Fat woman rejects help

Press, 24 April 1979, Page 10

Fat woman rejects help

N Z P A Birmingham, England A woman who says she weighs 330 kg refuses to move from her two sitting-room chairs in spite of doctors’ pleas that she needs urgent hospital treatment to lose weight. “Th&y will only stop me smoking and starve me to death,” said Mrs Muriel Hopkins, aged 48, who is staying with her mother, who is 85, in a small house at Tipton, 15km west of Birmingham. Mrs Hopkins sis so heavy that she is unable

to walk, and spends most of her day slumped over chairs. She also sleeps there as she is unable to bend to get into bed, according to reports. The trouble started last week when Mrs Hopkins fell over and could not get up. Policemen and firemen were called in to set her upright, which they did by rolling her up in a carpet. Then doctors decided she should be taken to hospital, and called in an ambulance. But . after several attempts by ambulancemen and fire

crow to lift her, she told them all to leave her alone. “I got fed up with them all going to and fro,” Mrs Hopkins said. “I would rather stay here with my mum. I have always had a weight problem, and I smoke like a chimeny.” She also confessed to liking potatoes, and bacon and eggs. Her mother, Mrs Beatrice Brown, said: “She is a real guzzler, but it is not the food which makes her fat, it is some trouble with fluid in her tissues.”