https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jul/01/small-pleasures-by-clare-chambers-review-a-suburban-mystery

There is compassion and quiet humour to be found in this tale of a putative virgin birth in postwar Britain

In the mid 50s, scientists began to give serious consideration to the possibility of single-sex reproduction. Dr Helen Spurway, a biologist at the University of London, observed that guppies were apparently capable of parthenogenesis. It had also been demonstrated that it was possible to induce spontaneous conception in rabbits by freezing the fallopian tubes.

In December 1955, the Sunday Pictorial (later renamed the Sunday Mirror) took a tabloid response to Spurway’s research by launching a Christmas appeal to find women who believed they had experienced a virgin birth. Most who came forward were ruled out for displaying some confusion about what virginity entailed. But there was one case over which several eminent doctors failed to reach a consensus – that of a woman named Emmimarie Jones, who apparently conceived a daughter while confined to bed in a German sanatorium.