WOMAN’S ENFORCED FAST

Greymouth Evening Star, 1 October 1937, Page 9

WOMAN’S ENFORCED FAST

NO FOOD FOR EIGHTEEN YEARS There is a bouse in Shrewsbury read (say/ the. Daily Herald) where ih" larder is always empty and the ,\<<-kly "F>od" bill amounts to no more than half a. crown. In it, her face lined by years of suffering, lives 62-year-old widow, Mrs. E. Hoarc. who has eaten nothing for the past lx years. Thirty-six years ano, shortly after her first child was born, she found difficulty in swallowing food. Doc trns could do nothing for her. Grade ally she became worse, until she was reduced to eating thin bread and butfm- ami trying to gel the food to dissolve in her month. Even this became H'o painful, a crumb could choke her. In 1919 she became resigned to her fate —she would never cat again. Now she lives on sweetened tea and coffee and orange juice. “Sometimes I feel that I cannot go on,” she told a reported, “but 1 shall m ver say die until 1 drop. I have b-'en constantly hungry—starving in •:;<:t, all those long, weary years. The ry smell of food makes mo raven('os. and yet I cannot touch a thing,” She feels that her case is hopeless •-cl intends to bequeath her body to hospital, in the hope that doctors may solve the throat mystery which hr- robbed her of the desire to live. “My third daughter was married a fortnight ago.” ’she went on, "and I am left here alone. I have only my ol.d-a.~e pension, and I shall have to give up *he house. If people come to see me, they have to provide for themselves. I have no use for food here. Often I have fallen in tlm street, faint from hunger." Every week Mrs. Hoare uses over 41b of sugar in her tea and coffee.