Though newspapers across the nation were avidly following the \u201cextraordinary case\u201d, Sarah was not the first so-called \u201cfasting girl\u201d Britain had seen, nor was she the first to submit to such a perilous test. Europe had a long tradition of these miraculous maidens: young women who appeared to eat almost nothing at all, despite being otherwise in good health. Taking their lead from the devout Catholics of the medieval period, whose anorexia mirabilis<\/em> was rooted in their deep piety, fasting girls had been attracting attention since at least the 16th century, their abstinence bringing them fame and fortune.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Even early on, they had divided opinion. To some, they were a \u201cwonder of God\u201d \u2013 evidence of his miraculous powers, and worthy of the crowds who flocked to gaze on them. Others were cynical: early modern physicians might not be able to state with any certainty how long a person could survive without eating, but at a time when famine was a bleak reality, the necessity of nourishment for the preservation of life was well-understood.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n It was growing scepticism that had led to the very first watches. In 1600, King Henry IV of France sent his \u201cbest and chiefest\u201d physician to determine whether it was \u201cby deceit or not\u201d that Jane Balan had conducted her three-year fast; and in 1668, the Earl of Devonshire arranged for surgeons to watch Martha Taylor, \u201cThe Famed Derbyshire Damosell\u201d, who claimed to have fasted for 12 months, only occasionally wetting her lips with a feather dipped in water, or drinking the juice of a roasted raisin. The fact that duplicity was not detected in either case (nor in many others) meant that even as physicians were seeking alternative explanations \u2013 ranging from bodily make-up to the nutritive properties of air \u2013 the idea of miraculous or supernatural abstinence was kept alive.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Meaning \u201cmiraculously inspired loss of appetite\u201d, the term anorexia mirabilis describes the religiously motivated self-starvation of women in late medieval Europe, some of whom allegedly went without food for months or years, claiming that they were physically unable to eat \u201cearthly fare\u201d. Like feasting, fasting was a central tenet of the Catholic faith, but the refusal (or inability) to eat was closely entwined with female piety. Women\u2019s cultural association with food, and the nurturing of both their family and the poor, made it their most accessible resource for expressing their desire to share in Christ\u2019s sufferings, and for achieving holiness through the service of others.<\/p>\n Saint Catherine of Siena (1347\u201380) remains one of the most famous adherents: until her death from a stroke at the age of 33, she was one of numerous women who reportedly lived on the Eucharist alone, pushing twigs down her throat to make herself vomit if she was forced to eat anything else. Her strict fasting she described as an infirmity, saying she prayed God would make it possible for her to eat. It did, however, enable her to avoid marriage and earned her a notoriety that facilitated her intervention in major political and religious crises.<\/p>\n <\/p><\/div> <\/section> Medical knowledge was obviously much advanced by the time Sarah\u2019s fast came to the attention of the national press in February 1869. The vast majority of physicians were unshakeably convinced that surviving on air, or staying alive through the mercy of God, was utterly impossible: \u201ca palpable absurdity, and in contravention of all known laws and experience\u201d. Already, prolonged fasting \u2013 or the pretence of it \u2013 was considered a pathological behaviour: \u201ca well-known phase of hysteria\u201d. Conventional treatment for food refusal involved admittance to a hospital ward, where \u201cby moral means\u201d the patient would be coaxed into eating, or failing that, force-fed through a tube.<\/p>\n Cases like that of Ann Moore \u2013 \u201cthe pretended fasting woman of Tutbury\u201d \u2013 had done much to damage the credibility of apparently miraculous fasters, too. Despite avowing \u201cthat for six years I have taken nothing but once, the inside of a few black currants; [and] for the last four years and a half nothing at all\u201d she had been exposed as a \u201cvile imposter\u201d after a watch in 1813, called off when it became obvious that \u201cshe was suffering severely from want\u201d and had \u201clost weight rapidly\u201d. It turned out that while making the tidy sum of \u00a3400 from exhibiting her person to visitors, Ann\u2019s daughter had been feeding her all along: washing her face with towels made wet with gravy, milk or arrowroot, and passing food into her mother\u2019s mouth when they kissed. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Yet despite all that, the fasting girl became something of a Victorian phenomenon. At a time of friction between new scientific fact and traditional religious faith, many ordinary people remained open to the idea that a medical miracle might occur. Not everyone thought it impossible that despite the \u201cmere mention of food\u201d bringing on a fit, Sarah\u2019s health could actually be improving. Press coverage led to a steady stream of Britons making pilgrimages to the Carmarthenshire home of the \u201cWelsh Fasting Girl\u201d, following the entrepreneurial schoolboys who waited for them at the local railway station. Upon entering the bedroom in which Sarah laid all day, every day, her bed strewn with ribbons, flowers and books, they might be permitted to touch her hands or her face \u2013 and, of course, to leave gifts.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n So, while the medical community had been reluctant to see an old-fashioned observation conducted on Sarah, fearful of lending credibility to what they believed were ludicrous claims, the experiment to authenticate her fast had been sanctioned. One more rigorous watch, many thought, would prove to the public that it was impossible to survive without sustenance. Four nurses had been sent from London\u2019s Guy\u2019s Hospital for the purpose, and the Jacobs\u2019 home diligently searched for hidden food. Sarah\u2019s parents had also agreed not to make her bed, nor let her sister sleep alongside her.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Unfortunately, the experiment cost Sarah her life. As she lay in bed, her pulse quickening, her body increasingly cold and restless, and her mind delusional, the doctors had urged her parents to withdraw the watch so that she could begin furtively eating again \u2013 as it was painfully clear she had been doing all along. But either from pride, their own delusion or, as they repeatedly said, a promise they had made to Sarah, they refused; and she slipped away on 17 December. The post-mortem categorically confirmed that their assertions that she had taken no food or drink for 26 months were untrue. Amid public outcry, they were both found guilty of manslaughter. \u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt would,\u201d thought one US neurologist, \u201cbe perfectly possible to re-enact in the City of New York the whole tragedy\u201d, since Americans were proving just as receptive to the claims of their own fasting girls. The most famous was Mollie Fancher, who had initially come to the public\u2019s attention in 1866 after going \u201cseven weeks without food\u201d. By the 1870s, the \u201cBrooklyn Enigma\u201d was apparently eating and drinking little more than a small banana and a few teaspoons of milk punch in a six-month period, and, like Sarah, receiving nationwide attention. Naturally, some of it was highly sceptical \u2013 at least one neurologist tried (unsuccessfully) to get Mollie to agree to a 30-day observation \u2013 but not all of it. Mollie was offered (and accepted) a lucrative endorsement deal from a company specialising in invalids\u2019 prosthetics; and PT Barnum attempted to recruit her for his show. President Woodrow Wilson even sent her a letter to mark her \u201cGolden Jubilee in Bed\u201d in 1916.<\/p>\n Just as other fasting girls were seen and reported on in Britain \u2013 like \u201cStrathaven Fasting Girl\u201d Christina Marshall, who \u201ccompleted her eighteenth week without food\u201d in 1881 \u2013 so were they found across the US, especially in places where supernatural causes were still given credence. In the mid-1880s, over 1,000 people came to visit Kate Smulsey, the \u201cFort Plain Fasting Girl\u201d who had apparently not eaten for over a year. Maine\u2019s Josephine Marie Bedard, meanwhile \u2013 said to have \u201cno more desire to eat than other people would have to chew iron\u201d \u2013 was fought over by two rival promoters keen to exhibit her as a curiosity. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Why exactly Mollie Fancher, Sarah Jacob and those like them began to refuse food (or to eat in secret) has never been clear. Sarah had done so after a mysterious illness involving convulsive fits; Mollie while recuperating after an accident. One Dr Fowler, firmly convinced that hysteria lay behind Sarah\u2019s behaviour, thought that \u201cthe oft expressed wonderment and surprise\u201d of her parents as to the very little food she lived on in the wake of her illness had encouraged her fasting. The \u201ccultivation of this habit\u201d had in turn brought rewards, leading her into \u201csimulation and deception\u201d.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nFeathers and raising<\/h3>\n
Anorexia Mirabilis in the Middle Ages<\/h4>\n
The first references to fasting girls can be found in accounts from medieval Europe<\/h6>\n
Strange pilgrimages<\/h3>\n
![\"""\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2022\/11\/GettyImages520722533-8addb7c.jpg?quality=90&resize=280%2C413"\" "\\"\"\"\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div> The majority of physicians were convinced that surviving on air was utterly impossible <\/blockquote> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n<\/div>
Lucrative endorsements<\/h3>\n
![\"""\"](\""https:\/\/images.immediate.co.uk\/production\/volatile\/sites\/7\/2022\/11\/GettyImages515355808-b6a9542.jpg?quality=90&resize=381%2C413"\" "\\"\"\"\\"\/")
<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>New interpretations<\/h3>\n