Sarah Jacob was, by all accounts, a plump Welsh girl of strong morals and strong religious faith living in the mid 1800's. She also didn't eat from the age of twelve without any serious harm for almost a year and a half. Or so she claimed.
One day when she was around 11 years old, she started to vomit blood for no reason that anyone could figure out. Even though that came to an end fairly quickly, she was bedridden from then on. And the very sight of food from then on is said to have caused "very strong fits". For the next sixteen months her parents viewed her, and her survival despite not eating, as a miracle. They told the local vicar, one Reverend Jones, who despite initial doubts became convinced that the girl was a miracle and told the world.
The world pretty much laughed in his face and then tried to ignore him. So he set up nurses to watch the girl. To quote the British Medical Journal:
A local committee was therefore instituted to watch over this fasting girl. No public confidence was, however, placed in the watchers, and no satisfactory result ensued therefrom. Considering that these watchers were actually debarred from touching the child's bed, it is obvious that the whole process was reduced to an absurdity, the very first element of success being denied it. We must not, notwithstanding, be too hard upon these Welsh watchers.The Welsh watchers were ineffective because they were limited by the ground rules put in place on them, and the medical community pretty much continued to ignore Sarah Jacob. It wasn't until a medical examiner from London went through the area on vacation and made a stop to see the "fasting girl" that the whole thing really blew up. Dr. Robert Fowler of London sent a letter to the London Times, and by the next day every paper in England and Wales was reporting on the case. It was, admittedly, a slow news day.
It was a little harder for the medical community to ignore this apparent medical mystery now that a doctor had written about it to the media, and now that everyone on the street knew about it, so a proper test of whether Sarah was actually fasting or not was set up in 1869. She would be carefully monitored for two weeks. They set up guards, day and night. They searched her bed. They checked everyone coming into the room for food or water. They were going to make sure that Sarah didn't get anything to eat or drink without their knowing it.
Now, they weren't psychopathic about it. They didn't want her to die. She could eat or drink whatever she wanted, but if she wanted it, they wanted it on record. Nurses offered her food and water, but she turned them down every time. Her health started to decline, and the Reverend Jones asked the parents to stop the whole thing, but the parents refused, saying that they had seen this kind of decline in her health before. As long as Sarah didn't eat anything, she'd get better.
Yes, they actually thought that she'd get better if she didn't eat. Let me clarify, she'd get better only if she didn't eat.
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There was almost as much controversy over her death as there was over the last year and a half of her life. Because she was, even up to her death, described as a plump girl. There was an inquest into the cause of death, since how do you stay plump while starving to death? Well, in a case of acute starvation the body can't actually break down the fats in your body quick enough to stave off starvation. You'll get thinner, sure, but you can die of starvation long before you look like you're starving to death. This inability of the body to break down fat at will is also the reason that a good physical trainer will advise against losing more than a kilo a week; you're not actually losing fat, you're burning muscle. It's only with chronic starvation that you really start to get that emaciated, anorexic look. (quick side note: anorexia nervosa was formally named in 1873, totally unrelated to Sarah Jacob though)
The vicar, the doctors and the parents were all investigated in the death, but in the end only the parents were charged. They were both convicted and sentenced; her father was given a one year sentence of hard labour, but her mother was given leniency because she was pregnant. She only had a six month sentence of picking oakum (pulling apart rope and cordage into fibers). Just so you know, that's sarcasm. Picking oakum seems like a pretty hellish thing to have to do for six months, although I have little doubt that it's still better than hard labour.
It's thought that Sarah's parents honestly thought she was a miracle fasting girl, which makes the entire thing tragic for them. It's thought that one of her sisters was sneaking food in for Sarah to eat before, but they couldn't do that with the tight supervision of the test. So, there's no way that Sarah herself thought she was a miracle fasting girl, which means that she literally starved herself to death rather than admit that she was lying. That's what you call committing yourself to the lie. When you have people all around you saying, "Listen, we know you're lying. Your lie is literally killing you. Just have a sandwich and we can all go home," and you still choose to die, that's a special kind of crazy.
Sarah Jacob: Died of starvation to keep a lie going. And adding insult to injury, she was still getting called plump.
Yes, I'm aware that plump wasn't an insult.
Sources:
Evan and Hannah Jacob photo taken from the Camarthen Gaol felons register
Police news image taken from the BBC
British Medical Journal Volume 2, 1869 edition
The Lancet, Volume 2, 1870 edition
Casglu'r Tlysau - Welsh heritage & culture website, available in Cymraeg and English
WelshLegalHistory.org
Suite101.com
Wikipedia article on Fasting Girls
BBC article on Sarah Jacob being added to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
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