Richardo Sacco, known as the "fasting man," has died at Blackpool after an illness which followed a fast of sixty-five days at a local place of amusement. "Sacco" was the assumed name of one Richard Hans Jones. He was a baker by trade, and was aged forty-eight when he died. It was his practice to perform fasts at places of public exhibition. He would pledge himself to abstain from food for a period of many weeks, and he would dwell for the time concerned in a glass case, sustained by no more nourishment than was afforded by draughts of sweetened water. For a fee the public was admitted, throughout the fast, to behold and to admire the withered, fakir-like being, smoking his incessant cigarettes and daily becoming more hideous to the eye. Sacco continued in this morbid, although lucrative, practice for about a quarter of a century; but he fasted once too often. He finished a fast of nearly eight weeks, and immediately fell into ill-health, to which he succumbed.
The Irish Times, November 8th, 1929.