The story of the Russian woman who gave birth to 69 children

The largest number of children recorded in history occurred in Shuya, Russia, by the wife of Feodor Vassilyev (1707- 1782). This woman is said to have had 27 pregnancies, giving birth to 16 sets of twins, seven sets of triplets and four sets of quadruplets.

According to the official page of the guinness world recordss, the case was reported by the Nikolsky Monastery on February 27, 1782, a place that had registered all births between 1725 and 1765.

One of the media of the time, ‘The Gentleman’s Magazine’reported the following:

“In an original letter now before me, dated St. Petersburg, August 13, 1782, Feodor Wassilief [sic], 75, a peasant, says that he is now alive and in perfect health, in the Moscow Government, and that he has had:

By his first wife:

4 x 4 = 16

7 x 3 = 211

6 x 2 = 32

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27 births, 69 children

For his second wife:

6 x 2 = 12

2 x 3 = 6

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8 births, 18 children

In total, 35 births, 87 children, of which 84 are alive and only three are buried. The above can be relied upon, although surprisingly, since it came directly from an English merchant in St. Petersburg to his relatives in England, who added that the peasant was to be presented to the empress.”

After the story was discovered, it appeared in other media at the time, such as the ‘Saint Petersburg Panorama’, which reported in 1834 that “on February 27, 1782, the list of the Nikolsky monastery arrived in Moscow containing the information that a peasant from the Shuya district, Feodor Vassilyev, married twice and had 87 children”.

On the other hand, ‘The Lancet’ (1878) wrote that, in the midst of a study on twins by the French Academy, this extraordinary case was remembered because it was published in the book ‘Travaux Statistiques de la Russie’ (Statistical Works of Russia) .

Apart from these records, not much information is known about the first Mrs. Vassilyev. Although it is believed that she lived to be 76 years old and that her first name was Valentina.

Although, according to the Guinness World Records page, this figure must “take it with tweezers”, it is certainly likely that the Russian woman had a genetic predisposition to hyperovulate (release multiple eggs in one cycle).

Furthermore, according to the ‘BBC‘ Although scientifically unlikely, it is mathematically possible that Vassilyev’s wife had 27 pregnancies. Well, according to rough calculations, she had 16 twins in 37 weeks; seven triplets at 32 weeks and four quadruplets at 30 weeks. As it is, she was probably pregnant for 18 of the reported 40 years

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