A complete history of the case of the Welsh fasting-girl (Sarah Jacob) with comments thereon; and observations on death from starvation.

  • Fowler, Robert.
Date:
1871
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A complete history of the case of the Welsh fasting-girl (Sarah Jacob) with comments thereon; and observations on death from starvation. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

    45/326 (page 33)
    The silly father's answer to my advice and offer was, How can yon London doctors make my child eat, without making a hole in her ? Yours obediently, Egbert Fowler, M.D., District Medical Officer of the East London Union. Black Lion Hotel, Cardigan, Sept. 4. This letter excited much feeling; and discussion in the neig-hbourhood. Appearing- as it did in the slack period of the News-season, the letter evidently proved quite a godsend to Newspaper editors and reporters. In many of the evening impressions of the same day's London papers, the letter was again inserted and was com- mented on. The next day, four or five of the morning papers followed suit; and before the week was out, the letter had been reproduced and noticed in almost every Provincial paper of England and Wales. Two slight errors of fact stated in our letter we will at once correct: the child, we believe, had not been con- firmed; and the thin and poor bed on which we found her lying, was made of flock, and not of feathers. The girl was seen in the month of September, 1869, by Mr. John Griffith, a gentleman well known in the Prin- cipality as an active agent in most of the popular movements of the time. His anonyme—moot de plume— (or nickname, as Mr. C. Coleridge, the Counsel, very u-reverently called it), is Gohebydd, signifying, we are told, Correspondent. He, however, styles him- self simply a writer to the Welsh Press, particularly the Baner Newspaper. This gentleman quite confirms Mr. Davies' statement of the continued improvement of the girl's appearance. Mr. Griffith states :— I saw the girl; she appeared to me to be in the same condition as m April. I should say she looked better. Subsequently to our letter, repeated paragraphs about the case appeared in several newspapers. Whether from sheer disgust at these paragraphs in the English papers, which m his professional capacity he was so constantly coming across, or whether from strictly patriotic motives on behalf of his fellow-countrymen and women does not distinctly appear,—certain, however It IS, that Mr. John Griffith (Gohebydd) was mainly instrumental m initiating the last watching of Sarah Jacob. After his visit to the girl in September, 1869