The stories behind the Cardiff Giant, Piltdown Man, the Cottingley Fairies and Mary Toft's rabbits: how each hoax worked, who it fooled, how it unravelled, and what they teach us about spotting fakes today.
Some hoaxes fooled crowds; others fooled scientists for decades. These four, from the 18th to the 20th century, show how fakes take hold, and how they're eventually exposed.
Mary Toft (1726)
Mary Toft of Godalming, Surrey, convinced several doctors that she was giving birth to rabbits. Local surgeon John Howard reported the births, and the case reached the court of King George I. Nathaniel St André, a surgeon to the royal household, examined her and was convinced.
Sceptics grew suspicious, and Toft was brought to London and watched closely. When a porter was caught trying to smuggle a rabbit into her room, the story began to collapse. Under pressure, she confessed in December 1726 that she had inserted rabbit parts into her body. She was briefly imprisoned. The doctors who had believed her were widely mocked in satirical prints, including one by William Hogarth.
The Cardiff Giant (1869)
Workers digging a well on a farm in Cardiff, New York, "discovered" a 10-foot stone man. Crowds paid to see the "petrified giant". It had been carved from gypsum on the orders of George Hull, a tobacconist who wanted to mock people who took the Bible's mention of giants literally.
Scientists quickly said it was a recent carving, and Hull confessed. By then, the showman P. T. Barnum had made his own copy, so for a time two fake giants were on display, each claimed to be the real one.
Piltdown Man (1912)
Amateur archaeologist Charles Dawson announced fossil skull fragments from a gravel pit at Piltdown in Sussex. They were hailed as a "missing link" between apes and humans, and seemed to suggest early humans had a large brain before an ape-like jaw.
Doubts grew as other fossils from Africa and Asia didn't fit the pattern. In 1953, scientists including Kenneth Oakley, Joseph Weiner and Wilfrid Le Gros Clark showed it was a fake: a human skull combined with an orangutan jaw, stained to look old, with teeth filed down. Chemical dating confirmed the bones weren't ancient. A 2016 scientific review concluded that Dawson was very likely the hoaxer, working alone.
The Cottingley Fairies (1917)
Cousins Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths, aged 16 and 9, took photographs of themselves with "fairies" in Cottingley, near Bradford. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes and a believer in spiritualism, used them in a 1920 magazine article as evidence of the supernatural.
Photographic experts disagreed about the pictures for decades. In the 1980s, the cousins admitted the fairies were paper cut-outs, copied from a children's book and held up with hatpins, though Frances maintained that the last photograph was genuine.
Why hoaxes work?
- They tell people what they want to hear: Piltdown suited ideas at the time about human evolution, and the fairies suited spiritualist beliefs.
- Authority lends credibility: support from doctors, scientists or famous writers persuaded others.
- Money and attention: several hoaxes were profitable for someone.
How they were exposed?
In each case, the fake didn't fit growing evidence, and someone tested it rather than accepting it. Close observation caught Mary Toft; geology exposed the Cardiff Giant; new fossils and chemical tests undid Piltdown; and, eventually, confession ended Cottingley.
Lessons for today
Doctored images and fake stories now spread faster than ever. The same questions help: who benefits, does it fit other evidence, has it been independently checked, and is it simply too good to be true?
Sources and further reading
- Wikipedia: Mary Toft
- Wikipedia: Cardiff Giant
- Wikipedia: Piltdown Man
- Royal Society Open Science: Piltdown study (2016)
- Wikipedia: Cottingley Fairies
Facts checked on 20 October 2026. Spotted an error? Tell us and we will correct it.