth, midwives were actually licensed to perform baptisms to children when it was clear that they would not live, and they were held accountable in court for any improprieties in the birth room. The records of ecclesiastica courts provide evidence as to their regular activities, and this case is no exception.
Elizabeth Harrison said that “on Tuesday the 11th of this January she wass sent for by the wives of Harborough, Margery Slater being the messenger, to come to Agnes Bowker, being in labor. She saith that she asked this Agnes who was the father of her childr… who answered it is one Randal DOwley, for he had many times the use of her body carnally: and further she saith that the said Agnes told her these tales following.”
Then the story comes out, which shifts depending on who is telling the story. We are first going to listen to what the midwife told the court that Agnes had told her – notice that this is coming second hand, later on, and potentially edited for the archdeacon’s court.
The midwife says: “There came to Agnes divers and sundry times a thing in the likeness of a bear, sometimes like a dog, sometimes like a man, and had the knowledge carnal of her body in every such shape. Also she saith that Agnes Bowker told her that as she walked abroad the country, she met with an outlandish woman, a Dutch woman, and the stranger asked her the cause of her sadnelss. Agnes answered, I have good cause for I am with child; then sht stranger said, Nay, though art not with child, but what wilt though give me, I will tell the what thou art withall. Then Agness said I will give thee a penny, and so did, and the woman stranger said Thou art neither with man child nor woman child, but with mooncalf, and that thoughs hall know shortly, for thou hast gone 40 weeks already, and thou shall go 11 weeks longer, and then at the same hour t he moon changeth or therabout, gett thee women about thee, for then it shall fall from thee.
What to think about this story? Was Agnes in a relationship with shape shifting animals, and Randal Dowley? 16th century science held that these things were uncommon, but not impossible. In a different telling of the story the woman was Welsh – so did Agnes seek out a woman to help her through her trouble? Remember she was also suicidal at the time, and later evidence would show that she likely suffered from epilepsy. Maybe the midwife just made the entire story up?
In the 16th century the mooncalf was a well known motif – as Cressy writes, it was “a mass of malformed tissue, believed to be the fruit of forbidden relationships, faulty seed, or a vicious conception.”
The Midwife Harrison went on to name the women who were at the delivery, and talked about how they brought forth the monster – the bottom part coming first. She said that when the women saw this strange sight they fled, but that the midwife boldened them and willed them not to go from her, and then she said to the monster thus: In the name of the father, the son, and the holy ghost, Come Safe, and go safe, and do not harm. Now in the name of God what have we here?
The court asked the women who had been present to come to the court. Six women admitted that they had helped with the delivery, but none of them could tell what exactly had happened. They all agreed, however, that they were afraid. Joan Clement was 50, and she recalls that she was going away when the midwife called her back with a prayer. Emma Buttrick was 40, and she was by the house with her child in her arms when the monster cat was born, “but she saith she dare not affirm or say it came out of Agnes’s body.” Another woman, Margaret Harrison, age 30, said “that she was at the birth of the monster with her child in her arms, and the wives willed her to fetch a candle for they had not light, and when she came in with the candle she saw the monster lie on the earth, and she thinketh it came out of Agnes Bowker’s womb.” Finally, Isabel Perkins was age 30, and she was also present with her child, “and saw the monster when the midwife drew it from under the clothes of Agnes Bowker.” It’s important to note that none of the women actually saw the monster emerge from Agnes, but they did see it on the floor, and it looked just like a skinned cat.
Everyone agreed that there was a “monster” on the floor – but had Agnes Bowker actually given birth to it? So far the story centers solely around the women of Harborough and their testimony, with the exception of Randal Dowley. But now the men would come in to give us their opinions. They started an examination, and tried very hard to figure out exactly what had happened.
The curate Christopher Pollard told the court that he was present when the entrail of the cat was opened, and there did he with others see and take forth very straw out of the cut, to the number of three or four. George Walker owned an inn, and he “ripped the maw of the cat, pulling it out of the body thereof, and there did he see certain meat congealed, and also in the same maw a piece of bacon.” The investigators were pragmatic and thoughtful, wanting to turn over every stone – or in this case, piece of bacon – to try to get to the solution. The men concluded that this was a very real cat which had been fed from the scraps around the town – hence the bacon – and also brought into the evidence record the story that Agnes had tried to borrow a cat from a neighbor, whose cat was now missing.
Five days after the first ecclesiastical court hearing, the secular authorities decided to listen to the case and investigate what kind of crime had happened, if any. Agnes was interviewed again on February 4 where she talked again about the supernatural conception, saying that “a thing came unto her as she was in bed and lay the first night very heavy upon her bed but touched her not.”
In the weeks following her delivery, Agnes was in homes in Harborough, and several women were able to see her and talk with her.
On February 10, Emma Walker – who was the wife of the innkeeper who found the bacon – visited Agnes to give her counsel to discharge her conscience. The fact that this was an unsolved msytery that could also have been a supernatural mystery was disconcerting to the townspeople, and they wanted it solved quicklike. The easiest explanation was that it was some kind of infanticide coverup, and that’s what they all wanted to get to the bottom of. Walker said that she told Agnes, “though hast had a child, and it is made away, and this cat by some sliehgt or sorcery is conveyed to thee.”
Agnes testified again on the 12th, and Anthony Anderson, the archdeacon commissary, records, “Agnes saith that in time past she dwelled with one Hugh Brady, sometime dwelling in Harborough, and was scoolmaster. She saith he was a very vicious man, and did lie with his maids often, and committed adultery with them; and she knowing his facts told her mistress on him, and her master therefore entreated her evil, and there the falling sickness (epilepsy) took her, and her mistress did send her to London to dwell because her master should no more so evil entreat her. After this she saith she came to Braybrooke and dwelt there when the Queen’s majesty came on her grace’s progress thither, and being at the court gates this Hugh Brady saw her, and came to her and gave her two shillings, and bad her go to the grange yaard close and he would meet her there. She saigh she went there, and he came to her and cast her on the ground and had his carnal pleasure upon her, and bad her be merry, and he would get her a boy, and send for her where she should live in better state all the days of her life. Further she saith he said to her, hath thy disease left thee yet. No, saith she. Well, saith Brady, if thou wilt be ruled by me and not betray me, I will help thee of thy disease. There is no remedy, thou must needs have a child first, and then thy disease will leave thee, and another thing thou must do.
She asked Mr. Brady what she must do further. Marry, saith he, thoush must forsake God and all his works, and give thyself wholly to the devil, and within two or three years, thou shalt be whole.
The testimony goes on to detail this affair with Brady and Agnes, in which it was clear that he was preying on her, promising to give her a child so she would be healed of her epilepsy, and then disappearing. Both Mr Brady and Randal Dowley had left the area and were unavailable for questioning. During this time someone had published a sensationalized account of the monstrous birth, and Anderson wanted to set the record straight, and he said that the “monster” was definitely a run of the mill cat. He even performed an experiment where he attempted to skin a cat to see if it could look the same as the monster, and found that it did indeed take on the same appearance.
The transcripts made it to William Cecil who turned to the Bishop of London for advice. Should any of them be concerned about these events in Leicestershire? Bishop Grindal decided to investigate, and was skeptical that it was anything other than a simple cat, just like Anderson. This was a period still relatively early in Elizabeth’s reign, with the religious settlement still new, and the idea of strange monstrous births had been a genre going strong for a few years already. The idea that the supernatural was working against religious reform – or for it against Catholics -was something that everyone in government was concerned about – hence the fact that this story made it to the highest levels of government.
We can look back through 400 years, and modern psychology, at the twisting changing stories of Agnes, and reasons why she might have told differing accounts. We will never know what really happened to Agnes, or where the cat came from. But there are some interesting pieces of Elizabethan life that we can glean from this story. First, it’s heartening to see that a single pregnant woman was able to secure the help of several midwives, and women willing to help her through her travail. We often think about single women needing to give birth alone outside or something, but this story shows us that even a “downfallen” woman like Agnes was able to have decent medical care, which I think is a light in this bizarre story.
‘So that’s it for this week. The book recommendation this week is Travesties and Transgressions in Tudor and Stuart England by David Cressy. I’ll have a link to purchase in the show notes at englandcast.com/agnes. Let me know what you thought about this episode -You can get in touch with me through the listener support line at 801 6TEYSKO or join the new Tudor Learning Circle, which is a free social network just for Tudor history nerds.
[advertisement insert here: if you like this show, and you want to support me and my work, the best thing you can do (and it’s free!) is to leave us a rating on iTunes. It really helps others discover the podcast. Second best is to buy Tudor-themed gifts for all your loved ones at my shop, at TudorFair.com, like leggings with the Anne Boleyn portrait pattern on them, or boots with Elizabeth I portraits. Finally, you can also become a patron of this show for as little as $1/episode at Patreon.com/englandcast … And thank you!]