Fasting Girls: The Bizarre Victorian Fad Behind “The Wonder”
![Fasting Girls: The Bizarre Victorian Fad Behind “The Wonder”](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/8/7/5/881875_320x180.jpg)
On a scale from American Hustle to Godzilla of “movies likely to be based on a true story,” Netflix’s The Wonder would seem to fall somewhere around Donnie Darko. This particular story of a girl whose family insists she never eats and doesn’t require food to live is not, in fact, true, which is probably a good thing. Not to spoil too much, but it’s pretty goddamn harrowing.
There were, however, plenty of girls and even a few poorly adjusted women who claimed to have fasted for years, mostly during the 19th century in Europe and America. Their reasons varied, from picking up a side hustle in the lucrative starvation exhibition business to just trying to catch a break from their awful parents, but it usually involved either their own religious convictions or that of others. Like a guy with a birthmark in the shape of the Virgin Mary, they were part miracle, part freak show.
The First Fast
![Jesus told Julian of Norwich to stop eating. 15TH CENTURY CRACKED.COM She was her day's most famous anchorite, which is a person who lived in complete isolation for God reasons, who claimed she received visions that told her (among other things) that Jesus was the precious food of all true life and thereafter stopped eating.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/8/7/4/881874.jpg)
Saintly Skepticism
![Nobody bothered much to fact check her. CRACKED CON It's unclear to what extent Julian of Norwich truly stopped eating because she was shut up in her room all the time, so you couldn't exactly watch her. She's also considered a saint in some practices, and people really don't like to question those.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/8/7/3/881873.jpg)
The (Not) “Fasting Woman of Tutbury”
![Ann Moore revived the fasting craze. 1813 CRACKED.COM She was an English woman known around town for eating the bare minimum, which is pretty standard for impoverished single mothers, but eventually, she claimed she'd eaten nothing for more than four years. She was declared a miracle and even an omen of famine.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/8/7/2/881872.jpg)
The Gravy Train
![It turned out Ann Moore had a trick up her sleeve (or rather in her washcloth). GRAGKED COM It eventually came out that Moore tricked those tasked with debunking her claims by having her daughter wash her face with towels soaked in broth or gravy or pass her food by kissing her on the mouth. Visitors often left substantial offerings to the fasting woman, so hey, it was a living.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/8/7/1/881871.jpg)
The “Brooklyn Enigma”
![One bad year left Mollie Fancher with all kinds of supernatural abilities. 1864 CRACKED.COM After being thrown from a horse and then dragged by a train, the 17-year-old quite understandably refused to leave her bed. She claimed to have lost all sense of touch, taste, sight, and smell, but on the plus side, she gained the ability to read minds, see the future, and live without food.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/8/7/0/881870.jpg)
Debunking Mollie
![Weirdly, she wouldn't allow anyone to observe her. CRACKED COM Mollie Fancher declined all requests to test her claims and, by the late 1880s, admitted she'd begun eating again. Coincidentally, she made good money from devotees and endorsing invalids' prosthetics.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/8/6/7/881867.jpg)
The “Welsh Fasting Girl”
![Sarah Jacob was mostly trying to get out of chores. 1869 CRACKED COM As she began to recover from a mysterious illness, the nine-year-old started eating less to keep herself sick enough to get out of the back-breaking farm work she was forced to do. Her parents ran with it, hyping her up as having not eaten for two years, just to prove they were indeed awful.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/8/6/6/881866.jpg)
Shit Gets Real
![When a fasting girl was finally tested, she starved to death. CRACKED.COM Sarah Jacob's family actually allowed nurses to observe her, and wouldn't you know it, after five days without food, she starved to death. Her parents were convicted of manslaughter for refusing to feed her.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/8/6/3/881863.jpg)
Jersey (Fasting) Girl
![No one knew why Lenora Eaton stopped eatin'. 1881 CRACKED COM Unlike most of these would-be saints, while others in her New Jersey town promoted her as a symbol of their faith in the miraculous, Eaton refused to explain her sudden rejection of food. Maybe she just had a keen sense of irony.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/8/6/8/881868.jpg)
The Deaths Keep Coming
![Lenora Eaton died after 45 days without food. CRACKED COM She even allowed doctors to treat her, but she continued to refuse food, and they couldn't find any medical reason why she would. This one seems like a clear case of mental illness, but they didn't even bother labeling her as hysterical, as was the fashion in those days.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/8/6/9/881869.jpg)
The Tingwick Girl
![Josephine Marie Bedard claimed she hadn't eaten for seven years. 1889 GMIG POTCO Hipnie CRACKED.COM By this time, fasting girls were such a phenomenon that Boston museums entered a bidding war to exhibit Bedard. The 19-year-old was especially coveted because, despite her claims, she remained stout and active, which was Victorian for thicc.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/8/6/5/881865.jpg)
“Fasting Girl Bit a Doughnut”
![Potatoes and a doughnut undid Josephine Marie Bedard. CRACKED.COM While exhibitors fought, the scientific community had had quite enough of this shit. A prominent doctor swiftly met up with Bedard, found a half-eaten doughnut in her pocket, and left a plate of potatoes unattended to see if she'd eat one. She did.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/8/6/4/881864.jpg)
The Stool Saint
![Therese Neumann followed the communion wafer diet. 1923 CRACKED COM After falling off a stool somehow left her blind and paralyzed, Neumann claimed she ate and drank nothing but what she received during communion. There was also some stigmata, miraculous healing by visions of saints -- you know, typical mystic stuff.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/8/6/0/881860.jpg)
Yo-Yo Fasting
![Therese Neumann seemed to be wasting away but miraculously got better. die stigmatisierte Jungirau 1927 Theres Neumann en am & Aprildem Karfreilag theres 1898 Lift Gestorben Anschliss an die Feste der Kreuzerhohung der sieben Schmerzen Mariens 900 und d'e: Sugmatisation des N ran flaur am и September 1952 MACH - CRAGKED.COM Doctors observing her confirmed Neumann didn't eat, but she mysteriously lost 10 lbs. once she was being watched, only to bounce back within days. It's believed that her father had begun sneaking her food, but she's a candidate for sainthood, so you can't say that out loud.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/8/6/2/881862.jpg)
Starving For Attention
![The fasting girls' motivations were complicated. CRACKED.COM Many fasting girls were deeply religious, but Victorian standards of beauty and femininity -- A.K.A. weakness and deprivation - can't be ignored. They were basically the era's Hot Girls. They also happened to make a lot of money from donations and exhibitions. If only being too broke to eat could be so easily monetized today.](https://s3.crackedcdn.com/phpimages/imageset/8/6/1/881861.jpg)