Ann Moore, later notorious as the 'fasting-woman of Tutbury,' was baptized at St. Peter's Church, Derby, with a recorded birth date of 31 October 1761.
Ann Moore was born on 31 October 1761 and baptized at St. Peter's Church in Derby, England, according to parish records cited in the Dictionary of National Biography. She would later become one of the most talked-about women in Georgian England under a very different guise: as the supposed 'fasting-woman of Tutbury.'
Little is documented about her early life beyond her baptismal record, but she grew up in humble circumstances typical of the rural working class in Derbyshire and Staffordshire during the late eighteenth century. Decades later, she settled in the small market town of Tutbury, Staffordshire, where she would give birth to the claim that made her famous — and infamous.
This birth record is historically significant primarily because it anchors the chronology of a woman whose later life became a national sensation and cautionary tale about credulity, celebrity, and the era's fascination with bodily miracles. Her exact birthdate, established through parish documentation rather than folklore, allows historians to date the arc of her extraordinary public deception with precision.
The discrepancy between the commonly cited approximate birth year (c.1761) in secondary sources and the precise parish-recorded date reflects the broader challenge of reconstructing the biographies of ordinary women of this period, who rarely left documentary traces until they became objects of public scrutiny.
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