A List of Supercentenarians November 21, 2011
Author: Beach Combing | in : Modern , trackback
The following list of long-living folks crops up in a book from the very early twentieth-century. Different versions of this same list had already appeared in various publications through the nineteenth century and names seem to have been added and dropped as easily as editors clumped decades onto the supposed Methuselahs: John Effingham, for example, is recorded elsewhere as being a Cornish soldier who died at the impressive age of 104, not 144 as stated below!
Some of the names are famous: Louisa Truxo and Thomas Parr (painted by Rubens), for example. Others are strangely anonymous: who was John Delasomer? But one thing is certain, most came from the British Isles. In fact, in Beachcombing’s edition the author specifically states that all are Irish or British unless otherwise stated (a promise the author doesn’t keep but anyway).
Year of Death/name/age at death
1759 Don Cameron 130
1766 John Delasomer 131
??? George King 129
1767 John Taylor 130
1774 William Beattie 133
1778 John Watson 130
1780 Robert M’Bride 127
??? William Ellis 131
1764 Eliza Taylor 131
1775 Peter Garden 131
1761 Eliza Merchant 133
1772 Mrs. Keith 133
1767 Francis Ange 134
1777 John Brooke 134
1714 Jane Harrison 135
1759 James Shellie 136
1768 Catherine Noonan 136
1771 Margaret Foster 136
1776 John Miarait 137
1772 J. Richardson 137
1793 — Robertson 137
1757 William Sharpley 138
1768 J. McDonough 138
1770 — Fairbrother 138
1772 Mrs. Clum 138
1604 Countess of Desmond 140
1778 Swarling (a monk) 142
1773 Charles McFinley 143
1757 John Effingham 144
1782 Evan Williams 145
1766 Thomas Winsloe 146
1772 J. C. Drakenberg 146
1652 William Mead 148
1768 Francis Confi 150
1542 Thomas Newman 152
1656 James Bowels 152
???? Henry West 152
1648 Thomas Damme 149
1635 Thomas Parr 152
1797 Joseph Surrington 160
1668 William Edwards 168
1670 Henry Jenkins 169
1780 Louisa Truxo 175
1820 Soloman Nibet 143
1822 Lucretia Stewart 130
1839 Wm. James (S. Carolina) 132
1846 Thos. Lightfoot (Canada) 127
1861 Marian Moore (England) 131
1869 — Lockhart (Iowa) 127
1878 Eulalia Perez ( California) 140
???? Edna Goodman (Arkan.) 127
1888 Granny Rose (S. Carolina) 131
1889 — Wapmarek (Germany) 126
Beachcombing’s first reaction, as so often, is ‘what nonsense’. But one thing bothers him. There is normally a relation between reports of longevity and countries where there is not an established bureaucracy: not least because scribbling administrators and civil servants leave a paper trail with obvious consequences for eighty year olds claiming to be 130! Memories here of an earlier post on Romans who lived well into their second century.
And so Beachcombing is left wondering how so many individuals from Britain and Ireland, including many who had lived in the same parish through their whole lives, managed to get away with such outrageous claims. Sixteenth-, seventeenth, eighteenth- and nineteenth century Britain had an established bureaucracy, both state and ecclesiastical. You couldn’t just turn up at the Town Hall and claim to be two hundred.
Any explanation? One thing strikes Beach looking at the English names. Many are remarkably common combinations: Henry West, Thomas Parr, Henry Jenkins, John Brooke, Jane Harrison… Did someone confuse a grandparent and a grandchild in the parish records and was an exaggerated age foisted on some of these (reluctant?) centenarians? Drbeachcombing AT yahoo DOT com
PS Can’t resist the legend that the Countess Desmond above, who died in the early seventeenth-century, danced with Richard III as a girl! Now that would have been a memory…
