Ann Moore

Ann Moore (31 October 1761 – 1813) was an English woman who became notorious as the fasting-woman of Tutbury. From 1807 to 1813, she claimed to have eaten nothing at all, but her claims were eventually shown to be a hoax. Derbyshire, the daughter of a day-labourer and sawyer, William Peg (or possibly Pegg), in 1761. In 1788, she married a farm servant, James Moore. By some accounts, she was pregnant at the time. Moore, who may not have believed the child was his, deserted her soon after the marriage. After the separation, Ann returned to work as a housekeeper for a widowed farmer in Aston, near Tutbury, where she had two more children by her employer. In about 1800, she made her way to Tutbury to find employment as a cotton beater. and bulletins describing her condition were publicly distributed as the monitoring period continued. However, neither the residents nor the visiting surgeons saw any evidence of food or water intake. Robert Taylor and John Allen, two local doctors wrote about the case to the Edinburgh Medical and Surgical Journal in November and December 1808. Both doctors publicly supported her claims, increasing her publicity.

From 1808 to 1813, she continued to attract crowds of visitors Writer Mary Howitt, then Mary Botham, was taken to see her as a child. She says that her father told her that not many believed that she ate nothing but that she did eat very little. Mary said that she could only think of the following poem:

"There was an old lady all skin and bone This old lady was very well known She lay in bed as I've heard say For many years to fast and pray When she had lain a twelvemonth's space The flesh was gone from hands and face When that another twelvemonth was gone She was nothing at all but a skeleton" showing the inconsistencies and absurdities of the woman's statements, and the curious parallel between the case and that of Anna M. Kinker, a girl of Osnabrück, who practised a similar imposture in Germany in 1800. Henderson reported that Ann claimed to have not eaten solid food for "upwards of five years" and had not drunk liquid for four years. She claimed that she did not pass urine or any other matter.

She died a few months afterwards, aged 53 years.

Some modern historians view her actions as an early form of social protest, while others view it as simple fraud.