Sarah Jacob was the Carmarthenshire farm girl who dominated the national and regional press for almost all of 1869. In the popular imagination she was 'the Welsh fasting girl' and although she was not the first anorexic, she was arguably the first to cause a national furore, and become something of a celebrity. She died despite a team of nurses from Guy's Hospital stationed at her home in Lletherneuadd, and after the best minds in British medicine had set theorised about the cause of her apparently supernatural existence - living in spite of starvation, losing no weight yet clearly suffering in all kinds of ways. Sarah's was not the only story here. Her parents were charged with murder and eventually convicted of manslaughter. The Girl Who Lived on Air retells this human story of an anorexic made to be the centre of a lucrative and also media-hungry 'spin' on the nineteenth century nexus of knowledge between science and superstition, folk-belief and religious asceticism.
Stephen Wade covers new ground in examining the medical issues surrounding the case, the legal complexities (including the use of Welsh in court) and the interpretation on a newly enacted law which reformulated serious crime, the prison life of Sarah's parents, and the significance of folklore and superstition in an unusual and yet all too familiar story.

In 1869, Sarah Jacob caused a national furore as 'the Welsh Fasting Girl' – this was a girl who seemed to be living on air, having eaten nothing since her 12th birthday in mid-May. Sarah's story was headline news; gifts and donations flooded the family home in Carmarthenshire; nurses were sent from Guy's Hospital. But after only a few weeks of medical supervision, Sarah died, and the shocking truth was revealed: that she had secretly been given food before the nurses arrived. Sarah's parents were charged with murder, eventually convicted of manslaughter.

Was Sarah an anorexic at the centre of a lucrative scam, driven by a hungry media and her parents' greed? Examining the medical and legal issues surrounding Sarah's case, Stephen Wade gives a haunting glimpse into the ways science, superstition and the cult of celebrity collided in the late 19th century.

Stephen Wade is the author of twenty books on crime and law in history, with a special interest in regional crime stories. He teaches History at the University of Hull.